A fun week!

My parents arrived late on Saturday, December 20, and left very early this morning. We had such a fun week with them! Unfortunately, I had a brain lapse and didn't take any pictures.

On Monday (12/22) we went to see the Mesa Temple Christmas lights. We went to our favorite hole-in-the-wall Mexican Restaurant before going to see the lights. It was yummy - although I can't remember the name of it at the moment. We go to see the Temple lights nearly every year and although there aren't many changes from year to year, I still love going and seeing the beautiful lights. It was raining this year, but that was okay because it wasn't very crowded!

Tuesday and Wednesday we did last minute Christmas stuff and just spent time visiting. And even though my parents are from Idaho, they did think it was cold here! :o)

Thursday was a nice, relaxing Christmas Day. We made Christmas dinner with all our usual traditional foods and played games and took a nap and had a really nice day. I must say, though, that I do miss the Christmases of times past when the kids would wake us up at 4 am to see what Santa had brought them....Zach surprised us and called Thursday afternoon. He was originally supposed to call Friday morning, so when John answered the phone and someone was talking in Greek he almost hung up until he heard, "Dad, it's Zach". It was sooooo good to talk to him - we talked for a little over an hour. I'll follow up on the conversation in another post.

Friday we went to the "big" (Super) Walmart twice - once so Kam and Parker could buy their new MP3 players with some of their Christmas money, and twice so Kailen could buy the same MP3 player as Kam and Parker after she decided it would cost 1/2 as much as the one she originally wanted and was just as nice. Smart economics! I also got one since I use my old one at seminary every morning. We spent Friday night and part of Saturday ripping and syncing music. It was really fun!

Saturday was an easy day at home. Very nice change from the usual. Sunday was church as usual. Kam and I had a break from Ward choir practice due to the holidays, which was nice. We played games Sunday night which was fun! It's nice to have all the kids be old enough to play all our favorite games.