December Hodgepodge

As I'm sure most of you, we had a fun and busy December.

We went to Temple Square to see the lights

and drank some hot chocolate to keep ourselves warm.

We also went to the zoo with our buddies the Harmons, which was actually one of the best zoo visits we've ever had. We thought it would be too cold and none of the animals would be out, but it was the opposite. The weather was just fine and we loved that there were not a lot of people there. Maybe that's why we saw the animals doing a ton of stuff. I got a lot of close-ups as you can see:
For those of you who have seen "Madagascar", here is a fossa (foo-suh).
This gorilla was so cute. Just wook at dat wittle belly!

And the giraffes totally got close and personal. I zoomed in here, but still - it was so close! I even missed a shot of it licking our friend's hand!

Then we headed to Colorado for Christmas at Craig's parents house. Three out of the five kids were there, but there was still plenty of cousin time for Max, which he couldn't get enough of!

Max was so cute each time he opened a present. He would always act so surprised and loved everything he got. He's easy to please. He even said later when it was time to go to my parents to open presents that we wanted me to open them since he was tired of opening presents! Silly kid!

Craig and I also celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary! I slept in until 9-ish or so, and was woken up by Craig singing his own arrangement of "Feliz Anniversary" to me with a sombraro and a guitar. It was awesome.

Then he found a real jewel in a closet - his middle school football jacket! It was even more fun to watch him try and take it off! We went out for dinner later that night and enjoyed being out on a much-needed date. It was such a great anniversary!

We also had a lot of time to just sit and chat, which I really enjoyed.

Craig's parents cuddled up together and I had to take a picture they looked so cute! There was a lot of wrestling and horsing around with all our nieces and nephews.

They sure wore him out!

I don't have pictures for all the other stuff we did like sledding, play Christmas Family Feud, see "Avatar" in 3D, eat, and eat some more, go on a scavenger hunt, and have the best dance-off EVER. Everyone participated and it was so hilarious. (I know I am biased, but I think Max won. I'll try to get the video posted later.)

It was seriously such a great vacation! It's amazing what a little time off from daily stresses and responsibilities can do for a person!

I hope everyone else had a wonderful holiday.

I am really looking forward to the new year!

Max is 5!

We celebrated Max's 5th birthday

this past weekend

with a dinosaur themed party

complete with a volcano cake.

The kiddos played Simon Says, Limbo,

and Pin the Tail on the Dinosaur,

followed by cake and presents!

The years are slipping by so fast!

I wish he would stay little forever........

Happy 5th Birthday, Mr. Maxter! We love you!

New Blog Site and No Last Name

Hello! For privacy reasons, we will soon be changing our blog address to http://craig-andrea.blogspot.com/. You can go ahead and change the adress since it's already set up. It'll just be blank until I transfer everything over. I plan on moving it sometime next week. No, nothing creepy happened, we just feel like we need to take some precautions, and one of them is to remove our last name from our blog.

So, if you happen to have us listed on your blog list with our last name, we would appreciate it if you could change it to just our first names. And also please don't mention our last name or where we live in your comments. We are really trying to keep that information private and would appreciate your help with that!

Thank you everyone!

Karate

He loves it. We love it.

Ali's Cameo

This is a little kudos to my younger sister Ali, who moved to Arizona last spring. She went to support the Rockies last Saturday night when they came to play the Diamondbacks. She told me she was going to make a poster, so I made sure I recorded the game in case they showed her on tv. I tuned in in the 9th inning, only to see her on tv a few minutes later! I started screaming "Oh my gosh, Ali's on tv!" and woke up Max! It was too exciting! So here is a recording of it off my tv (I know, kinda hokey).

P.S. In case you're wondering why her friend on the left is doing "karate chops"....Ali told me that they were being heckled by D-back fans, so her friend on the left was saying that they would get "karate chopped" by their guys friends if things got too crazy. So funny!

PASS!

No, that isn't Craig in the picture, but this is how Craig felt Thursday afternoon after he found out that he passed the Bar! Not only did Craig endure three years of law school, he had to find a job, (which was EXTREMELY stressful and difficult to accomplish in the worst law job market seen in decades, so we feel tremendously blessed with that one), and finally take and pass the bar. We are so relieved and excited to have reached that final step. We'd like to thank evereyone who prayed for us and supported us along the way! No, Kanye, you cannot have the mic!

More Than Just Clothes

Max after getting himself dressed:

Max: "How do I look?"

Me: "You look awesome, buddy."

Max: "Thanks. This is my favorite attitude."