Valley of Fire

Today we took a little day trip to Valley of Fire.  It was the most beautiful piece of nature I think I have ever seen.  It was quite scenic.  I've never seen anything like it.  And to imagine that this was once under the ocean 150 million years ago and then when it was land how people lived on it like cavemen.  I am in awe.  God's work is amazing in this place.  The pictures do not do it justice but hopefully you get a sense of what it is like.
And who in the world found this place baffles me - seriously, we were out in the middle of nowhere and boom - there's all these red rocks.  Definitely will go back here.  The kids had a blast!  It was like one big outdoor playground for my guys.  Awesome day!

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Christmas 2012

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house.....

We stayed home for Christmas this year.  No trips, no family coming in, just us and our little family.  It's the second year now and even though we miss time with our families, it's also nice to have a quiet lazy holiday.  Since we don't visit family, our families send us all their gifts for the boys.  Thus the reason I have three trees at my house this year.  

This is my "pretty" adult tree as the boys called it.  I just wanted to have a pretty tree this year.  This was for our families presents to each other.

Here's the real tree we picked up for the boys to have as "their tree".  They decorated the whole thing.  We put all of S's family's gifts here.

And this is my tiny alpine tree.  I had it in a boy's room last year, so this year I put it in our family tree with just lights and put all of my family's gifts under it.

The stockings were all hung by the chimney with care....

This is actually the first house we have had where I could actually hang stockings above the fireplace AND have all 5 of them hung!!

On Christmas eve, we decided to make sugar cookies and decorate them.  Not sure what I was thinking but we made our way through it somehow.  I told S to remind me never to do this again on Christmas eve.  Too much work!  But it was all memories in the making -right??

Here's the final result.  Not the best looking but not bad for 8, 5 and 3 yr olds.  With some help from mom and dad of course.  Notice the "ninja-bread" men mixed in.  Boys....

Good morning little ones!

 W got his remote control car.  Now he's just trying to figure out a way to attach a spy camera to it...

 T was super excited about his super hero art set 

 C was all into it this year.  He asked us at the end "more presents??"  He knew what was going on this time around.

 He got a super cool hot wheels set that attaches to the wall.  This boy was in toy heaven!

He also got a little vet set

And it came with our new pet "Mr. Fantastic".  He has been taking good care of him and making sure he gets fed every meal.   

But when it was all said and done, this is what we saw the majority of the day.  Boys on electronic toys.  Oh how times have changed.

Hope you all had a very MERRY Christmas!!!

Christmas Eve Eve and The Chocolate Factory

On Christmas Eve "eve", we went out to the Ethel M. Chocolate Factory where they have a lighted cactus garden.  Yep - you read correctly - a CACTUS garden.  It was lit up beautifully.  The pictures just don't do justice.  Plus an added bonus - chocolate!  You can't go wrong with this new holiday tradition!

Merry Christmas from the Jones'

Let the Christmas Break Begin!

Ahhh....finally time for Christmas break.  A time with no plans and no schedules.  Love it.  We are staying put this Christmas and I gotta admit, I'm excited about it.  We have nothing planned and, of course since it's the beginning, it's great.  Ask me next week and it may be a different story.  HA!  

Let me share a little about our last week of school and work before the holiday posts are published.  This is our view for past week:

I guess the desert can be a pretty place after all.  It snowed up in the mountains last week.  We get the pleasure of looking at snow without having to deal with it.  I'm really enjoying that part of living here.

Last weekend, S bought this beauty:

We decided it would be nice to have that second family car again.  So, S decided on a truck for functionality with the house and other activities (he thinks we are going to take up camping - haha - we'll see about that!)

On to teacher gifts.  One nice thing about moving is you can use the same ideas over and over and no one knows.  So....in light of my foot and just the shear fact of being tired of thinking about things, I went with the clipboards for year #3.  They turned out really cute.  I attached an amazon gift card to each (love amazon!)

W's teacher has a pirate themed classroom, so that is why the middle one is 'pirate-y'.  I think it turned out to be my favorite.  Here the back:

I decided to do a little something for all the specials teachers - art, music, library and p.e.  Haven't done that in the past but wanted to know we think about them and appreciate them too.  So, thanks to Pinterest, I made these cute peppermint candy jars.  I had a bunch of frappicino bottles that I had kept (i bought them while we were in temp housing - something I never buy because they are way too expensive in my opinion)

  On Friday, the kids got to wear their pj's to school.  So, S & I figured since they were already in their pj's it would be the perfect night to drive up to the Las Vegas Speedway and see the Glittering Lights display.  It was really done well and LOTS of lights.  The boys had a great time watching the Grinch on the way to and from the speedway. On the way home we stopped by Sonic and got yummy milkshakes to conclude the 'christmas light looking' tradition.

 Here's a few things we saw at the lights.

 Boys appropriately named this one the "time tunnel'

 Also wanted to share with you some projects W brought home the last day of school.  Here's his "ninja-bread" snowglobe.  I think it's awesome.

And he also made us a card.  He was able to choose any cover and he chose the one with the wise men.    Sad to say but I'm surprised they had this option to choose from.  BUT glad they did and happy my child chose it!

 But the inside is what tickled me.  

 Hope the next few days leading to Christmas is stress-free and family fun-filled for all of you!

My Birthday

My birthday was last week and I had quite the time this year.  I must say it was hard to top my fabulous weekend with my friend Angeline at Shania.  So my big day was rather quite with just some shopping with C.  Once everyone was home from school/work, we grilled steaks and had some yummy cookie cake.

I was also kind to Shea (who is totally unAmerican in the fact that he does not like Chocolate Chip cookies).  So I was the sweet loving wife and made him some coconut creme pie bars.  THey turned out really quite good!

W was so sweet.  He woke up and got busy wrapping me up a gift.  He said he got this beauty at school.  I wore it proudly all day long.  Sweet boy.

  This was my real gift later along with a little stick vacuum from the boys to clean up all their messes.

After my family celebration, I was off for my night on the strip.  HA!  No, seriously, I was going out to meet one of my favorite friends from Louisville -  Jane Stacy!!!  She was in on a quick one day conference and staying at the Venetian.  Well, it just happened to be she was here on my birthday which is also HER birthday as well!!!!!  We just found us a little bakery in the Venetian, bought some cake and ice cream, and sat and chatted for several hours.  SO MUCH FUN!!!!  I'm getting so spoiled with all my favorite friends coming to Vegas!

All in all, it made turning 37 a very FUN TIME!!!

Fun Girls Weekend

Back in September, I mentioned to you that my best friend Angeline was coming back in town for a little birthday celebration.  So this past weekend, we partied it up as only stay at homes can!  We left the kids at home with dad and enjoyed kid free time together and went to see THIS LADY!!!!

Here we are all ready for the show.  I could only wear one boot due to my foot and ankle brace.  So, I found some cheap generic Tom like shoes and wore one on my other foot.  It blends in nicely with my ankle brace but I did get some interesting looks from folks.

This was my first Vegas show and it was absolutely AWESOME!  She had a great show and picked her most well known hits.  I forgot how much I liked here - I knew every word to most every song!  Each song took me back in time to when it was popular and it also made me miss my Country music.  I haven't listened to country in a while, but it brought the country back in this gal.  Such a good show!!

 Of course we had our pic taken by random stranger in front of poster.  My crutch makes my  sweater look really really weird.

 On Sunday, we went to the Bellagio because both of us were anxious to see how they decorated the conservatory for Christmas.  It did not disappoint.  Hope you can get a glimpse of the wow from the pictures.  The first is as you walk in.

 Center front is a huge rocking horse with gingerbread town around it.  The train going through the town had a little "train cam" on it and you could watch video.

 Another "let stranger take our pic" in front of the huge Christmas tree.

 These next two were my favorite things.  The first is a sign made strictly of natural materials.  The house is roses, the white is carnations, doors & window shutters are cinnamon sticks, and there's real tree bark and douglas fir for trees.  Gorgeous!

 The other is the set of polar bears made of all carnations.  This one was made of 18,000!!!  Wouldn't you hate to have the job of the person who had to count all of them?!

 After the conservatory, we went to the delicious little chocolate place in the Bellagio and split this fabulous Nutella crepe.  Sinful!!!

All in all it was a great weekend!  I am exhausted (not as much as my friend who had total jet lag).  I love having a friend like here.  Just wish she lived closer so we could do this more often.  Thanks Angeline (and thanks to her hubby Steve too for insisting she come see the show and take me along!)

Random Catch Up

I have fallen behind in my blogging.  So, I decided to make one VERY random post of all our happenings in the past couple of weeks.  We had a great Thanksgiving of just staying home and enjoying some family time.  It was nice to not have to do anything.

Before the kids got out of school, I did send them with a little Thanksgiving teacher happy.  You know me and how I love to appreciate teachers.  I went simple and made cookie jars.  Figured if the teachers were busy (we had school up till Wed) they may not have time to whip up a dessert for the holiday weekend.  We made cowboy cookie jars from Bakerella.

 W lost ANOTHER top tooth.  That's his 3rd top tooth in a row.  We joked with him that he wouldn't be able to eat his favorite HoneyBaked Ham at Thanksgiving.  He assured us he would.

Also on Thanksgiving weekend, we had a cast signing party.  I had a dr appt planned for the Monday following the holiday weekend and I was hoping I could get it off.  The kids had fun "decorating" my pink cast!

this was W's contribution.  Such a sweet little boy!!!!

 T drew me a Christmas tree.  He's my artist and I loved his artwork with a tree and presents. 

 Here is my funny husband's contribution.  Gotta love his sense of humor!  If you're wondering about C, he had a great space of squiggles.

 While I was off my feet the past 6 weeks, I FINALLY got T's artwork done for his superhero room.  I think it turned out cute and definitely helped that big blank yellow wall.

 Monday came and I had my dr's appt.  It was WAY better than I anticipated.  The nurse cut my cast off first thing.  I literally thought she was going to cut my leg off in the process!  (I will spare you the ugly picture I took of my horrifically hairy leg!  which by the way took 2 razors once I got home!)  Then the doctor came in and told me I was healing nicely and could move to an ankle brace for the next 4 weeks.  It is now, as I am typing this, one week of the brace and just today I was able to put about 25 percent weight on my foot.  I'm slowly getting there but I hope to be without crutches by my birthday!  Here's my foot after the cast - I am still very swollen.

And here's my new look post cast off.  Yep, that's partially the hairy leg sticking out - sorry folks.  But anyway I wear this brace along with either my tennis shoe or crocs because that's all I can fit into right now.  I'm lookin' good, let me tell ya.

 Since the good news last week, we have begun preparations for Christmas at our house.  Here's a glimpse as to what we've done so far.  The boys love their new Christmas jammies.  So hard to find good boy jammies at a decent price!  I found these on gymboree's website and got a GREAT deal on them.  Normal price would have broke the bank with 3 kiddos but I got them all for about half the price.  Score!

 Here's our front door decor 

 And here's MY tree.  S thinks it's a little "poofy" but I love it.  Being the only girl, I need some "poofiness".  Anyway, W told me he thought it was pretty.  I assured the boys we were going to get them a small REAL tree they could decorate.  W's mind was at work and he said "oh....so the adults get a tree and the kids get a tree".  WEll, partially correct.  Mommy gets a tree and everyone else gets one.  HA!

Quick story about a conversation I overheard.  T asked me if Santa was real.  I responded "what do you think."  He said, quite unsure, "no??"  W pipes in and says "yes he's real.  He's dead now but he used to be alive"  I love little minds!!!