December 2012: End of year

Right before we left for our trip to CA prior to Christmas, the insurance company of the young woman that rear-ended J-rod's truck back in November, called to say they were declaring the truck a total loss. They had two offers for us, one offer for if we chose to keep and repair the truck anyhow, and another if we decided to accept their declaration of it being totaled and "sell" it to them.  The amount offered for "selling" it to them was considerably more than if we chose to keep and repair it, as well as much more than the truck was worth so it was not too difficult a decision for us to make.  While we hadn't planned on shopping for a second car at this point, the weeks we went back to being a one car family were enough to convince us that we'd need to quickly find a second car between Christmas and the New Year before J-rod returned to work.  Fortunately it didn't take long and now J-rod has a nice used, commuter car that uses up very little of our gas budget. 

Two days after Christmas, we said our last goodbyes to the trusty truck that had served us well for so many years and watched as it was hauled away to it's final resting place. Sigh. A few days after having said goodbye to the truck, we welcomed home a new car. It's good to be a two car family again.

Goodbye old friend. Hello new friend.

One of our favorite days of December is Li'l J's birthday. This year he turned 8 and was super excited that he would finally become a Cub Scout after SO many years of waiting and watching as his big brother M got to attend. Li'l J was also definitely looking forward to his baptism and sharing that special day with all his family. Li'l J adds a lot of joy to our family with his spunk...though to be honest, sometimes he infuses a bit more spunk into our lives than what J-rod and I are prepared to handle!  Regardless, we LOVE Li'l J, we are grateful he is a part of our family, and we enjoy celebrating him!  

The day before his birthday, Li'l J let us know that he wanted to open his birthday presents first thing the morning of his birthday so that he could do it with J-rod present before J-rod left for work. Oh boy. Opening presents first thing in the morning on a work day means getting up before the sunrise--that's even earlier than we get up on Christmas morning--a tough request to grant for those of us that aren't morning people, but we did it and Li'l J was thrilled that we did. 

Since we are creatures of habit and we love our traditions here, Li'l J got to open his birthday presents under the Christmas tree before J-rod left for work--at 4:45 in them morning--yay!  Then he spent the rest of the day enjoying his gifts and looking forward to another tradition, birthday dinner at Red Robin with two deserts afterwards: the complimentary sundae at Red Robin and then at his request, a chocolate silk pie instead of birthday cake when we returned from Red Robin. Yum!

It is great to be 8!

New Year's Eve 2012 found me and the kids celebrating at a friend's house while J-rod worked night shift.  At our friend's house we enjoyed board games, a bonfire, and sparklers. We had a fun night bringing in the New Year!

Happy New Year!

Stayed tuned for our adventures in 2013.

December 2012: Christmas

While preparing for the festivities of the day, on Christmas Eve 2012 I wore this fun and festive t-shirt inspired by one of our favorite Christmas movie's, Elf:

I LOVE this t-shirt I bought in San Diego!

It's become a tradition for us to go see a movie on Christmas Eve, so that afternoon we went as a family to see Rise of the Guardians. After the movie my mom and sister A needed to stop for a few things at the store. In the pet section we noticed two pictures that reminded us quite a bit of our sweet Jeffrey and spunky Copper: 

Jeffrey and Copper

In keeping with another Christmas tradition:

Christmas Eve jammies!

Christmas morning, this is what we woke up to: 

Merry Christmas!

Presents from Santa

A big surprise from J-rod and Z

So blessed!

C-sta and Li'l J trying out their new presents

Aww, they do love each other!

While we are daily grateful for all that we are blessed with, during Christmas our hearts and thoughts are especially turned to the blessing of the Savior, the knowledge of His gospel in our lives, and all that He has done on our behalf so that we may be a forever family. 

December 2012

Li'l J's limo ride and pizza party

Li'l J started off December 2012 with a limo ride to Peter Piper Pizza where he enjoyed a pizza party.  Li'l J qualified to participate in this activity by being a high seller in the annual cookie dough fundraiser at the beginning of the school year. Li'l J and the other students that earned this reward had a great time!

Our little singing C-sta

The weekend following Li'l J's pizza party, C-sta and her preschool class got to sing at our town's annual holiday festival. It's the first time in all the year's we've lived here that we attended and we were very impressed. There were lots of performers, vendor's, arts and crafts booth, and tasty food all around. A mound of snow was hauled in for the kids to play in and there were even a few entertaining chihuahua races.

The middle of the month flew by as we prepared for Christmas. Decorations began to go up all around our house; the kids participated in their school Christmas concerts; and I turned another year older.

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!"

BFF's O & A baking cookies. 

Happy, Happy Birthday Z!

The weekend prior to Christmas we packed up and drove down to San Diego to cheer on BYU in the Poinsettia Bowl. We got to meet Cosmo at the pep rally before the game and then had a blast at the game (it helped that BYU won), and I even got to visit with a former roommate who happened to be sitting with her family in the section next to ours. It was fun to see her for a bit. The game was such fun to be at and we can't wait until we can go to another one!

C-sta helps us get packed up.

Bounce house and face painting at Cougar Town.

Pep rally with the BYU band and Cosmo.

At the game.

After the Poinsettia Bowl, we enjoyed exploring a couple beaches, visiting the historic Coronado Hotel on Coronado Island, the San Diego Temple to see the lights, and spending time with friends.

Exploring the beach on Coronado Island.

In the sand.

Gorgeous CA sunset on Coronado Island.

Historic Hotel del Coronado

San Diego Temple Lights

Li'l J and our friend H through the years. 

 While in San Diego we had lunch with H and her family.

Beautiful Oceanside Beach and Pier.

Family pics at the Pier.

M & Li'l J built a sand penguin.

Leaving Oceanside we saw this store--Zippy's store!

When we left Oceanside we headed up north a little ways to visit family in the L.A. area.  First stop, my Mom (G'ma Mijo) and Aunt A's. On the way to pick up lunch at a classic area stop, I took M on a little tour to show him the elementary and middle school's his Aunt A and I attended.  It was a great stroll down memory lane for me!

Campos: home of the yummiest Avocado burrito.

John Adams Middle School

Will Rogers Elementary School

After our visit in good ol' SM, we headed up to Great G'ma M's house to see her, G'pa S, G'ma S, Aunt C, and Uncle N. Christmas came a little early for our kiddos while we were there.

Thank you Great G'ma M!

Before leaving CA we took the kiddos to my dad's grave site. They hadn't been there since his funeral and so hadn't yet seen his headstone.

Visiting Papa Mijo's grave site.

On our return trip to AZ, my mama and sister A caravanned with us so we could all enjoy Christmas together.  After not having seen my mama and sister A for over a year, it was very nice to have a few days together!  More about Christmas 2012 in the next post. 

October 2012

October was busy, fun, and still HOT!  With all the heat I had a difficult time getting into the right mood to decorate and prepare for Halloween, but I eventually got it done.

Some fun crafts I worked on in October.

I'm grateful that we could start the month with General Conference as it was a good way to recharge my batteries from the previous six months and prepare for the upcoming weeks while J-rod would be working night shift and I would have to take on my least favorite role, that of "single mom."  It had been forever since J-rod had to work nights and as such we were all dreadfully out of practice, but fortunately we managed to muddle along.  I was very grateful when his night shift rotation came to an end!

Even Jeffrey agrees: Night shift stinks!

(Did you notice how much Jeffrey has grown?)

C-sta helps to make General Conference treats: 

homemade "quick" donuts--YUM!

Listening to and watching General Conference.

Part-way through the month I was able to chaperon a field trip for M and the sixth grade to the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix.  I'm usually not a huge fan of museums, especially when having to keep an eye on a bunch of tweens, but this museum far exceeded my expectations. Plus, the kids all behaved very well so it made for an enjoyable day!  With the short amount of time we got to spend in the museum--because of the travel time there and back, not long enough--we only got to see about a quarter of all that is available but what we did get to see was awesome!  I'd love to go back with our family and finish taking in the rest.  

The MIM

The highlights of the day included a short interactive concert in the museum theater by a Panamanian pianist/composer and his band. The audience got to participate by singing and dancing throughout the performance as prompted by the pianist, at one point he even picked two students from the audience to join him on stage and one of them was from M's school. After the concert the pianist and band held a question and answer session.  

Danilo Perez Trio

Instruments of Eastern Europe

The Czech Republic and Russia

Iceland, Denmark, and Liechtenstein

Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France

The United States

Our group really enjoyed the hands-on/experience room where they could play instruments from all over the world.  The GIANT gong was an especially fun one to play.  I especially enjoyed watching and listening to M and others (students, teachers, and even a few parent chaperons) play on the Steinway grand piano set out on the main concourse.  The piano was beautiful and I LOVE that there is a sign next to the piano encouraging anyone to sit and play it!

The Experience Room

Steinway

C-sta's preschool had a field trip to the zoo a few days after M's field trip, and since it was on a Friday (when the boys don't have school) we all got to go. It was so cute how excited A was about riding a school bus, especially since the boys and I had to drive up separately and she got to ride it with just her teacher's and friends.  

Riding the bus

The boys rode almost all the rides available and we all enjoyed our time there.  We learned that this particular zoo has many rare albino animals because the owner loves to collect them and seeks far and wide for them. We even got to see a rare albino wallaby that peeked out for a bit--that was a fun treat!

Happy Faces!

What we saw

Penguins in the AZ desert--

Li'l J was thrilled! 

Our Primary held their Sacrament Meeting program during October.  This was the first and last time all three of our kids would get to be in the program together, it was a bitter-sweet day for me as their mama.  All three did a good job, though Li'l J definitely stole the show with his antics (showing/goofing off when he shouldn't have and then not performing when he should)! Both J-rod and I were told a few times throughout that day by different ward members that Li'l J is a "rock star" in the making--awesome!?!?

Primary Program Day

As is the custom, our kids got numerous opportunities to wear their Halloween costumes: to school, then at the school Fall Festival, the pumpkin patch (on one of J-rod's rare days off when we were finally able to go pick out pumpkins), our ward trunk-or-treat, and then FINALLY on Halloween.  

Halloween Fun!

Continuing the trend from his understated Clark Kent costume last year, this year M chose to go as Peter Parker.  Li'l J begged me to make him a "Gravity Guy" costume.  "Gravity Guy" is a character from a video game Li'l J likes to play on my iPod, "Jetpack Joyride".  Putting together a costume from a computer graphic was kind of a challenge especially since I'm not very good at costume making, but fortunately what I pieced together worked well.  C-sta wanted to be Pinkalicious (from the books that she loves).  I searched high and low in the stores for this costume, but the only thing I found was online and it was priced wa-ay higher than I'm willing to pay for a costume.  So what to do? I turned to an amazing seamstress in our ward for help.  I was thinking she could teach me a few things and help me put together a simple costume, but when I met up with her she had already made C-sta a beautiful dress and then wouldn't let me pay her!  I was very grateful for this sister's talent and her willingness to share it with us and help make C-sta's Halloween dreams come true.

Carving pumpkins

My favorite Halloween costume?  There isn't one that I can recall from my own childhood, but in my adulthood I have LOVED when I can get my family on board to dress in a family theme.  As the kids are getting older the opportunities to get them to humor me on themed costumes are getting fewer and fewer.  I didn't really push for it this year; doing it all on my own I got to the point where I was just happy to have a costume for each of them by the time Halloween rolled around.  Maybe next year?

C-sta and her darling friend B having fun

Fun with C-sta