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.