Temple Lights

Our church has a temple here in Mesa, and they light it every year and have a choir every night for a month between Thanksgiving and New Year's. I wanted to share some pictures, although it's not as pretty in pictures as in person of course, but it's a special place and our family has added it as another tradition to go and see around Christmas.

Christmas visitors

We were blessed this week to spend time with the Beck/Pitts family, who we know from Ohio. Paul and Debbie Beck are serving a mission for our church in Glendale for two 1/2 more years, and their oldest daughter, Tricia and her family, came to spend the week with her parents. This is the first Christmas that Paul and Debbie have been away from their kids, but it was eased a bit with the Pitts' visit. Tricia was about 16 when Erik was born, and she became our babysitter and surrogate mother to the kids. She and Bill have their own family now: Gavin (8), Abigail (5) and Brandon (3). We were able to see them a couple of different times this past week, spending Christmas eve at the Beck's just like we have for the past 12 years or so. Here's the Pitts family wearing the Arizona Diamondback hats we gave them.

The kids

Erik and Gavin had a good time playing Gavin's Gameboy
Guitar Heros.




















Abigail recently lost her first tooth. She and Sarah bonded like sisters.

Brandon is a really sweet boy!

Nativity

One of our Christmas tradition is for the kids to re-inact the nativity story while Paul reads from Luke in the Bible. It wasn't quite the same without all of Debbie and Paul's other grandkids...Tyler (22) had to substitute as the angel.

This year it was interrupted by a phone call to Gavin from Santa!

Christmas Eve Bingo and Music

There are a few other annual traditions that the Beck's
every year on Christmas Eve. One is playing carols.
This is a picture of all of us holding our designated
chime, which has a number that matches to the music
and you have to hit it as your number comes up.

For bingo, we use M&M's for the chips. When someone gets their first bingo, they get to open his or her gift from the Becks.

Christmas Morn

Sarah and Erik had a good Christmas morning. Sarah's favorite gift was a pink Gameboy DS Lite with a cat and dog game to go along. Erik's favorite gift was his new XBox games. His XBox had gone on the blitz a few weeks ago, and was under warranty, so we had to send it off for repairs. Luckily for Erik, it was returned to him on Christmas Eve by UPS, so he was very happy about that!

Sun's Game

The lawyer that I work for, Scott, took everyone in the office out to dinner Saturday night at Stoudemire's, and then to a Suns game. Here Erik is holding Scott's new baby, Kaitlyn, who is 3 1/2 months. She was a great baby!

Sarah at the game with her Suns facepaint.

Here's a 2 pointer by Shaquile O'Neal! The second video is the halftime show featuring some Santa's putting up some dunks that rival Shaq's (except Santa needs the help of a trampoline!).

Erik's 14th Birthday Party

Erik wanted to have his 14th birthday at Stratum Laser Tag. We made his cake, but the icing stuck to the top of the portable pan, so the Happy Birthday part got smeared, but it still tasted good!

This is Erik celebrating the Call of Duty 5 XBox game from mom, dad and Sarah.

This is some of our party guests, the Pitts family (Bill, Tricia, Gavin, Brandon and Abigail) from Ohio, who are in town to visit Tricia's parents, Debbie and Paul.

This is the rest of Erik's friends, Frances, Ryan, Brandon, Jacob, Tyler, Sarah, and Kendon, then Abigail, Brandon and Gavin again. Erik got "The Dark Night" Batman movie, so some of the boys that could went back to the house and watched that.

Erik's only disappointement was that the girl he likes from school couldn't come because she had to do some charity work (sounds like a keeper!). Regardless, he had a great time! Thanks to everyone who sent money/gifts!

Merry Christmas!

We wish all of our family and friends a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. What better Christmas card than one that comes with music (from Sarah's first band concert)!

Sarah's Band Concert

Mamma Debbie's in Phoenix

The Beck girls came for a few days to visit Mamma Debbie and Paul in Phoenix. We had dinner with them on Friday night. Tiffany brought baby Isabelle, and so these are pictures and a video of Erik and Sarah teaching Isabelle how to do "the worm." Tiffany and Michael are coming back for Thanksgiving; Tricia, Bill and kids are coming for Christmas; and Tracy and family are coming in February, so we're looking forward to seeing our adopted family members over the holidays!

Happy Halloween

Erik and two of his friends went trick-or-treating together. Erik is dressed like "Ed" from a cartoon called Ed, Edd, and Eddy. Frances is the skeleton and Jacob is The Joker. Jacob stayed with us a couple of days this past week while his parents were out of town, so it worked out really well that he could be here for Halloween night.

Sarah, dressed like a cat, with a cat.

We invited our neighbors to hang out in our driveway for a block party. I made chili and hot dogs, and they brought nachos and desserts. These are our next door neighbors, Beth and Mike.

This is Beth and Mike's front door. Much scarier in person than on this video...

These are some of the decorations in my front yard. Hard to see at night..but it's a huge spider web that I hung between two trees. The other decoration is my "graveyard."

These are the neighbors that live across the street from us, Amy and their daughter Courtney, who is in Sarah's class. Brad and Logan, 8, are not in the picture.

Dylan's new truck

My brother's son, Dylan, turned 16 and finally got a truck of his own. His sister, my niece Kelsey, is the beautiful girl in the truck bed. It's so hard to believe how big all the kids are getting!

Sarah's Zoo

It never ceases to amaze me what animal Sarah is willing to touch, pick up, or adopt. She definately didn't get that from me! This is a baby lizard she found at Grandma's house in Albuquerque. There are lots of full grown ones that live under the bushes around our house, but they run so fast that it's hard to see them normally. I've never seen a baby like this. It is kind of cute...

Baby Jacob and Mason

This is Lars' sister's baby, Jacob. He's almost a year (Nov.) so he's crawling and pulling up, almost walking with help. If you're wondering why all the photos show him attached to his mom's legs, that's because he is! He wouldn't let her out of his sight for one second!



Mason is big brother, who is two. You'll see him in the video trying to grab the camera out of my hand so he can take a picture too. He's talking up a storm now, repeating every word he hears. He was a ton of fun to play with!

Baby Hailey

This is Lars' brother's baby, Hailey. We saw her when she was newborn, and now at six months, she's much more entertaining! The kids just love to hold her and make her laugh. We bought her these cute little pink crocs - she liked chewing on them more than wearing them!

This is Lars' brother's new house being built in Albuquerque. The land was once a dairy farm, so pretty flat and not a lot of trees, but big size lots of an acre or more. Can't wait to see it finished, hopefully at Christmas!

Safford Reunion

Sarah got her face painted at the Safford High School reunion we went to on Friday night. Safford is where Lars grew up until his senior year in high school, when they moved to Albuquerque. It was a reunion for all the graduates in any year, which was kind of fun to see people from 18 to 81 there. We took off on Friday around 1:00 p.m. and got there about 5:00 because there was a bad accident that blocked the road so we had to drive about an hour out of the way to get around it. There was a bar-b-que dinner from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. and then the high school homecoming football game was from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. That was the first football game I've been to since I was in high school! Lars saw some of his former classmates, but no one I knew. There is one girl from his class, Michelle Clark, who happened to move to Cincinnati and was in our chuch ward when we were in Ohio. She still lives in Cincinnati and was apparently at the reunion, but we didn't run into her. Too bad! There was going to be a parade on Saturday, a pep rally, and a dance, but we came back home Friday night instead of staying over - all the hotels were full.

Snow in Phoenix

Bet you didn't know that it can snow in Phoenix, huh? Well it can if a machine makes it! That's what was happening in the parking lot of a new local shopping center who was celebrating its grand opening a few weekends ago. The kids, especially Sarah, really enjoyed throwing snowballs at each other for about two hours, while Lars' sister, Miriam, and I enjoyed window shopping at all the new stores. Nothing quite like playing in the snow in tank tops and flip flops! But Sarah thought enough ahead to bring her winter gloves with her, and it was a good thing. That snow was COLD.

My new office

This is a picture of the condo where I work. The fenced area is a courtyard that has wicker chairs and side tables so we can sit out there when it's cooler.

This pool is right across from our condo/office. It has tables and chairs under an awning so we can eat lunch out there, although in the summers it's too hot, but I'm looking forward to fall and winter to be able to eat there more. The white wall in the middle of the picture has a waterfall running down it, so the sound is relaxing.

This is the view that you see when you first walk in the front door. This would be the living room if it were just a condo.
These bookcases hold books about various artists, and then you can partially see the kitchen in the background.
This is my desk, which is up on the loft level. It's a bit messy as I haven't had much time yet to actually arrange it. But it's a bright and cheery space and I like that.

This is a sculpture that one of the artists did for us that hangs from the ceiling when you first walk in the front door. You can see the loft level where I work up on the right-hand side.

This is one of the two bedrooms where artists stay in the condo. This is the one on the same level as the loft where I work, and it has a bathroom. Then there is another flight of stairs up to the third level where the master suite bedroom is. That room has a king size bed, a full bath, and a closet as big as Erik's bedroom!