Happiest Place on Earth x2

okay, it's been a crazy month and a half.  We put our house on the market and we had accepted an offer after showing the house for about 48 hours!  It was a perfect situation because they would allow us to rent back from them until school is out so we wouldn't be scrambling for a place to stay.  This was such a blessing to have it go fast. We didn't have to stress about keeping the house perfect for too long.  Shortly after selling our home we made an offer on a home in AZ before we had even seen it in person.  We had looked at pictures, looked into the schools in the area, and neighborhood.  When we felt really good about that particular house we had some of the AZ Partridges walk through for us.  It was a little scary, but we feel that Heavenly Father is leading us there at this time. This is a bit of a leap of faith.  Brett will be working remotely from home once we get down there and travel up to Utah occasionally to make sure everything is running smoothly here.  We are really looking forward to this new adventure in our lives. We will leave a piece of our hearts here in Utah too.  Every night as I'm doing dishes I look out our window above the sink to the amazing view of Utah valley and I think about the people and things that I will miss.  It's funny because when I was young I never would have imagined myself living in Utah, but after 11 years it has really become home. 

  Over Spring Break we took a truckload of our things down to AZ to store at Grandma and Grandpa's house until we can come down and move it into our new home.  We were also able to take the kids to see the new house.  They are really excited, mostly about the pool.  Then we caravaned over to Disneyland!  It was the perfect vacation and a great get away from everything.  The boys had so much fun with their cousins and loved watching a few of their cousins perform on the stage.

I think out of everything Owen and Emmett were most excited about meeting Captain America and Spiderman.  They waited in line really well.  Owen drank a little bit of his water and then shut the lid and said he wanted to save the rest for Captain America because 'he was probably really thirsty'.  He was so cute giving him his used water.  Cap' took it happily and was so sweet with the boys. 

 Spiderman was funny and such a great character.  The boys had a hard time making webs with their wrists and fingers so he stopped to help them get it just right. . . or at least mostly.  

 Hyrum liked meeting Pluto and they all liked meeting Chip and Dale. 

Naoh Turns SEVEN!!!

Noah is such a joy to have as a part of our family.  He is energetic, upbeat, sweet, caring, a wonderful big brother, and quite the athlete. He LOVES playing all kinds of sports but especially basketball.  He had a really hard time cutting down his list of twenty friends to four for his party so we could fit everyone in our two vehicles.  Morgan Felix, Max Kellogg, Nico Naseath, and Miles Gross came to celebrate with us at Get Air Trampoline Park.  The kids all had so much fun, it was really hard to get them to slow down enough to take a picture:)

Midway Ice Castle

There are only 4 ice castles in the nation, so we were so glad that we were able to visit.  It was pretty incredible to go through the tunnels and ice features.  The best part was being able to go with our friends the Gross'.  Noah got to go through with Miles and Owen got to be with Anna.

Noah going down the sled, followed by Miles.

 Emmett was a little timid, but he liked exploring the small paths.

 Anna, Owen, and Emmett

 Noah and Miles

 I'm pretty sure Hyrum went down the slide a few dozen times.

 . . . and you can't go through an ice castle without running into Anna, Elsa, and Christoff.

 There was a really amazing ice room that we were walking into.  Their was a couple standing in the middle kissing and Owen yelled, "Eww, Mom! They kisseded!"  It was pretty funny, the couple laughed.

SNOW!

We wanted to take full advantage of all this snow, so we had some fun sledding on 'the big hill'.  The boys loved it.  The snow is so beautiful!  We've decided that our family is transplanting to Arizona.  It's going to be a big change for us and we are excited, but I will really miss this view.  

January

Owen gave his first talk in Primary!  He was so nervous, but he did an amazing job!

Camouflage Baby!

 I can't even handle this cuteness!

Arizona Christmas

I can't even begin to say how great it was to be in Arizona for Christmas with family.  After such a crazy year, it was like we were finally able to take a breath and just be a family again, and leave the cancer behind.  The kids LOVED playing with cousins.  

Here's Owen, Madi, and cousin Brett.

On Christmas Eve we had a great program at Grandma-ma and Grandpa's home.  Each family sang a song and Grandpa read a story.  Hyrum had been practicing a couple of Christmas songs for a while and was a bit nervous, but did an amazing job accompanying!

Baby Brett made the cutest little Santa on Christmas:)

 . . . and of course the customary Christmas PJ's picture:)

 Miracle Baby buddies: Tate and Baby Brett

 The Partridge's invaded a cute little soda shop. 

Brett and I were so glad to be able to do sealings in the Mesa Temple while we were down there to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary.

Christmas Program 2015

Cedar Ridge has a cute Christmas program every year.  Each grade prepares some songs and they perfrom them for each other.  This is the first year they invited families to come and watch too.  It was SO cute!  Noah's class was dressing up like Whoville people.  He was ecstatic to be the Grinch:).  Hyrum's class were reindeers.  Can you spot him?  He was wearing his snow pants all day, funny kid. 

and of course, Baby had to try on the antlers too:)

 We've been getting a lot of snow and the kids have been loving it.  We've made lots of snowmen.

 Here's Hyrum's record breaking snowman, with Dad's help.  It was over 6 feet tall!