Christmas is Here!



I'm just now getting around to posting it, but we put up all of our Christmas decorations on the day after Thanksgiving.  We actually ending up having to buy a new tree this year because when we plugged in the old one half of the lights didn't work.  I was excited to get a new bigger tree, but it was a little sad too.  We had the old one for nine years, so I guess that I am a little nostalgic about it. 

 

This was the first year that Caden was really excited about helping with the ornaments. 

Here is the final product, and the cats are always happy when the Christmas tree is up! 

Caden thinks that he is a cat too. 

Here are our outside decorations.



Fun at the Park

Caden and I went to Discovery Park, near our house to feed the ducks on Monday.  As soon as we got close to the water the ducks started flocking over to us.  They were even pretty brave and got out of the water to eat the food that he dropped on the sidewalk.

Caden also had fun on the swings.  He was mad because I stopped pushing him to take a picture. 

Here is another swing picture with the Gilbert Temple in the background. :) 

Later Caden told me that this was his favorite part of the park. 

He was posing on the rock for me here.

The Phoenix Zoo!

 We joined to zoo on Saturday because they were running a really good deal to celebrate their 50th anniversary.  It was nice to be able to go, and just enjoy it.  We didn't feel like we had to rush around and see everything since we can go back whenever we want.  You will probably be seeing a lot more posts about the zoo in the future!

Caden's favorite thing was the Kamoto Dragon.  (Seeing the real one and not just the statue.) 

There was also this new viewing area for the elephants, and we could see them really up close. (At least it was new to us.  I don't know how long that it has been there.) 

It's always fun to see the Spider Monkeys!  You get to walk around in their enclosure and see them up close.  You aren't allowed to touch them though, and there are employees that will spray them with water if they get too close.

 

Riding the tractor is always a favorite too.  It's a good thing that there were other kids wanting to have a turn or we probably would've been there all day! 

Checking out the turtle shell.

Hanging out with the alligator.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 On Thanksgiving morning Matt went to play football and Caden and I went to CVS to score some early Black Friday deals.  They had this cute cardboard rocket to keep Caden occupied while I waited in line.  Caden loved it!

For dinner we got to eat at Grandma Shobe's house (this picture was in grandma's backyard.) and also at Matt's sister Janeille's house.  We try to pace ourselves and not eat very much at either place, but we are usually stuffed.  We are really blessed to have so much family here to be able to celebrate the holidays with!  I don't really like to write mushy things on here, but seeing how it was Thanksgiving I feel like I should name a few of the things that I am thankful for here.  First is Matt because he is the most amazing, wonderful, nicest husband ever!  Everyday I am so grateful for him, and everything that he does.  Next is Caden.  It was such a struggle for us to have him, and I am so grateful that he is here.  I will admit that he has been very ornery and challenging lately, but really sweet some times too.  At night I like to lay with him for a few minutes and rub his back before he goes to sleep.  We talk about stuff that he did that day.  It's always a good way to end the day.  I have so many things to be grateful for!

We decided to end the day with some crazy Black Friday shopping!  It may sound weird but I love the Black Friday shopping and all of the craziness that goes with.  It is amusing to watch all of the frantic hoards of people, and I usually can get some good deals too.  I think that you just have to go with the right attitude, and enjoy the atmosphere without really counting on anything.  So first we hit up Target because there were a few small things that I wanted to get there.  It wasn't really anything that I was overly concerned about though.  Target opened at 9pm and we got there at 9:15. (By we I mean Matt and I.  Caden was home asleep and Matt's mom was watching him.)  Target was a complete madhouse.  The line to get in was still wrapped around the building.  When we went last year the whole line was already inside by 9:15, so I guess that there were a ton more people this year.  When we finally got inside it was pretty much impossible to walk down the aisles because they were crammed with so many people.  I'm pretty sure that this must've been a violation of the fire code.  Anyways I was surprised to find that they were out of the couple of small things that I wanted except for a pair of pjs for Caden.  We were walking past the empty tv section when suddenly a worker came out with another pallet of 32" tvs that were $147.  I knew that my parents were wanting one, so we grabbed one to check with them.  It was a good thing that we did because they were all gone in like a minute.  I'm pretty sure that the people who waited in line for hours would've been really mad about this!  After paying for stuff we headed to Sports Authority.  We got there about 10:15, but they didn't open until midnight.  The first 80 people in line got a free gift card that could be anything from $10 to $500.  When we got there we were about 40 people in, so we were feeling good about that.  Matt's gift card ended up being $25 and mine was $10.  We were just glad that we didn't both get $10!  We ended up getting a 6 person tent, an air mattress, and Matt got a really nice basketball for 50% off.  After that we just headed home.  It was the perfect way to kick off the Christmas season!

There is a Traffic Jam

in our hallway!

 

Caden and I had fun lining up all of his cars, so they can "take turns" as Caden said.

A Little Bit of Redecorating . . .

So when we moved into this house 5 years ago we never painted.  The walls were a tan color, and honestly I was just glad that they weren't white.  Well Caden came along a couple of years later, and it's pretty much impossible to clean messes from dirty hands on flat paint (which is what our paint was. Seriously who uses flat paint?)   Anyways I've been wanting to paint for awhile, so we finally decided to do it.  We ended up hiring someone because we didn't really want to do it ourselves, and I very much enjoy the straight lines where the wall meets the ceiling that I am not skilled enough to do myself.  I was wanting to paint a gray color, but I was afraid that it would end up looking blue or green.  The color that I ended up picking is called Fine Grain by Dunn Edwards.  It's a beige gray, and it may look more gray or more beige depending on the light.  Overall I am pretty happy with how it turned out.  All of the painting also prompted a little bit of other redecorating.  I have to say that once I got started it was hard to stop redecorating, but Matt wasn't all that enthusiastic about spending money on it.  A lot of the stuff came from my birthday money, so thank you everyone for that!  Here are some pics of the changes that I made.  You can see the new paint color in all of the pictures. 

 

 This is a new chandelier over the kitchen table.

 



New sparkly pendant lights.  You might notice that a lot of the new things are sparkly.  I decided that we needed a little bit of bling! 

New kitchen faucet.  I love love love how tall it is!   

This is the half bath that used to be painted this awful dark green color.  There is no natural light in here, so it ended up feeling like a cave.  I am really loving the new color, so I got a few new decorations to go with it. 

New light airy curtains for the office. The office also use to be green, so this is much improved!

New wall sconces.  I had a really hard time getting a good picture of these because they are in the hallway, and there isn't a whole lot of other light.  They are white with some crystals, and they are so pretty.  They look more like wall art then light fixtures! 

I was also sad to take down my Halloween wreath, so I made another one that can stay up all of the time.  I love how it turned out!

Happy Halloween!

Here we are carving our pumpkins. 

Matt's mom passed out the candy while we went trick or treating.  You can see our finished pumpkins here too.  Matt did the haunted house which turned out so good.  It was the hardest difficulty to make too according to the book.  I made the Grim Reaper which got a little messed up, but I guess that it turned out okay. 

This is the third year in a row that Christina and Mikey brought her cousins Cloe and David over for trick or treating.  Caden loves having someone to go with!  David was really nice and let Caden hold his sword the whole time too since Caden liked it so much.  My parents also came along for the trick or treating, so we had lots of adults! 

The people down the street have this huge pumpkin that put up on Halloween every year, and all of the kids want to go there.  They must pass out a lot of candy at that house! 

We we were done trick or treating Caden couldn't wait to take over handing out the candy.