Phoenix Zoo

I am so hopelessly behind that I'm not even going to try to write a lot. We took the kids to the zoo that day after we flew back from Washington. The pictures are in reverse order thanks to Blogger, but here they are for your viewing pleasure.

Winter Break Part 2

We took one extra week off of school and went up to Washington to see Greg's family. They were able to finally meet Ethan and I'm pretty sure they loved him! I think he was held pretty much the entire week.


The kids were so excited to play in the snow with their uncles and cousins. They spent one day riding bikes on the bike path (after the snow was shoveled). Brayden and Tawny really liked using the big snow shovel. Another day when there was more snow they made snow angels and rode on the sled behind the 4-wheeler. Luckily Elaine still has tons of snow clothes for the kids to wear, so they were nice and warm.

They were both having so much fun...

...until Tawny got cold. She melted into a little pile of sad, crying, snot-nosed three-year old.

But after a little rest on the couch she went back out for round two and had so much fun.

It was great to see everyone again. As always, the trip didn't feel quite long enough. At least we didn't drive this time. We didn't think 24 hours in the car with 3 little kids sounded too great, so we decided to fly this time. I was a little nervous with Brayden's peanut allergies (okay, I was super nervous), but we were careful, and everything went fine. It was Brayden and Tawny's first time on an airplane and they loved the whole experience.

Winter Break

I didn't know it was possible to pack so much fun into just a few weeks! The week after Christmas my brothers Brian and Steven were here. We spent the entire week over at my parents house hangin' out, playing games, and eating tons of great food. Brayden and Tawny loved playing with Tyler and Jordan. The best was watching Tyler and Brayden "wrestle". Brayden was making such an effort to play softly and not hurt Tyler. I loved seeing him show so much concern. It made a Mommy proud.

The following week was just me and the kids and we made the best of it. We had picnics in the park, friends over to play, rode bikes all over the neighborhood, watched tons of funny movies, baked treats together, visited daddy at work, went to the Children's Museum in Phoenix, and so much more.

Greg was busy working, but we still wanted to see him so one day we took a picnic out to the farm and ate lunch with him. Afterwards Brayden and Tawny rode with Daddy for a while.

These pictures are all of the Phoenix Science Museum, We went with the Sotos and we all had so much fun, the mommies included. It started out with this HUGE three-story tree house. We spend almost an hour exploring and having fun up there.

This was the racing room. There were realistic toys for them to climb on, as well as 3-4 huge racing tracks for little cars made out of PVC pipes.

The Ball Room. There was a little market where the kids could go shopping for food, then pay for it at the register. Then they could take the food to the adjoining kitchen and "cook" what they had bought. This was one of Tawny's favorite rooms.
The noodle forrest. Hundreds and hundreds of pool noodles suspended from the ceiling. Enough said.
Arts and crafts

The Car Wash