Happy Birthday Eddie!

December is a big birthday month for us. Not only is it the celebration of Jesus, but Eddie's and his mom's birthday as well! My very cute husband LOVES to celebrate his special day...all month long! He calls it his birthday month! We celebrated this big occasion with our best friends, "The Gang" as we call them, with an Adult Night In (fancy way to say no children), a delicious dinner of Mexican food hosted by Sandy and Dave with the family, AND a date night to see the comedian/ventriliquist Jeff Dunham. We had so much with all, thank you for helping to celebrate Eddie 36th!

Turkey Day!

Here is a page made up of a few snaps I took on Thanksgiving. We celebrated the day at Dad and Judy's AZ home with most of the Van Bebber family. It was a beautiful day filled with laughter, love, and fun. The cousins especially have the greatest time, they get to spend all day together and do their favorite thing...play! We are so grateful to be able to share this holiday with my parents every year, and despite missing my grandparents who loved this holiday as well, we spend the day together remembering how they blessed our lives. My grandparents were wonderful people who knew how to "thanks and give", may we always attempt to live by this idea.

Our Sedona Hike

It has been one of Eddie's and my favorite things to do every fall season...drive to Sedona, AZ to see the Fall leaves changing. It is one of the prettiest times of the year, especially this area of Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon. There are only a few short weeks to "catch" the leaves changing their color before they fall off the their branches and sometimes it is hard to visit in the perfect window of time. We wanted to share our love with the kids this year and take them hiking on a family-friendly trail. The West Fork trail is perfect for all levels and ages and we just love it! The boys especially had so much fun. Logan's highlight was crossing the streams through the rocks and "slipping" into the water, getting his shoes and part of his pants wet...perfect place for boys to get all that energy out. And Ethan finally got to "hike" at the end of the trail when we were almost done. If we had let him out of the hiker any sooner, we would have taken three days to hike the 2 miles that we did. We are going to try and make this a family tradition every year. Here's to the next fall!!!

Hangin' with the Cows!

On Veteran's Day, we went to a local dairy farm and spent the day hanging out with the cows. It was really neat to be so close to the animals and especially see my children's reactions to them. Ethan was all smiles and waving and Logan wanted to touch them, but they always backed away when we came near the fence. It was a nice day spent with two of my favorite boys in the world!

Backyard Fun...

Ethan has a new love...the two-wheel scooter! He has been riding around our backyard on a three-wheel scooter for the past six months, very age-appropriate and safe I might add. But ever since he has been able to ride big brother Logan's scooter, that is all he wants to do now! He is supposed to be 5 years old to ride, at least that is what is recommended. I guess I have to accept that he is going to learn things faster than Logan did, earlier on! What a big boy, and he says "Scoo, mommy, scoo!" everyday! As you can see from the pics that he has his own scooter now, we could not wait for christmas. They were both fighting over Logan's scooter and for 3 days I listened to it...until Eddie saved the day and brought one home for Ethan. It really is fun to be able to watch them play together doing something they truly love.

Playful Pals

One of Ethan's best buddies is Dylan. They are about 9 months apart in age but they play very well together. Here they are having a blast swinging on the swingset in Dylan's backyard. It's so cute to hear them have a "conversation", of course it's not like ours but it is so sweet to listen to them talk about what they like to do or toys etc. Ethan has so much fun with his pal 'Dyl', as he calls him.

Happy Halloween...Finally!

We had another fun-filled Halloween at the Jaffie House. All of our family comes over, including all my nephews and nieces, we have dinner or snacks, and then get all the kids dressed for trick-or-treating. I think secretly the dads all love this night because they hang out in front of the garage with their "beverage of choice", pass out candy to all the little spooks from their lawn chairs, while us moms work and take the kids out for trick-or-treating! This has become a tradition every year, and our kids look forward to spending this night with their cousins. It is so cute to see them dressed up! We had Wonder Woman, a Ninja, Darth Vader, Dorothy and Toto, a Pumpkin, and even a Constuction Worker. Ethan was supposed to be Buzz Lightyear, but refused to put on his costume, so we put his tool belt on with his hat. I have learned to just "go-with-the-flow" when it comes to what 2 year olds want to do. We'll just have to see if he dresses up next year!

Our Pumpkin Masterpieces

I know that I am posting pages backwards, but I just haven't had time to keep up with all the holiday and events from the month of October. Halloween pics will soon be posted too!
Carving pumkins this year was much easier now that Logan can actually carve without the danger of slicing his fingers. We made three pumkins with quite different looks. Of course Ethan just had more fun playing in the backyard than seeing what carving was all about. He did however like the hollowed out pumkin once we were done scraping the slimy guts out (never my favorite job). Plus he had more fun picking the pumpkins at the patch than carving them!

Veteran's Day, 2009

This is a quick page I made from Logan's Veteran's Day Program they had at his school. It was a wonderful performance and tribute to our veterans, and all grade levels contributed. Logan made some stars for the service wall and the memorial garden for our family members that have served and are currently serving. What a great day for teaching our young ones about history and sacrifice, thank you again to our incredible verterans!!!

And now he likes his "Ears"...finally!

Exactly four weeks after our visit to the magic kingdom, Ethan finally decided it was okay to wear his Mickey Mouse ears! He was very excited about them, wore them the entire rest of the evening and kept touching the tops of the ears to make sure they were still there, so cute!!! He even made the rest of wear our ears at the dinner table, it was quite the scene (and no I did not take a picture of it!). He completely understands whose ears they really are (Mickey's) but when it comes to dressing up in costume or hats, Ethan is a little slow to warm up to the ideas. I think 4 weeks is his time-frame!

Maggie's Run @ Tempe Town Lake

Just ran this very quick and fun 9K this morning with more of my running groupies! It was 5.6 miles around Tempe Town Lake, what a beautiful day!And, what a great event to raise awareness and funds for this organization that provides homes and shelter to women that are pregnant and are alone or living on the street. It was the 2nd annual run and I am sure that it will continue to grow each year. Thanks ladies for a fun morning!

OOOPS!

Forgot to click on all the pages! Enjoy!

Nike Women's Half Marathon, SF 2009

Here are a few pages I created from the San Francisco adventure with our running groupies, AZ BABES. We had so much fun the whole weekend, what a wonderful and beautiful city to not only visit but run in!!! This is definitely on the top of my race list as a favorite (not that I have lots of races under my belt), but the entire experience was awesome!!! And what a great group of women to spend 3 days with...I look forward to the next Az Babes adventure. Again, these are only a few of the many pictures I took while we were there but just wanted to share some highlights with you. By the way, YES that is a picture of a nice looking gentleman holding little blue boxes on a silver tray! Instead of a race medal, each runner received a silver Tiffany necklace when they crossed the finish line...maybe that was the draw for so many runners, I LOVE mine of course!

Fall Fun!

It's a yearly tradition for my mom, my sisters, Kari and Leslie and their families, to head out to Queen Creek, AZ to Schneph's Farms to celebrate the fall. The kids look forward to our time there and its so fun to see them each year try new things as they get older. There are many rides, play area, a giant slide, pony rides, pig races, a big corn maze, a huge pumpkin patch and even a train ride (at night it becomes a spooky train ride). This year we were joined by our family friend Bryce along with mom's new hubby Dave. Kettle corn and Italian ice were the favs this time, we will see what next year has in store!

And one more..

It seems that you can only upload 4 scrappbook pages at a time, here is the last one from our trip!

Disney Pages continued...

Tour of Disney, 2009

During Logan's Fall break from school, we took a trip to the Magic Kingdom with Uncle Russ, Aunty Shell, Nanny and Papa (Dave and Sandy). While we were there, our neighbors The Zylstras and my coworker Michele and her family were also visiting Mickey Mouse, so we all spent the first day together. We had so much fun, especially with the park all decked out for Halloween. Ethan had a little touch of the flu, but he was the best person to get sick out of all of us...he was the only one who had a permament ride with the stoller! Besides, he still is a little young for many of the rides and the characters looked much better to him from inside the stroller than out. Logan rode every roller coaster this time and loved them all (although he said he closed his eyes on Space Mountain). I was so proud when he announced to us that he "loves it when he loses his stomach on the roller coasters", he is a roller coaster rider in the making!!! Another big highlight for Logan was when he got chosen to participate in the Jedi Training Academy, he learned some new techniques with the light saber and then actually got to test them out on Darth Vader! We also had the opportunity to check out California Adventure and ride all the fun rides. We especially enjoyed The Rapids and Scream roller coaster! We just love Disneyland and can't wait for our next tour with Mickey!

Parent's Night Out!

This is what happens when you let the adults of the house out for the night...they go a little crazy, including what they think is "IN" for fashion! Really, our friends and neighbors The Carpenters, had a Halloween party and we got to have a night out! We even went out of our comfort zone and used a real babysitter, not just our family. And we survived, as well as the children! In fact Logan was so excited to have our babysitter arrive, he was looking out the window until she came, and then was shooing us out the door quickly, no tears. This was our first babysitter (we are very fortunate to have both sides of our families here in town, so there has always been a family memeber to stay with the kiddos), but I think we will be venturing out more now, watch out Chandler, AZ!!! I will be posting some pages soon from our Tour of Disney and my San Francisco trip. It's been a little hectic here and you would think by being on vacation from work I would have plenty of time to scrappbook and blog. It is the exact opposite for me, I guess that means I better get back to work!