Highlights of AZ Christmas

 Our car was packed to the gills with people, stuff and a pooch. Another LONG roadtrip back to AZ.

 Hotel fireplace fun.

 Grandma's!

 Family pictures.

 Male bonding.

 Bob Jr....

 Sunday lunch!

 Why do my kids like this small rat? ;)

 Tower building with Lindsey.

 Family game night. This night we played 'Don't Eat Pete'. Amelia especially loved the mini M&M's!

 More!

 Pooch needed her walk, so Macers and I went for a Christmas light stroll.

Rudolph!

DMCO Christmas 2015

 I really have a lot of other activities/chores that need to be done, but I downloaded the official choir pictures today and wanted to share them!

Macey is with the group sitting on the floor. I really have no idea, maybe to the left...

Backstage busy work.

 I felt awful that I didn't get any great pictures of sister backstage from concert 1, so here is my attempt at concert 2.

 This was the only picture during concert 1 of sister I took, and it is BLURRY. You see why I had to do better the second day!

 Macey is in between the two conductors (just to the left of Professor Jensen's head), 2nd row. This is during Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

 Macey next to McKayla and in front of Juliett.

 In between songs.

 Snowflakes song.

So cute! Sister is the face in the middle. I worked hard volunteering backstage and during the rehearsals this semester. It was so worth it to see how awesome the kids did on stage. One last semester with the youngest singing group before we move up with the massive big kid group.

1st Cross Country Meet

 Yesterday was Alex's first Cross Country Meet. Selfishly, I would like to see him love this sport! All the guys I knew in school that ran cross country were very kind, smart, and dedicated students. Qualities I'd like to see in my son too! Above shows that the guys were just below the setting sun. Hard to take a good picture.

 All the middle schools competed at once.

 That is a lot of boys!

 The weather was awesome! A great day for a run.

 Alex is running on the sidewalk to the left of the picture. He finished in the top 75 (but other boys who didn't cheated and took his 'ticket'!) Anyone after that, basically ran for fun. Next time he needs to be 10 seconds faster! And hopefully everyone else will be 10 seconds slower!

 Track man.

 You would have to zoom in, but this IS cross country and he did walk away covered in mud on his backside.

7th and 8th grade team. Alex didn't come home too excited. 3 more meets for him to give it a try.

Halloween etc.

 It is Halloween. Pumpkins at Kroger? No.

 Pumpkins at Wal-Mart? No.

 Over-priced fund raiser pumpkins at Methodist church? Yes.

 But look at this great photo op.

 Serious about gutting this pumpkin.

 Serious about stenciling this pumpkin.

 12 years old and still seriously grossed out about pumpkins in general.

 Rainbow Dash, John Cena (don't ask, once they start it is hard to stop them) and Kirby.

 Lakitu. Not one of my finer costumes, but it will do.

 Princess Peach. Super cute little racing queen!

 Waluigi and a Gamer.

 This is them very embarrassed but doing it anyway because there could be candy on the other side.

 Love this look on Ryan's face! The gorilla (Jospeh) is eating his turtle shell!

 Negotiations.

 Apparently there are note fairies that visit Macey's classroom. She built a house for them in the playground after school.

 Pajama Day. Also Oliver's bday, so we sent that Penguin Lover this cute picture for his birthday greeting.

 Our spooky tree just got creepier. Ugh, time to be chopped down.

 Stretch!