Thanksgiving Week (now with pictures!)

We spent the week of Thanksgiving in Utah this year.  With Matthew now in rotations we didn't think we would get enough time off to travel but luckily it worked out and we had such a great time.  We stayed with Matthew's parents who had just moved to a new house and had lots of cousin time and Nonna Pa time.

We went to he Hogle Zoo for the first time.  In all the time I have spent in Utah I had never been to the zoo but we all went and loved it.  Lots of cool animals.  Kensley loved the baby giraffe and Austin loved the polar bear and the sea otters.  It was a great family outing.

Fun times with cousins!

 Black girls with the Allens

We were able to hit two Thanksgiving dinners.  First at my Grandma Black's house we were able to visit with my two sisters who attend BYU and my 2 of my aunt and uncles and several cousins.  I don't get to see them that often so it was nice to catch up.  Next we had dinner with the Graffs. All of Matthew's siblings were able to be there which was nice.  All the food at both dinners was amazing.  My favorite part is the pie. :)  Later that night, my little sister and I had a fun night of Black Friday shopping at a new outlet mall.

Austin and Kensley were both thoroughly entertained by cousins and toys the whole time.  They actually were great the whole trip. However the day we were suppose to drive home Matthew got really sick. So sick that he really couldn't drive home.  So we stayed another day, got him some antibiotics and were able to get home a day late.

 Thanksgiving at the Blacks

 Hogle Zoo

 The Swings at Nonna's house

Black Friday shopping with Kayla!

Overall, I am so glad we were able to travel to spend Thanksgiving with family. It was well worth the trip!

Jenna's Visit

For the week of Halloween, my sister Jenna and her family were able to come out and visit!  Her husband Cole had a conference in Phoenix anyway so the whole family came  and I'm so glad they did! We had such a blast with them and the cousins loved playing the whole time. Jenna and I (according to our husbands) get so giggly and goofy when we are together and the husbands enjoyed time to catch up as well.

They are already used to the cold Kansas weather so we spend as much time as we could outside in our warm Arizona weather.

 Girls in swings!

 Twins!

 Cole playing frisbee with the boys

 lunch at the park

 These boys played so good with each other the whole time! 

 Getting some girl time

 Of course the favorite activity was jumping and playing on the air mattress.

 We had preschool over at my house while they were here on Halloween day so this was our Halloween snack!

 Getting ready for Trick or Treating.  Cade was a road, Austin was Jake the Pirate, and Rylee was a owl.

 We loved going trick or treating with cousins!  

 Kensley helping the kids go through their candy as soon as we got back from trick or treating.

 Jenna and I were able to get away and go fabric shopping!!  Woo hoo! Probably the best two hours of their time here! :)

 Yay for cousins!!  So Cute!

 On their last day here we went to Jumpstreet with some friends. My kids were having a rough morning but Cade and Rylee loved it!

On one of the nights while they were here, Austin got up in the night to go to the bathroom and said to me half asleep, "I love my cousins."  It was really the cutest thing ever.

You guys are welcome back anytime!

October

I can't believe it's been about a month since I have last posted.  October was a jammed packed month for us.  But here are the highlights from last month.

Matthew has started his medical rotations! Woohoo!  He is done with all the lectures, classes and endless studying and now actually gets to experience all the things he has been learning about.  His first one is currently at the podiatry clinic at the medical school. He has loved it so far and is learning a lot. I love hearing about everything he gets to see and do now. It's also so nice now to have him home in the evenings instead of having to go back up to school to study.

This year Matthew and I were asked to be in charge of our ward's Trunk or Treat party.  Definitely an overwhelming job! I was excited to do it but it was just a lot of work and kind of consumed my month!  I had a committee to help which all did such a great job and I couldn't have done it without them!  It's just getting every little detail ironed out that takes so much time.  I was kind of relieved when it was over.  We had close to 250 people attend and I got lots of good feedback so hopefully that means it was a success!

Costumes this year were very low key since I had a lot on my plate this month.  Austin is really into the show  Jake and the Neverland Pirates right now and really wanted to be Jake this year so I decided we would all go as pirates.  I already had mine from several years ago, I found most of Matthew's at Goodwill, and then made Austin's and Kensley's and some of Matthew's accessories. For some reason I really wanted Kensley to wear a tutu just because she hasn't ever worn one yet so her costume kind of morphed into rocker-chick pirate but whatever! 

Matthew's school always puts on a great Halloween carnival and this year was no different.  We went around to several offices trick or treating with his friends Peter and James.  Then we enjoyed snacks, inflatable slides, and carnival games.  Kensley was a sport in the stroller for most of it as long as she had some candy to hold and play with. 

I also got a new calling at church this month.  I am now the laurel advisor! I am so excited to be working with the young women!  They are such a fun and great set of girls. 

The week of Halloween will get its own post because my sister Jenna and her family were able to come visit!   So. Much. Fun! 

8 Months

We love our little girl! She is 8 months now and has really developed a lot in the past weeks. She is a crawler now! She can now go anywhere she wants and loves to explore.  She somehow always finds the door stoppers and loves to "boing" them.  (You know, those little spiraly things on the baseboards that keep the door from banging into the wall behind it?)  She knows where every single one is in our house.  Austin thinks it's pretty funny.  She has barely been starting to pull herself up against things. However, this little girl won't sit up on her own!  I feel that is a little out of order but I guess she will get it sometime.

Kensley has gotten her first tooth in and I can feel another one coming in. Teething for her has been brutal. Way worse than with Austin,  I'm hoping the first tooth is the worst to go through.  She has finally started to sleep through the night but only about half of the time. We finally have her sharing a room with Austin.   They still wake each other up all the time but I'm hoping they will get used to one another.

Kensley just loves her brother to pieces.  As soon as she wakes up she looks for him.  She always wants to see what he is doing or to crawl over to him and "play" with him. Austin has been really good with her lately. He will get on the ground and crawl right next to her and tell me, "Look, two babies crawling!"  If he is playing cars he will give one to her to play with too. We definitely still have our moments but I can tell they are going to be good friends.

Exploring and getting into things:

Really wanting my camera

 Posing after lunch

 We went to the Children's Museum and she was able to really play with things instead of just sitting in the stroller for most of the time. 

We all just adore this little girl!

Family Pictures 2012

My good friend Kiya took some family pictures for us and I LOVE how they turned out!  She is so wonderful and so awesome to work with.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Ahh! How I love my little family!

Update

It's been exactly a month since I last posted. Ahh! Where did the time go?  I feel like we have done a lot this past month so here goes...
In between Matthew's summer term and fall term we had a little break so we made a quick trip to Indio, CA.  We went there last summer and had so much fun we decided to go again.  It's only about 3 1/2 hours away so it was very worth the trip.  Not that there is that much to do in Indio, but the place we stayed has several fun pools and play areas for the kids. We went with our good friends the Kmetzschs and had a great time. Our boys played so good together and kept each other entertained the whole time.  The adults had fun chatting and playing games in the evenings.  I completely forgot my camera so these are from my phone.

On one of the days we drove about to 30 minutes away to Palm Springs, CA.  On our way we passed this huge windmill farm. I mean, like windmills as far as the eye can see.  Apparently it is the 7th biggest windmill farm in the world.  It was actually pretty neat to see.  We stopped and took pictures. 

Palm Springs has a lot of history and was old Hollywood's vacation town. It has a cute downtown area that we walked around and we even passed Marilyn Monroe's house there and Elvis's honeymoon house. We had to get a picture under the huge Marilyn statue. (darn blogger for not letting me rotate this pic)

We stopped in this hat shop and all had fun trying on hats.

Such a great little get-a-way with friends!

Then about a week and half later was labor day weekend. We realized Matthew had Friday and Monday off so we quickly decided we wanted to go somewhere.  We talked to Matthew's parents in Utah and decided to each drive half way and meet in Vegas!  I'm so glad we did! It was a quick last minute plan but worth the trip.  

While trying to decide what to do while there we found out it was the opening weekend for Wicked to be playing.  We have been wanting to go see it together since we've been married but haven't had the chance yet.  Matthew has seen it once before we met.  However, tickets were expensive or in the nosebleeds so we weren't sure if it would work out.  

Well all of that didn't matter because I won 2 front row tickets in a raffle!! 

 My button says "I won the Wicked Lottery!"

We found out about this raffle and decided to take our chances. It was worth a shot. We had to show up 2 hours before the show, put your name in a box and if your name was called you won the chance to buy $25 front row seats. Well guess whose name they called?!  Yes, mine!!  Woo Hoo!  I couldn't believe it.  Me and about 10 other people won tickets! 

The show was so amazing.  My face I'm sure looked just like a kid in the candy store the whole time.  Especially from the front row!  We could see their faces and emotions and it was just so fabulous.  It also worked out perfectly that Matthew's parents were there to watch our kids.

Here we are in our front row seats

Such a fun and night!

Other than that we mostly hung out, swam and enjoyed our long weekend break.  It was slightly cooler here too so it was a nice little break from intense heat. 

 We also got some voucher to eat at one of the Casino's buffets. So we were able to walk around downtown and have lunch. This is inside the Venetian. 

 Matthew's sister Aubrey came too.  It was so fun to see her and catch up.  Austin and Aaron played so well together the whole time. They were really cute together!

 Austin was so sad to leave so no smiles from him.

Now we are back in the swing of school. Matthew has a short term of classes right now and then will start rotations in October.