Arizona Lorenzanas

The day after Christmas, we hopped in our car towards Phoenix, where both of my brothers live. We stopped off in Vegas for 2 days just to break up the trip a little. We took the kids around to all of the free gimmicks at the museum (ie, the volcano at the Mirage, lions at MGM, etc...) And I have to say that although our meals were delicious there, I have no real desire to go back to Vegas. I was really turned off by the strip and all of the terrible advertisements there. And we saw like 5 people get arrested all on separate occassions, in the short time that we were there.

Checking out the cool fish

Evan happy after a spaghetti dinner at Maggiano's

Once we got to Vegas, the kids had a blast reconnecting with their cousins and it was so great to see my brothers. They have a great little setup there -- they live 1 house away from each other. So, it was so fun bouncing back and forth between their homes.

Cutest kid ever -- baby Ryan

Alex, Aubrey, Maya and Emmy

While we were there, we decided to take advantage of the warmer weather, so we went to the zoo, the train park, a local park by the house, went to a children's museum, Dallin went shooting with the boys, and I got to do some shopping with my sister in laws. We also went out to a fantastic restaurant one night and then went to see the Blind Side, which was great!

Jacob & Alex at the kids museum

Emmy & Aubrey at the kids museum

All of us FREEZING on the train ride

Phoenix zoo

Jacob & Sadie

The rest of the time, we spent playing in their backyards, playing foozball, playing on the Wii, and just hanging out and eating great food. We spent New Year's there and ordered in some yummy food that night and played Dance, Dance Revolution (I've got some good blackmail video of that!) And it was so great ringing in the new year with family.

Uncle Marco and Aubrey

Aunt Michelle & Emmy

Aunt Kathy & Aunt Michelle ready for some dancing!

Who says white boys can't dance?!

We honestly had so much fun there, and Jacob cried for an entire day after we left because he missed his cousins so much. On the drive back home, we stopped off at the Hoover Dam. It was pretty impressive b/c they are building a bridge so that people won't have to drive over the Hoover Dam (we assume for security reasons now). So, that was actually pretty interesting to see and read about.

Christmas 2009

OK, I have a few minutes to post about Christmas this year, so forgive me for the basic recap. Christmas this year was wonderful! I've really enjoyed establishing our own traditions with our kids every year. This year we had our traditional christmas eve dinner: lobster tails and tamales with a few other side dishes. Then we re-enacted the Nativity with our neighbors. All of the kids did a great job and had so much fun watching the video of it afterwards.

Then we came home, set out our treats for Santa and his reindeer, wrote letters to Santa, and opened 1 present that evening. The kids could hardly contain themselves the whole evening. They kept asking us if Santa had arrived in Reno yet and were looking for Rudolph's red flashing nose in the sky. It was awesome!





We told the kids not to come upstairs before 7 a.m. and fortunately they listened. Once they came up, they gathered in our room while we took a few pictures, which seemed like torture to them. Then we went out and started opening presents. We had our traditional Kringle for breakfast which was so delicious and we spent the whole day just relaxing at home and playing with all of the new toys.



Lastly, the next few pictures are from our ward christmas party in mid-December which I forgot to post. The kids all had fun sitting on Santa's lap, except for Evan who seem terrified of him this year. Go figure!