oh christmas tree and zoolights

hooray for christmas. we finally got our christmas tree and it only took me 4 hours to get it set up and decorated. can i just say i hate fake christmas trees but they are very economical and we all know how much john likes that. so after scratching my hands and arms up trying to spread out all the branches so it looks "real" this is how it turned out...

is it just me or is it really hard to settle on a theme for christmas? i mean christmas ornaments aren't cheap and you don't want to have to buy new ones every year. i finally decided to go traditional with a twist i chose red, white and a bright green. growing up i always loved my mom's christmas tree because it was kid friendly and whimsical so this is my attempt to recreate my moms tree. anyway jack really likes the tree and every time we turn on the lights he says "did mom decorate that?" i'm taking it as a compliment.

so after getting our tree and believe it or not watching fred claus i finally feel in the christmas spirit and to celebrate that we went to the phoenix zoo for "zoolights" with steph, jonathan, tyler and haylie. i highly recommend doing this, it is so cool and beautiful and the kids love it.

all throughout the zoo they have light animals running, jumping and sliding. the picture doesn't do it justice but it is awesome.

jack and tyler found this cave of lights and wanted to hang out their the rest of the night but we had more animals so to see. hope all of you guys are able to find fun christmas stuff to do. merry christmas everyone.

trying to get into the christmas spirit

i can't believe it is already several days into december and it is still in the 70's. it just doesn't feel like the christmas season, i guess i've lived in utah too long that christmas means seeing my breath in the air and snow on the ground and that is just not happening here. so in order to feel more like it is really christmas time we made a ginger bread house, went to glitter fest in glendale, went the the "world's largest living christmas tree" lighting here at our local outlet mall, saw santa, went to the mesa temple lights and i'm even drinking my favorite stephen's hot chocolate while i write this post but even with all of that something is missing.

that thing that is missing is my christmas tree. in an effort to save money john ordered our fake tree online and it is still not here. cross your fingers it will get here tomorrow december 9th!!! i've been collecting ornaments for my birthday to decorate my tree and they are just sitting in the bag waiting. but until then here are some pictures of our christmas outings so far.

hooray for turkey day...and more

this is the first year in 3 years that we actually got to spend thanksgiving with immediate family and it was awesome. we were lucky enough to have nanna and papa come up from california to spend the holiday with us. we even got the illustrious matt to make an appearance. the best part of the holiday besides all our blessing of course is the fact that i didn't have to cook the turkey and that jack actually ate the dinner served, i didn't have to prepare a separate meal for him. i've noticed that a lot of my posts have to do with what jack ate or didn't eat. oh well that is our life and i wouldn't change it for the world. we were also very lucky to have my sister and her family spend the holiday with us, it was an awesome florez/modrell/vaknin party. this is a late post but i just want to give thanks for my family and friends and this awesome country that we live in so we can the freedoms we have and the gospel in our lives. with that said bring on christmas!!!

we of course tried to get a family picture since this was the first time in a long time we were all together but the kids of course had other plans and didn't want to cooperate.

the whole crew enjoying the grub

jack actually sitting at the table and eating the food



laura and kevin borrowed a fun bounce house that entertained the kids for a while so the grown ups could have a little down time.

sing me a little diddy

jacks sings all the time, he especially loves the mamma mia soundtrack (i guess i listened to that cd a little too much), primary songs and a cd he got from his preschool. i'm always trying to get jack to sing me a song so i can document it on video but he never will, he always says "i don't want to sing anymore." so the other day jack wanted me to take pictures of him so while i had the camera i asked again and he finally performed and this is the song he chose...

i love hearing him sing!!

i'm married to an old man

today is john's birthday and i can't believe he is 30!! i guess it seems so weird because we have known each other for so long. john started his day by rolling his ankle again playing basketball. the last time he rolled his ankle was on jack's birthday, needless to say i told john that he is not allowed to play on my birthday. he came home limping to a lovely pancake breakfast prepared by yours truly. then it was off to work where his employee/friend kevin hired an austin powers impersonater to come sing to him. kevin is always doing so many nice things for our family. for jack's first day of school kevin bought jack a cars lunch box and sippy cup. for jack's birthday he bought him a gangster hummer that sang YMCA. what a guy kevin is, thanks.

after work john came home to a house decorated super cheesy to help him feel like he was still young, with streamers and a paper birthday sign. he informed me on the drive home that he actually felt like eating out (total shocker since he never wants to do that) which was fine because i hadn't started cooking the meal he requested. so off to red robin we went (because we had a coupon for a free milk shake.) came home to have cake and ice his ankle.


i want everyone to know that i love john more now then the day i married him, even though he is now an old man. he is the greatest husband and father and i'm blessed that he chose me to spend his life with. love you hooch, happy birthday.

copy cat

i was looking at my friends blog and they had a tag i thought was really fun and i decided that i would do it too.

what you do is open your fourth picture folder and then open the fourth picture in that folder and tell the story that goes along with that picture. it just so happens that the fourth picture in my folder is not a picture at all but a little video clip.

the story behind this video is just a cute 17 month old jack laughing at his dad. i love being able to look back at jacks life and remembering what a cute chubby baby he was. sometimes i forget about how small and sweet he was and it is good to get a reminder on the days he is coloring pictures on my walls!!!!

Trick or Treat (We found the cable)

Finally got the pictures uploaded from the camera and there were actually some really good ones from Halloween so we have to post them, as well as a few others.

As you can see, Jack was a pirate. We taught him how to say "Argh matey!" to make sure he really got in to character. He had a good time running around and in typical Jack fashion, really could care less about any of the candy he was getting (he is the anti-kid).

Overall it was a success and Jack only tried to go in the door of a stranger's house once (it was the first house we went to). He is already talking about how he wants to be a bat next year. Hopefully we can use Tyler's old costumes again!

what happened to october?

so it has been a little while since my last post and i have had good intentions about doing a new post. i sat down a couple of days ago ready to do a new post only to find out that we have somehow misplaced our cable to the camera to download new pictures onto the computer. so i have a camera full of some really cute halloween pictures, trip to the zoo and our visit to the gilbert airport airplane display but with no way to share them. whats a girl to do? hopefully one day soon we will find that cable and be able to join the blogging world again. love seeing all of your blogs, keep up the good work.

California Dreamin'

We had the fortune of going to visit Nanna and Poppa out in California this last week, sadly it came to an end way too quickly. Here is a recap of the weeks events:

Park day.

All I can say is thank heavens for grandparents! Seeing as how Shannyn and I have permanent shoulder problems due to having to push Jack on the swing all the time, it was nice to get some relief. Jack loved having Poppa around to push him to his hearts content.

Downtown day.
Shannyn wanted to get a "Dooney Burge" purse from Santee Alley in L.A., so we thought it would be fun to take the subway and the bus out there since Jack loves trains and buses. We managed to make it their and back without being mugged or harassed by bums, so it was a pretty successful outing. Oh and we got some cool stuff too. Try to take pics of the purses and shirts we got at some other time and put them up, but just know that they are pretty awesome (and they were super cheap).

Beach day.
One of Jack's favorite shows is "Ni Hao Kai-lan." It's about a little Chinese girl and her tiger friend Rintu, koala friend Tolee, and spider monkey friend Ho Ho (I can sing you the theme song if you like, that is how often we watch it). I guess he was getting tired from all the spanish on Dora and Diego so he wanted to try his hand at chinese. Anyhow, for one of the episodes, they go to the beach and make sand castles. Since that episode, whenever we would go to the park, Jack would say he is making sand castles. So we thought it might be fun to take him to the beach. Which it was, he loved it!
As you can see by his outfit (or lack thereof), we didn't think he would want to get wet since the water was so cold. We were wrong.

Disney day.
Nanna and Poppa got us tickets to Disneyland for Christmas this year (which may have to be a tradition, just letting you know ahead of time so you can start saving now). You might think it weird that we are getting Christmas presents in October, but I sort of like to get my presents from my parents way ahead of time. I don't think I have received a present from them on Christmas for about 10 years. Totally my fault though. Just don't have the patience. This way at least I get a good nights sleep before Christmas though. Right, Disneyland. Jack had a blast. He was great the whole day. Loved the jungle cruise (of course he loved the animals). Loved the tea cups (doesn't stop laughing the whole ride). Loved making Dumbo go up and down. He even took a nap while we had lunch in peace (that may have been the best part of the day). All in all it was a great day, THANKS NANNA AND POPPA!!!

i got tagged

so we are going to have a post about our awesome trip to california but again i'm too overwhelmed with all the pictures we took to even begin the post. i will leave it to john to do that post, but for now here is a little look into our history.

I got man-tagged and now I have been hubby tagged. Here is a little information about the man I fell for and married.

1. Where did you meet? we meet in our stake back in north hollywood, his sister dated my brother and my dad was his scout master.
2. How long did you date before you were married? we dated for two years
3. How long have you been married? 6 and a half years
4. What does he do that surprises you? his ability to not let people get to him.
5. What is your favorite feature of his? well he is a fine piece of male specimen but i really love his legs especially his calves.
6. What is your favorite quality of his? the fact that he loves to be together as a family, we always take jack everywhere we go.
7. Does he have a Nickname for you? babe
8. What is his favorite color? i don't think he has a favorite color he likes them all, just look at his dress shirt collection.
9. What is his Favorite food? he is a man who loves all foods except stuffing, weird huh?
10. What is his favorite sport? he likes to play basketball and he loves to watch football, i think that is because of fantasy football.
11. When and where was your first kiss? our first kiss was probably like two months after we started dating and it was in griffeth park.
12. Favorite thing to do as a couple? watch movies and we really love to play volleyball together when we get the chance.
13. Do you have any Children? one little boy, jack
14. Does he have a hidden talent? not any that i'm aloud to talk about.
15. How old is he? 29, 30 on november 19th
16. Who said I love you first? he did
17. What is his favorite type of music? lover of all music except for country
18. What do you admire most about him? how he will do anything to support his family.
19. Do you think he will read this? yup i sure do

Who eats more sweets? he does, i'm not really into the sweets.
Who said I love you first? he did
Who is taller? he is of course, i'm really short
Who can sing the best? he can, have you heard his mom and sister sing?
Who is smarter? john is a genius
Who does the laundry? i do except for his dress shirts because he doesn't trust me to get them out of the dryer right when it buzzes
Who pays the bills? he does, he is in the financial industry
Who mows the lawn? no one we have fake grass and rocks
Who cooks dinner? i do most of the cooking but i'm lucky that he loves to cook and is really good at it.
Who drives? when we are together he does, he has taught jack to call me a crazy driver.
Who's the first to admit when they are wrong? me, john tends to struggle with that one.
Who kissed who first? he kissed me first but i didn't fight him at all
Who asked out who first? he asked me out kind of. he asked me to go to vegas with him for a friends wedding. it was all in his plan to get me alone in the car for several hours and woo me.
Who wears the pants? both of us

The rules for this tag: Answer questions about your spouse, list names of people you are tagging in your post, then leave a comment in their blog letting them know they've been tagged.

i now tag anyone who wants to share their history with us.

wait a minute, i actually miss utah!!

(a picture of our trip to bryce with our friends scottie and rachel. i know it doesn't have to do with fall but it is just a reminder of how beautiful utah really is.)

can you believe you are reading this from shannyn florez, but it is true i miss utah. i miss my friends and being familiar with my area, knowing my way around but i especially miss the seasons. well i should clarify, i miss the fall season, the sweater weather, going to thanksgiving point for the pumpkin festival and the beautiful changing leaves on timp and provo canyon. it is still 100 degress here and i'm starting to think that i will never get to wear the hundreds of sweaters i have collected from living in utah for so long. ok that is all i really have to say because thinking about utah is making me sad.

a family that crafts together...

i've noticed that jack and i tend to get on each others nerves a lot lately, and i blame myself . the poor kid is mainly just bored out of his mind so he whines at me to get my attention. he doesn't really like to do anything by himself like play with his millions of toys, or play out back by himself and now he wants me to sit on the couch with him while he watches a show and i was going nuts trying to find ways to get him to entertain himself. then low and behold i was looking at my sister-in-laws blog and she had a blog by this lady with all kinds of crafts and things to do with your preschooler. i'm not normally the craft kind of girl but i was desperate and these crafts actually looked like something i could do and they were super cheap because most of the stuff she used was stuff i already had. so rather then constantly battle jack to get him to do stuff on his own i decided that these crafts would be fun for him and i might actually like doing them too. here is our first attempt.

it was awesome because all i had to do was cut out the stuff and then jack got to help squeeze the glue then he placed the windows, wheels and things and then i let him color it. my son doesn't have much of an attention span so actually getting him to participate in this was awesome.

here is the finished product. nothing fancy but made with love by my jack jack. i picked the school bus because one, it was something he knows really well and sees it everyday at school and two because it was something i could make without messing it up too much.


i truly think jack's favorite part was coloring his hands and feet more then coloring the bus. gotta love washable markers!!

another thing that is probably only exciting for me is that we finally managed to get jack over 30 pounds. i took him to his three year well child check up and found out that he weighs 31 pounds and is 37 and a half inches tall. this is a huge accomplishment because as we all know jack doesn't enjoy eating very much of anything, so 31 pounds is a huge deal for our family. and if i would have listened to jacks dr in utah we would finally be allowed to put jack in a front facing car seat. can you imagine? just so you know i checked with jacks rehab doctor about the car seat thing and they told me jack was strong enough to face forward a long time ago, so i'm not a negligent mother.

oh and by the way the blog that has all the crafts is www.notimeforflashcards.com check it out if you need some ideas. thanks laura for finding it.

birthday celebration

now that we live in arizona and it is still over 100 degrees i decided that this year for jacks birthday we would take him to our community "water park." jack still isn't really into anything in particular but he does love to swim so it was a win win. we had all of our arizona family come up to swim, bbq and celebrate with us. we were also very lucky to have my mom still here helping steph with the new baby. it was a great day and jack was extremely sad when everyone left to go back to their homes. thanks to everyone who came up we love you guys.

now is the time for the retelling of the days events...

jack is normally permanently grounded from playing the wii because that is all he talks about and wants to do. we thought that jack was taking his nap but he couldn't sleep because there was too much excitement in the air and he got out of bed and came down while john and others were playing rock band. so it was too late he already saw it so he joined in on the fun.



everyone that came up for the party at the water park.



the florez fam



loving dad and mom



here are all the arizona cousins together. this is the best picture we could get because of course kids being kids they didn't want to take a picture they wanted to play, except of course haylie she was great for her photo.





i'm probably a mean mom but even though it was jack's birthday i wasn't about to let him get away with not listening and misbehaving so i had to give him a time out, he was not pleased with that.



after his time out he was allowed to go and swim some more and he hopped right into the kiddie pool and became "one of those kids" who sits on the bubble blowers. i don't know why but it always gives me the creeps when kids do this. oh well what can i do, he isn't hurting anyone and he seems to be enjoying himself.



after swimming for a while we returned to our house to have the bbq, open presents and have the birthday dessert.

here we have lilly, max, katie and tyler. dang cute kids

jack taking in the mound of presents


this year for his birthday we got jack a play kitchen because he is obsessed with his cousin's. so john set up the kitchen the night before so when jack woke up he saw it and immediately started looking for the eggs like the ones tyler has. little did he know that i actually got him eggs but i was saving them for when he actually opened presents. so when it was time to open the eggs and he realized what they were he was so excited and had to immediately open them up and count them. as you can see by the big old smile he has on his face he loved the eggs. what a strange little man i have.



again i have a strange little man because the kid still doesn't like cake and still gags on it so we did ice cream cones again. all the kids were asking me what kind of cake we were going to have so i was really nervous that they were going riot when i produced the ice cream cones but luckily they all seemed happy with what they got.

i think jack really knew that at this point that this was his special day. he loved when we sang to him.

i just want to thank everyone who was able to come and share this special day with us. we love our jack and are so happy Heavenly Father sent him to us.