The most wonderful time of the year!

Christmas is finally upon us and I must admit this is my favorite holiday!! I just love the spirit of the season. I love giving gifts to my friends and family and I love receiving Christmas cards in the mail to see what everyone has been up to the past year.

This year we are lucky enough to have family coming out to enjoy Christmas with us. My grandpa "Papa" Andy is coming, along with my Uncle Rusty and Aunt Sileide and their two boys, TJ and Dane. I haven't seen them in at least 5 years, so I can not wait to see everyone!! We are also lucky enough to have my brother coming home from Germany for the holidays. I am so thankful that we will be surrounded by family to celebrate Christmas.

I also really enjoy all of the Christmas events leading up to the holiday. Looking at lights, Christmas parties, etc. Since lately I have been trying to transform myself into a runner, I decided to take part in one of the many "fun" runs that they have around the holidays. So last weekend, I ran a 6k race at the 12k's of Christmas held at a local park here in Gilbert, AZ. It was one of the few races around town that you can do with your pet and I just had to sign up Muley and myself. My mom, dad and Snoops came out to support me and we all had a really good time. There were Christmas carolers at different spots along the course and everyone dressed themselves and their pets up in holiday clothing. I really enjoyed seeing all of the costumes on not just the people, but the pets too. Some people are so creative! It ended up being a whopping 80 degrees that day, so the race was a little hot, but we did it and Muley did a great job!

This year for Thanksgiving the Nelson clan from California came and visited us here in Arizona. It was so nice to have them out here with us. I still cannot believe that it had been a year since I had seen them last. Time seems to be flying by these days! My two little cousins, Nic and Natalie, have grown up so much this past year. We had so much fun with them and can not wait to see them again!

Natalie showing off on the playground (I can not do this anymore...does this mean I'm starting to get old?).

 

Nic (our little spinner) He tries to spin everything he possibly can find. He loved mommy's new pinwheel app on her iphone and wouldn't stop asking for it the entire weekend. Of course when he wasn't on the iphone he was going into every single room and turning the ceiling fans off and on. He is just the sweetest little boy!

Mom, Dad, Dean-o and Suzi

Ok, so let me explain this picture. Thanksgiving morning we decided to make this recipe for sticky buns that looked simply amazing! It calls for the sticky buns to be assembled and placed into a muffin tin instead of your usual cookie sheet for baking these. However, half way through the baking process my mom realized that she had missed a step in the instructions and the butter, sugar, etc. from the muffin tin was spilling over onto the bottom of the oven. Apparently, she missed the step in the instructions where it tells you to place a cookie sheet below so to catch everything spilling over the edges of the muffin tin. Our first mistake was that we decided to continue baking the buns. All of a sudden the oven began smoking very heavily and we had to run open all of the windows and turn on all of the fans. It is a really good thing that we live where we do, because otherwise we may have had problems letting a bunch of cold air into the house. To make a long story short, the oven caught on fire eventually and my mom came running to the rescue with the fire extingusher to put out the flames. Luckily no one got hurt and once the fire was out our cleanup crew (Mark and Dean) were able to get the oven looking as good as new.

It was quite the story and really made our Thanksgiving memorable. We will never forget the year Ronee set the oven on fire!

Somehow dogs always manage to know who is going to be dropping the most food ;) Snoops and Muley really enjoyed having the kids around. I think they both gained a few pounds over the weekend.

Nic and Natalie really enjoyed playing ball with our dog Muley. She was so patient with them and it was so cute to see them throw the ball for her and really interact with her.

Miss D came by for a visit and Natalie couldn't get enough. This little girl loves her animals! 

The whole family - Take 1 (Please forgive us, these are horrible pictures)

Take 2

Take 3- ehh...maybe we can get some better pictures next year! 

I hope everyone had a truly blessed Thanksgiving holiday and were able to take time out to be thankful for everything that they have! I know I am so thankful for my friends and family.