Utah Trip December 2014

Scott and I took a trip up to Utah to visit before Christmas and to celebrate Scott's birthday.  It was a really fun trip, but definitely not long enough!  It was so great to see family and friends with whom the visits are few and far between.  I flew up a couple days before Scott and spent some time playing kick ball, legos, cars, etc.  Here are some highlights: (Please excuse the very blurry pictures.  One of these days, I am going to take a photography class.)

Camden has a play date with his cousin Michaela (sorry if I didn't spell it right) once a week and this time Nicole had a yummy project for them to do - rice krispy Christmas trees!

Hard at work decorating the tree....

Ta da!!

Hmmmm....which one looks better?

Straight for the peanut butter cup on the bottom!

Look what I can do Grandma!

This kid will do anything to NOT get his picture taken.

Caught you!

Hard at work fixing the problem.

I was also able to go out to lunch with my roomies, Pam, Ellen, and Gayle.  So great to see them and catch up.

Friends since 1981!

I actually got him to pose with me!

Scott flew up Friday after work and after waiting and waiting and waiting, his flight finally took off three hours late, but he finally got there.

Spending time with Grandpa.

Everyone came over to celebrate Scott's birthday.

Had fun playing games....yes Camden was having fun too UNTIL someone took his picture!

More play time with Grandpa.....

Grandpa's turn!

Woke up on Sunday to SNOW!! Okay, it's not much but it was a great Christmas present for me!

Camden and I were quite excited....cannot say that for everyone else.

We are so glad we made that trip and saw everyone before Christmas.  It was nice to get away and play for a few days!  Thanks Dan and Nicole for letting us come play!!

Since we have been home, it's been crunch time to get ready for Christmas.  We have been doing Christmas cards, last minute shopping, menu planning, etc.  Agnes came over yesterday and decided she needed to make some Christmas cookies.....

....and she decided one in each color was necessary!

Looks like Easter!

Josh was very proud of the number of blankets he piled on the couch.

And now that the blankets were out of the ottoman, it made a great place for Zach to hide.

Riley was getting the royal treatment today.

We were treated to a piano recital. He is really good!!

Merry Christmas from the Klundt's!!

Thanksgiving 2014

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend.  All of the kids were able to come and we had a lot of fun playing games, doing puzzles, and of course, eating, eating, eating.

It's puzzle-mania when Nicole and Ashley are around and they put together four large puzzles over the weekend with just some scattered help from others now and again.

I think they had this one done the first day. 

Only 300 very large pieces.  I was actually able to help with this one!

Karina heard we were doing puzzles and sent over this cute Santa puzzle.

Voila!

We also played lots of games, as usual.  Some of us (not me) tackled this Grand Prix game that Jared brought on Thanksgiving Day.

Thanksgiving dinner turned out great.  Everyone pitched in and took charge of some part of the meal.  Everything was delicious.  We probably didn't need as many pies as we ended up having but we sure didn't mind trying to finish them off over the weekend.  There is still one pie that hasn't even been touched!

We went for several walks with Camden and always ended up at the park.

Went right for the caterpillar...

Helping Grandpa walk the dog.....

Super hero.....

....to the rescue!

Hanging out with Grandpa.....

Found a dandelion to blow.....

We decided to put up the tree while everyone was here and Camden was excited to help decorate although I wasn't able to hold his attention long.  Although he did hang a couple ornaments and told me where to put several others.

Camden had made us an ornament with his picture on it so he helped us hang that one.

We also have a "Riley Dog" ornament that Clark made for us that Camden was excited to hang.

Checking out the ornaments.

Camden loved playing ping pong with Grandpa.

Staring contest?

Dan, Nicole, and Camden were still here on Sunday so we decided to go see the Christmas lights at the Mesa Temple. 

There was a display inside the Visitor's Center of nativities from different countries.  When I saw this one from Japan it brought back a lot of memories.  I always loved the Kokeshi dolls.

You can tell by our clothing that we are not at Temple Square! It was a very nice evening.

We have a kumquat tree in our back yard and Camden is always asking to go pick some.  The reason is that he LOVES them.  He eats the whole thing, peel and all. 

Finding ones that were ripe enough to eat was a challenge.....

but he was always successful!

It was so nice having everyone here.  The house seemed so quiet today.  I love the noise of everyone being here and miss it!  We are looking forward to being in Utah next week!!

Fall Update

The last few weeks have been very busy so I thought I would catch you up.

First of all, October was hot!  I'm pretty sure it was the hottest October we've had since I have lived here.  And here is some proof:

This was October 30!

I assumed that we would have an unusually warm winter but when November came, the temps dropped all of a sudden and I'm pretty sure this has been the coldest November since I have lived here.  Pretty weird. Although, there is a warm front coming through and we are suppose to have 80 degrees on Thanksgiving Day.  I'm pretty sure that is because Nicole will be here in a couple days and she has been praying!!

Since we have been back from NY, I have been trying to spend a lot of time on my Latin American history class.  I finally got to the point where I was ready to take the midterm, which was great because I really wanted to get it done before Thanksgiving. I took it last Friday.  It was very hard and I had to write one essay that I was hoping would not be on there and it was, so I did not do as well as I had hoped because of that.  I don't know my grade yet, and I'm not expecting to until after Thanksgiving.  For now I will enjoy the holiday and get back at it next week.

I have also been trying to learn more about cub scouts and get more comfortable with my calling.  I went to a big training that they had a couple weeks ago and Scott has been a big help too.  We have 11 boys in our den and after December 5 we will have 12!  They called a third den leader to assist which has been very helpful.  It is still a new experience and they are super rowdy boys and I just try to breathe deeply and evenly while I am there for the most part, ha!

Scott has been busy with work, calling and planning a big block party that was a huge success!  We bbq'ed and had all sorts of games and there was a big turnout. We even had a live band this time.  Everyone loves that he plans these parties.  We know our neighbors so much better now. 

Here is a visual of what we have been doing in our spare time.

The Phoenix temple had their open house and we met Ashley and Jason there one night.

The temple is gorgeous and Jason's parents treated our whole group to dinner at his country club.  Great evening!

The following Friday was Halloween.  We went over to the Robinson's for dinner and then came back to our house to pass out candy to the trick or treaters.  Here are some of the kids in our neighborhood (taken at the trunk or treat the week before).

Zach the football player

Josh the army guy

Agnes the mummy and Malia the zombie cheerleader

So the guys were all cute and the girls were all scary.....go figure.

I went for a bike ride with the neighborhood kids one day and we ended up at the park.

Like I said, I went to Pow Wow a couple weeks ago and learned some games to play with my den, like how to make a paper house that you can stack a book on without falling......

My life is so exciting.

A couple weeks ago the neighborhood kids came over on a Saturday and Scott convinced them that helping him wash the car would be a really fun thing to do.  It didn't take much convincing, they jumped at the chance and had a blast.  Agnes had a goal of getting completely soaked from head to toe.  Zach said he would help but only if nobody got ANY water on him.

They decided it would be fun to keep soaping up the places Scott already rinsed to see how long it would take him to actually get it rinsed.  He was very patient and let them run the bucket completely out of soap.

Agnes met her goal.

Zach and Malia decided to see how cold the pool had gotten.  A picture is worth a thousand words!

We have also been to several concerts and football games....

5th Grade orchestra and band fall concert

Zach plays the trumpet.

Clark plays the cello.

East Valley Youth Symphony....Gurrie on far left playing violin, Oscar on far right playing cello.

Good job Gurrie!

He's such a boy.

Zach and Clark's last football game of the season.

Last Saturday after the game the kids came over and Scott told them he would give them one penny for every acorn they picked up in the back yard.  We have a tree that drops them by the bucket and so he devised this ingenious plan to get them cleaned up.  They picked up hundreds of them and had a blast doing it.  Scott counted every single acorn and paid them accordingly.  Best ten bucks he ever spent!

Riley looking on cautiously.....

There you have it, the last month of our life! 

This week we are looking forward to seeing all the kids for Thanksgiving!! So stay tuned.....