Big Girl Gettaway

Our long awaited Girls Trip.  Phoenix, AZ February 2012

Oh, it was so great!  We should have done this long ago!  We

visited lovely Sedona, relaxed at our beutiful rental house for a spa day, swam in the very nice

pool, went shopping, ate good food and some not so good food, attended an Ariabian Horse show, watched movies, made a quilt for Katy's soon to be baby...and had a FAB time together!

Sedona was so amazing!  I loved it! The colors, the beautiful rocks, the warm, fresh air..the best sisters.

We really enjoyed our "hike" over the red rocks.  I just couldn't get enough of the beautiful vistas surrounding us.

I loved this shot with the palm trees at sunset behind us.  Johanna and I sported matching hairdos to go see Wicked

IHOP at midnight after WICKED.  Was this our best dinner out?  Maybe...Sad as that is, we just couldn't fit in the nice dinners we had planned on.  Oh well, my sausage and pancakes were delicious!

You can tell that this was a girls vacation since the only use this pool table got was as a shopping bag catchall

A steamy photo of Mom and Katy-so cute!  By the way, LOVED the heated pool!

Sorry Jen, I had to include this photo.  This just perfectly describes the state of relaxing poolside after a delicious meal in the warm sun.mmmmm.....

 So much for our "beauty treatments"  Don't think they did much, but they were fun to peel off!

I was so impressed with the Phonix area freeways-they were beautifully designed and decorated.  I've never seen anything like it!

 Saturday's Ariabian Horseshow in Scottsdale was fun.  The horses were gorgeous, though we've all had better lunches before....

 Arabian checking Johanna for a snack offering.....no such luck

 Speaking of snack...I'll have some of this yummy cake-thank you Katy!

 It was great to see a little of Olivia and Charlotte-Thanks Danielle!

Our Last Night....sigh.  I am drinking the last of my "free" lemonade from the horse show.  Actually, it was free.  I thought they said free refills, so after they filled me up again ( it was so good-rasberry lemonade!), and I'd explained that my cash was gone-spent on their overpriced, disgusting kielbasa ( I didn't tell them that part)-I went home happy with my delicious, FREE lemonade-and I drank every bit!

Happy Valentines Day!

I made some new Valentines decor this year-it turned out cute!

Cuddle buddies

Johanna dutifully helped Cam with his valentines

Ummm...these were SO GOOD!

Aren't these cute?  I think I saw the idea on pinterest-heart shaped cinnamon biscuits.  I made them for V-day breakfast, along with strawberry smoothies

Eddy had a sweet Valentines party in kindergarten.  They had healthy snacks, opened their cards (along with a lot of treats), did conversation heart math, made this cool hat, and did a valentines sequencing activity

too cute-Logan and Jade (we just call her "gigantic hair accessory girl"-she likes to wear oversized hair things) have really hit it off in guitar class

Johanna and Logan had a Valentines concert Valentines night.  The music guy-Mr. Foster, is a hoot-a total hippy, he leans towards beatles songs and the like.  The band did Huey Louis (sp?) last night-"The Power of Love".  Johanna played in band, Jazz band and guitar class.  I accompanied Johanna's friend as she sung a solo.

A busy January

Eddy's First Lost Tooth!  It's a milestone in our family-our last first tooth.  Cam kicked Eddy in the mouth while they were in the bath.  Cam was yelling..."Eddy's bleeding...alot!"  I guess it wasn't QUITE ready to come out on it's own yet. 

Johanna's all business at her ward YW volleyball game

Camden and friend, Abe watch their sisters after having their last basketball game.

We spent 2 weekends plus painting Johanna's room this delightful green color.  We painted one wall with these snappy diamonds.  I'll post a finished room picture later.  I also decided that I definately don't want to paint the whole house.

 What a mess!

We had 10 kids at our house last weekend for play, dinner and lateovers.  I spent all afternoon making homemade spaghetti and meatballs, garlic french bread, fudge sauce and brownies for everyone.  It was super noisy, which was okay until the girls wanted to watch "Love Comes Softly"downstairs and the boys wanted to play Wii Rockband upstairs-Romance and "Eye of the Tiger " didn't go well together and the boys and the girls were all yelling at each other.  Everyone must have had fun, because the girls and some of the boys came back again last Friday.

The girls thought it would be fun to take off their shoes and

run around in the rain......whatever

 Eddy and Jillian gettin' ripped in 30

Camden and his "sick" day at home.  He just didn't feel up to going to school that morning, so I let him stay home.  He layed on the couch and read books and then we made mini doughnuts...thanks, Hansen's!  He was feeling much better after lunch, so I sent him back to school with a plate of doughnuts for his teacher.  It was fun to spend a morning at home with him = )

Tofu key lime cheesecake

It's good....really!

I opened the door to get a picture of the boys coming home from school and Ed did this "ta da" kind of thing....funny

Eddy picked the David and Golieth FHE lesson last Monday-they had a great time shooting marshmallows at Golieth

What you CAN"T see is all the needles on the ground

Our gargantuan, 14 foot tall tree makes it's exit from our house.  I grew to love it, but was not sad to see it leave.

Johanna busied herself with this lovely painting on the last day of Christmas break.  She's planning on adding a phrase or saying to the left side of it-I'll post that later.

Some Salem Scenes

Spruce Goose.  We had a great time at the air museum-what a beautiful building!  We declined to pay extra to sit in the cockpit because I was so excited about getting in for FREE, I didn't want to ruin it!

I thought this turned out cute, even if it is cliche-I"m just noticing grandpa in the background.....

The SR-71 blackbird-Blake and Logan think it's pretty much their favorite airplane ever.

Gingerbread and Grandma's house-a holiday tradition!  The kids had so much fun!!!!

Okay, I did too-it's been years since I had "my own" house to decorate...I have to say, it was beautiful.

Finally, the Kroc Center!  We've tried to go before and been foiled, but this time we enjoyed it's chlorine waters, until some kid vomited in the kiddy pool....

So, we climbed on the rock wall instead

OMSI was also---FREE!  Thank you museum membership!  In this picture a current is passing through the Hoth/Thurman family while we laugh at the strange feeling.

 Also finally-everyone (for some reason I didn't go) visited the submarine at OMSI-I think the kids enjoyed themselves, and Grandpa too.  We've gone to OMSI before and it was booked up.

 This is a fun one..I woke up to damp sheets one morning and a dripping sound above my head...never good.  Grandpa's roof has finally caught up with him and it was leaking.  Luckily we were there so that Grandpa didn't have to climb on the very slippery roof.  With rope safely tied to front yard tree to hand on to, Blake nailed plastic over the back side of the roof and we slept dryly that night.

 Ahhhh...the obligatory Carousel visit.  This was our only time with Kevin, and he had a great time.  Kevin acted like he'd never before seen me in his whole life, but of course, he LOVED Blake and kept pointing at him and making everyone else point at him too.  My theory is that they were best buds in former life.

I thought this was a cute photo of everyone.

We had a great time at Mom and Dad's house-the days went by quickly, which they tend to do when you stay up late and sleep in!