Me and Mike

I've been thinking a lot about my marriage to Michael the last few weeks.  Many of our friends and family members have been going through difficulties in their marriages.  One of my friends even lost his wife a few weeks ago to cancer.  It has made me reflect on how lucky I am.  We stayed up late the other night talking about how easy it is to let a marriage go and not work on being best friends forever.  We work hard at getting along and even though we have disagreements and arguments at times, we always make an effort to show love and accept each other for who we are.  Mike told me he was glad he didn't marry someone "crazy"!  I guess that's a good thing (I've been successful in keeping him in the dark!).  I thought how fortunate I have been to be married to a man who sticks to his principles, who loves the gospel, who always wants to do what is right, and who loves me still, inspite of all my obvious flaws.  Tonight I get to go to a wedding reception for a girl in my ward who used to be one of my YW.  She is marrying a sweet boy from my home town of Chino Valley.  I will spend a bit more time thinking about my own marriage 16 and 1/2 years ago.  I love the man I married even more than I did then.  He is and always will be my very best friend.

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!