Gift Exchange

Tonight was the family gift exchange. Bob and Lucas were home for Christmas, so first they opened their gifts the family, then Bob gave out gifts he brought to the kiddos. 

Then it was time for the family "white elephant". Its the same rules as normal white elephant except these are nice gifts, stealing is still ok. It's always fun and in the end we all get some really great gifts. After the exchange we had some dessert before we had to say goodbye to the Wardell family. Today waws their last day before they started their journey home. 

A Trip Down Memory Lane

I know that all of my posts have seemed happy go lucky and that were having a great time. But the truth is James and I are struggling a bit with his sister Lisa. She is being very overbearing, bossy, demanding, controlling and not fun to be around at all. Today I think was the worst day by far. For one thing Bob and Lucas flew in, which has been fine. But Lucas is a bit hard to swallow himself (being a spoiled only child) couple that with Lisa being...well a B*#*@. I hit an all time low today. The plan was that the Wardell's were going to come over to Mom and Dad A's and it was going to be a relaxing and fun day of games, visiting and food. Well because this was the plan they got there rather early in the day and we were all going to start by having breakfast together. Before everyone had a chance to walk through the door Lisa loudly proclaims that everyone needs to go do something and get out of the house because she has a court trial at work that she needs to be apart of and she needs complete silence and no one can be around. So not only is she kicking Mom and Dad out of their own house, but 13 other people as well. NO ONE was happy. Everyone was so upset with her, Nikki sarcastically asked if it was ok to eat first. Apparently Lisa doesn't get sarcasm because she stated that that was fine but the trial was starting in a little less than 2 hours and that was our timeline. I was floored that everyone was even considering giving in to her. She was asked if she could just take her computer in the back room and we would keep it down. But I guess that wasn't good enough. Again I was flabbergasted that everyone was giving in to her and letting her get her way...including Mom and Dad. Me being absolutely furious was an understatement. As I was helping Kilian get his shoes on we were right next to Lisa. Kilian said he didn't want to go anywhere, he just wanted to stay here and play with his new Christmas toys with Lucas, I told him "I know honey I don't want to leave either but apparently we are all being kicked out of the house." and I looked right at Lisa. I wanted her to know that I was mad at her. Nikki said that they wanted to go drive by their Grandma's old house anyway. To try and be together as a family still we all decided to go to Mesa together. Kilian wanted to ride with Lucas in Nona and Grumpy's car and Avery wanted to with the twins in Nikki and Justin's car. So James and I had the car to ourselves for the drive which was really nice, we had the chance to talk (vent) without the kids overhearing or interrupting. We got to Mesa and headed to the Mesa temple visitors center. We didn't get a chance to see it when we were there for the lights because it was so busy crowded. But today there was hardly anybody there. After the morning we had I was really looking forward to being in a quiet peaceful and spiritual place to help me cope with my feelings. 

They had a mini replica of the temple that I was so excited to show the kids, especially Avery. She's been asking a lot of questions about the temple lately, so I was excited for her to see this replica so she could have an idea of what the temple looks like on the inside.

Her and I had some great conversations about what some of the rooms where for, and she was excited to see the baptismal font and again expressed how excited she is to be able to go to the temple and do baptisms. 

The visitors center was so nice, I even had a chance to break away from the group for some personal reflection and to try and get my emotions in check. It was just what I needed.

After the visitors center we took the kids across the street to a park so they could run around and get some of their energy out. There was this tall slide that Abby said she wanted to go down. Kilian (as always) has been glued to her side, but he wouldn't go up with her. Half way up she yelled down to us that she thinks she made a mistake, without missing a beat Kilian yelled up to her that she can do it, and he was waiting at the bottom of the slide to catch her. She did make it up and came down the slide to a very happy Kilian waiting for her.

Avery conquered her fear of a conveyer belt slide, that she didn't want to go on again but did because the twins went again and again...and again. :D

After the park the hunt for Grandma's house started. Luckily it didn't take us to long to find it. James even had the chance to reenact a childhood picture next to the same cactus years ago. It was a lot of fun to see and hear about his history. Were were all pretty tired and hungry, so it was time to head back to Mom and Dad A's for dinner and then our present exchange.

Saguaro National Park

Today we wanted to get out of the house and James really wanted to see some saguaro cactuses. So we headed down to the southern part of AZ close to Tuscon to the Saguaro National Forest. We met up with the Wardell's to enjoy a day with these giant cactuses. After we headed into Tuscon to grab some lunch/dinner before meeting up with the Wardell's to just spend some time with them before heading back to Mom and Dad A's.