Finally, Home for the Holidays

Because of BYU football, it has been three years since Matt and I have been able to go home for Thanksgiving and the last time we did, this is what happened!
Thankfully, there aren't many deer between L.A. and Phoenix so we were happy our drive went much smoother! But there was still a lot of excitement after we got to my parent's house. My dad got a pretty casual phone call telling us our neighbor's house was on fire and we should move our cars. We went outside with the kids to show them a firetruck and the house was just smoking. A few minutes later the roof over the garage collapsed and flames shot up! A bunch of fire trucks came and thankfully they were able to save part of the house but it was so sad and really pretty scary!

After the fire, the rest of the weekend was great. Maren and I ran the turkey trot, we had an excellent Thanksgiving dinner, had Christmas (hence, home for the holidays) black Friday shopping, family pictures and more.

Look at that face! What a ham! Crew loved playing with Carson and Papa's "BIG CHOO CHOO!"

We also happened to go to the Bass Pro Shop when Santa was there. Matt and I have really been pushing the whole "good boy for Santa" thing so we were anxious to see how Crew did meeting the big man himself. As you can see from the picture, he wasn't quite ready to sit on Santa's lap, but Crew is telling Santa in this picture what he wants for Christmas. "A bike, a big blue bike" (he has been telling us this for over a month) It was pretty cute and he felt pretty good about telling Santa for himself.
Matt took Crew out on the quads one night too. I think you can tell by the picture that it was a hit!

Two thumbs (or index fingers) up!!!

For my dad's birthday on Saturday he got a fire pit. We were all a little paranoid after Wednesday night's big event! But we had great night even though dad kept disappearing doing Bishop duties.

Thanks mom and dad for a wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas and happy birthday again Papa!