Tis the season to be . . . BUSY!!

I love the holidays so much!  But, I can sure do without the business that naturally accompanies the festivities.  It feels like we have been running since before Thanksgiving.  Here is a bit of what my family has been up to. . .
We all returned home from Utah/Hawaii, and were back to school, work, and laundry galore!  Then the girls had YW in excellence.  It was great from what I hear (Mike had to go while I bathed and put the boys to bed).  Then later on in the week, the girls both had the Christmas parade to march in (they were great!)  I don't have pics of them since it was a night parade of lights.  It was freezing cold.  My boys would have insisted we go home if they weren't expecting to have candy thrown at them!

Then, we had a few days to get the house cleaned up for company.  One of Mike's mission companions from Australia was coming with his two daughters for a visit.  It took a lot of work, but we were ready for company just in time.  Since Chris and his daughters have been here, we have played a lot of Wii, watched too much Disney (they don't have it there), and a few other fun things.  One day, we drove them out to Willcox to my folks house to see and ride the horses.  Dad thought it would be fine just to put the kids up bareback on Sierra, and she did great.


Even Jaxson got a ride.  He thought it was so cool.
That same night we had Mike's office Christmas party at La Casita.  It was fun and the food was yummy.

Next day Mike took Chris out shooting.  No one is allowed guns in Australia so he thought it was really awesome.  Then we topped it off by going to Tombstone, the town too tough to die.  We didn't have time to do all the shows and see all the museums, but that's a good thing since we probably didn't have the money to do it all either!