Arizona

We flew to Arizona in March to visit Brent's Dad and his wife Nancy. We talked Andrea (Brent's sister) into driving down from Utah with her little girl Emma. Andrea recruited Laurie and Jessica (nieces) to drive down with her and help her out with Emma in the car. We had such a good time hanging out, talking, playing games, and letting Owen and Emma play together. It was pretty much Owen's dream vacation. Open space to roam, animals to play with and chase, a tramp to jump on, grandparents to spoil him, cousins to play with and airplanes flying over head (they live by the airport) pretty much every minute of the day! He loved everything about it and was very sad to go home. We flew into Mesa Thursday night and stayed the night. Then we headed up to Linden where Brent's dad has his cabin. Andrea met us there that night. It was COLD. But that did not stop Owen from wanting to run wild the entire time we were up there. He loved it. And to make it better he had Emma to run around with him. Nancy bought him a wagon to pull around and he took it everywhere. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of Linden, probably because I was too cold to take my hands out of my pockets. But I did manage to get quite a few of Mesa.

After a couple of nights up in Linden we headed back down to Mesa for the rest of our stay. We played more games, jumped on the trampoline, fed the chickens, played with the dogs, had a campfire, and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Nancy also took all the girls for pedicure/manicures. Monday Brent and I took Owen to the zoo. This was really the first time he enjoyed the zoo even though there were sooo many people. It was still a great time and Owen loved all the animals and being able to spend time with both Mom AND Dad. We left Tuesday evening. We had such a fun time and were so glad we could go visit.

Brent made a bowl with his Dad

Grandpa's workshop

Eating ice cream

Grandpa and Owen

Owen LOVED the chickens. He was constantly talking about going to see the chickens. He loved to chase after them.

Collecting eggs. The first day we got there Grandpa was collecting eggs and Owen went in after him and found one that grandpa had missed!

"Wino"

Playing basketball in his pajamas

The wagon that Grandma bought him

Playing phone games with Emma

Watching a show with Emma

Walking in Linden

Pedicures and Manicures

This is my first pedicure. It was awesome. Mine is the lighter toe!

Owen loved playing with the hula hoop

This was the best picture I could get. Owen kept closing his eyes!

Grandpa Jon, Grandma Nancy, and Owen

Walking out the doggie door. Owen loved the dogs and always wanted to know where they were going and what they were doing.

Owen and Brigham

Feeding the chickens

Table bowling. We had to have a little tournament for old times sake

Valentine's Day

I know it was a long time ago, but I have these pictures so I thought I should post them. I decided to surprise Brent and Owen and make them these candy bouquets. They loved them...of course they did. What kid doesn't like a bunch of candy. This was the extent of our valentine's day celebrating.

Brent's bouquet

Our three bouquets

Owen looks like he doesn't like it, but he had just woken up from his nap

Christmas and New Years

We had very good and quiet Christmas this year. We stayed home again this year...even though we were really getting the bug to go visit Utah! We decided to go in the summer when there is better weather and more family to see. Anyway, I did a terrible job of taking pictures of our actual Christmas. We were recording during it so I kind of forgot to take pictures. After we were through we realized that our video recorder wasn't recording most of the time, so we only have a few after the moment shots of the opening presents. Christmas Eve we went to the church and played games with Kelie’s family. They had a bunch of minute to minute games that we played in teams. It was a lot of fun. We then headed home and sang some Christmas songs with Brent playing the guitar and read the Christmas story in Luke.

Sunday morning we let Owen look through his stocking and then got ready for 9:00 church. After we came home I made some homemade blueberry muffins and we opened presents and just hung out the rest of the day. Owen loved all of his new puzzles and toys and Brent surprised me with a very pretty church dress that I didn’t expect because I had pretty much bought my own Christmas!

I have about 5 pictures of this pose and Owen has his eyes closed in every single one of them!

Singing Christmas songs
Looking at all the presents!

Christmas morning after church. Don't mind the chocolate all over his face!

Our sad attempt at taking a picture of all three of us

Watching the race cars at Bass Pro.

Driving the train

Daddy helping Owen to drive the RC car

Some of the aftermath of Christmas morning

Playing with the train. I was a little upset when we set up the train the night before because I thought it was motorized but it isn't. Owen had so many toys that he didn't play with the train for very long periods, but now he absolutely loves it.

Watching The Polar Express and eating popcorn with Dad

Gift exchange with Owen and the girls

I made these art smocks for the girls. They turned out so adorable!

Christmas pajamas!

All of the presents...he got a little spoiled.

For New Year's we went to Jon and Vanessa's and played our traditional present bingo game. I didn't get any pictures of the bingo game because I was more concerned about keeping Owen occupied and not knocking every one's card over!

This is the next afternoon reading Curious George

Owen really liked the connect 4 game.

Watching Cars 2 with Denisha.