Post Christmas

After Christmas we were able to go to Prescott for a little bit. We finally checked out the zoo. It is small, but lots of good animals to see up close.

There are also a lot of toys to play on, which were Jackson's favorite (although in this one he looks like he's trying to strike his sister)!

We took one morning and hiked  the Peavine Trail. Brooklyn was so excited not to be in the stroller the whole time!

And Jackson just kept walking. Our children love to be outside. We were lucky it was so warm up there and we weren't in the snow everyday, although some snow would have been nice!

Jackson shared Lightning McQueen with Brooklyn, and helped her ride it. As long as someone did the button for her, she held on and had a blast. Jackson is such a great big brother, most of the time!! He loves to help his sister.

And of course, a trip to the park was a must. This slide is kind of steep, and a little scary. It took us a few minutes, and a trip down with Tia to get Jackson to feel comfortable on this slide, but then we couldn't keep him off of it.

The is our little monkey. Climbing all over the place, and sadly, trying to chew on the floor. Poor girl has teeth coming in like there's no tomorrow. She just had 3 break through in the last few weeks, and has 5 more trying to. 

She is also our fearless child. The slide we had to coax Jackson down., she climbed up, and went down backwards. She loves to slide and swing. We went out to the mall a few times to let the kids play, and she just acted like a big kid. Up and down the slide, mostly backwards on her tummy, but a few times face first. She tried to do that back at the house on the stairs as well! She's going to have a lot of falls in the next few years!!

The one thing we didn't do, and Brooklyn was really upset about, we didn't play any golf! She would try and carry these clubs and bag around the house. Up and down the stairs was really problematic. It was so funny because she wouldn't just carry one, and they are almost as big as she is! We think Bobby trained her and was trying to tell us something!!

Christmas

Santa brought this amazing apron to Bobby! Now there are no excuses for not helping in the kitchen! 

Brooklyn did okay with presents, but mostly just wondered around playing with toys. Mostly the old ones, but a few of the new.

Jackson was too funny. He got exactly what he wanted, which was Spencer, a train from Thomas, but spent most of the time playing with Brooklyn's gifts. He loved her tea set, and made us all yummy drinks! But this year was fun since it was the first year he really got into Santa. We wrote him a letter, and he even drew him a picture we left out with the cookies and milk. 

This picture doesn't show it too well, but these three had Christmas mo-hocks.  Bobby came home one night and decided him and Jax needed them since Bobby was off work for 2 weeks. And what little hair Brooklyn has just naturally spiked for us. So cute. We got lots of comments at church!

We had Christmas dinner with Barry's family. Mikelle's parents and sister, Kristin also joined us.  We even had Mikelle's Grandmother, Grandad and Uncle Rob for a little while. It was a lot of fun, and the sweetest part, was Jackson putting a bow on his head and running around telling everyone he was the best present ever!

Tessa got a fun game for Christmas, and of course after she let Jackson see how it worked, he wanted a turn and so did Trenton. We worked a lot on sharing Christmas night!

Pre-Christmas

To get ready for Christmas, we spent a lot of time in the car looking at Christmas lights. This was Jackson's favorite thing to do. One evening, we went into Scottsdale to the train park to ride the train through the lights. It was crazy crowded, but so worth the wait. There were so many lights and other fun things to do. Mostly Mikelle waited in line while the kids and Bobby did all the fun things!!

Here are Jackson's awesome antlers he made at our ward Christmas party. This year they did a brunch, and everyone came in jammies. It was a great idea and went really well. The one down side was that a little girl got sick in the middle of it, and guess who was sick all the next week? We hate the "choke-up" bug around here. (That's what Jackson calls it).

Grandma Halterman gave Jackson his own gingerbread house to decorate. He loved it. Mikelle helped, but just by putting the frosting where he wanted it. He was very creative, even made a little garden in front, I'm sure just for his Papa!

We took the kids to see Santa, and of course Jackson did great, and Brooklyn freaked out!  But we took them to Arizona Mills, where they had this cool sand castle for Santa's Village. It was real sand. Santa even sat on a sand chair. Too cool, especially for AZ.

This was Christmas Eve day. We went for a hike up South Mountain. The kids loved it, although Brooklyn would have preferred to walk. It was a little steep and rocky though for that. It was a gorgeous day. Unseasonable warm here in Phoenix, that means unseasonably cool for the summer, right?!