January

I love, love, love this time of year in Arizona!! The leaves turn and fall from the trees but yet it's still beautiful sweater weather outside. Best of both worlds! 

One day we were driving down through out neighborhood and we randomly stopped to play in the leaves. 

Ellie had so much fun throwing the leaves up in the air and also all over Mason.

Who says the Phoenix valley doesn't have all seasons?! :)

After Christmas and before New Years, the whole Smith clan drove to St. George to stay for a few days. Just Dance on the Wii was a hit!

We were all impressed with Ethan's coordination and rhythm! Maybe we'll have a coordinated Stake dancer in our family! :)

It just isn't a Smith get together without girl talk, trying on each other's clothes or doing each other's hair. Love these girls!

Ellie also likes to show off her fashion side with her black leggings and brown boots. Hey, you can get away with any kind of style now a days, right?! She is so funny. She can always be found in someone else's shoes. She steals my shoes, her aunts shoes, and even other kids at the parks shoes. It's so fun having a little girl!

Chanda put together some Minute to Win it games that were a TON of fun! 

I'd have to say that I crushed the competition (aka- Justin) at the throw the marshmallows in the bucket game. I might have missed 3, maybe 4 times the whole minute! I pretty much schooled him!

I also beat Barrett in the "find the penny at the end of the hose and pull it out without using other parts of your body game." I don't know the right name for these games but that works, right?! But then we switched hoses and he beat me. Must've been the hose. It was fun to feel my competitive side come out again. It's been dormant for awhile!

Nate beat everyone at the "blowing the cards off the table, except the Kings" game. He was really good at it.

We decorated a Rice Crispies choo choo train, played at the arcade with the kids, and went swimming at the hot tub in the freezing weather. It was such a fun little vacation. 

Here are some pictures just randomly taken throughout the month:

We love having a trampoline. We just play and play with the kids out there after school or on Saturdays. It's also a hit with our neighbor kids. I feel some kind of pride as a mom having our kids play outside all the time. They love it!

Hungry Hungry Hippos is still a favorite Sunday game to play around here. 

This little cutie is growing up way too fast! He is about 8 months old in these pictures. He will be 10 months old on the 19th! Crazy!

We kinda started a new tradition on Sunday with the kids. They love to bake yummy treats and so we try to bake a treat of their choice and then bring it over to G & G Smith's house later that day. I just buy the box stuff. It's SO easy and SO much less of a hassle than baking it from scratch. Just add water, egg, or oil and your done. Your kids feel like they've been awesome bakers and hardly any clean up.... I'll take it!

And of course they get to lick the beaters and the bowl. That might just be their favorite part :)

Right before Christmas, out backyard was completed. Here is the tour...

We have citrus trees lining the back wall and plan to have some sort of snail vine growing on trellises around the playground area. We decided to put rubber mulch in the play area. So much less hassle than dealing with sand and you aren't having to worry about bald spots on your turf. It's worked out really well for us!

This side of the house if the most shaded spot and so this is where we have all of our tropical stuff growing. Mango trees, blackberry bushes, Banana trees, and a few other exotic plants that I don't know the names of. Around this trellis, we will have vines growing around it someday. 

This is the view on the left as you walk out on the patio. The flowers are so gorgeous now. The baby's breath has taken over and it looks so pretty. Isn't there just something about flowers that makes you so happy?!

On the wall is our raised garden bed. We've already planted our garden for the season and it is looking so good. We are pretty excited!

The yard area.... it's not huge but it's perfect for us right now. Even with all the playground stuff, it's still big enough to have all the neighborhood kids over for a soccer game and for us, that's perfect! Not to mention, we have a park with sand volleyball courts and a huge green area like 3 doors down!

Ethan finally learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. He really could've cared less whether he had training wheels or not for the longest time and then one day he decided it was time to not use them anymore and learned super, super fast!

Ethan had a day off of school for President's day (or MLK Day?) so we went to the Sea Life Aquarium. 

It was fun! Ellie was quite a handful that day, if you can't tell :)

Sometimes, Ellie and I like to have picnics in our very own backyard for lunch. I love that she is just my little buddy. 

One day, we had a rainy day that created quite the massive puddles in our backyard. They were just begging the kiddos to play in them. The tramp really needed some dish soap on it as well :)

This is Halle and Chloe, the 2 oldest of the 4 kids next door. We LOVE our neighbors. All our kids are the same age, like as in 6 weeks or so of each other,  (minus the first, she's 8) and it's just so fun to have lots of kids around!

Tripp and Ellie...These two are so funny together!

Tripp is 110% all boy! He has "athlete" written all over him and he can hit balls off of a tee better than just about anyone!

These two love to hang upside down off our counters. Safe? No way. Especially not with the tile floor beneath them, but they think they are pretty funny doing it. 

We love our green smoothies, and smoothie staches! There's nothing better than making them with freshly squeezed AZ oj! 

What a cute picture to end on, eh?!