More on Phoenix (December)

It is Christmas eve and look at the weather system coming in!

ALL the boys are loving the rain!

There's not too much going on so we bake some cookies for Santa:

And I prep for dinner as we have our neighbor coming over for Christmas eve dinner.  Oh, I can't believe I did this but after spending all that time in the grocery store buying ingredients to marinade pork loin, I come home to find out I had completely forgotten to buy the pork loin itself!!!

Anyhow, glad I didn't forget to put the presents under the tree for Christmas day! :-P

It's Christmas Day and the boys waste no time!!!  First, their socks:

So happy with the new selection of music CDs!

Lots of dancing around the house to the new Trolls soundtrack!

And yes, "Santa" decided that it was okay for the boys to get boxing gloves this year ;-)

Graham and Charlie are so patient and nice to each other. Why can't it be like this every day??!

Not wasting any time and getting right into their Christmas gifts!

In the meantime, I am trying to have the boys finish up some blueberries and cherries. Seems like the only way to get them to eat it is to make it into a pie. YUM!!!

We are off to our Christmas dinner.  Love the views around here:

Graham and Charlie are already fast asleep before dinner!

At the restaurant and it is packed!  We have our new tradition of popping Christmas Crackers now - that's where we get our paper hats from :-)

Unfortunately, dinner was just so-so and we had a waitress that was sort of having a meltdown in between our meal!  Anyhow, it is Christmas so we still give her a very nice tip.
Since being so far north of Phoenix, I wanted to show the boys what used to be the tallest fountain in the world when it was built in 1970.  The Fountain Hills fountain is now the 4th tallest fountain and it was only about 30 minutes away from the restaurant.  But sure enough, boys were fast asleep halfway through the ride!

Well, thankfully Charlie woke up just as we were about to leave!  With 3 pumps working under ideal conditions, it sprays water at a rate of 7,000 gallons per minute and reaches 560 ft in height!

The next day, we head up to Sedona to see some snow.  Graham especially really wanted to see it and with the storm system rolling through, there was a lot more in Flagstaff but traffic was quite busy going north so we opted to stop in Sedona instead:

It's so pretty around here:

We stop by the Sedona Golf Resort for lunch and the boys are just happy as can be, running in how ever little snow that's left on the ground!

We drive on and find a trail to hike.  Again, the view is spectacular!  

By the way, it doesn't normally snow here in Sedona so it is quite the treat for the locals too:

Happy Graham!

 Phoenix trip - to be continued...

Random photos of the week

I have been really slacking with the blog!  Seems like there's so much going on lately.  Let's start with Charlie's lizard. He copied it from another picture. He even wrote his name all by himself!

Charlie eating a plum. I had him take off his shirt because I didn't want him to get all that juice all over!

Not my finest moment... Ha ha!  But I was SO exhausted!!!  And Charlie is probably asleep on the chaise lounge a couple of times during the week after school:

A men's European Tour event just finished up here in Abu Dhabi.  Here are the boys menacing after dark just before the start of the event. Haha!

There was a big bus parked in the parking lot of the golf club on the same night and the boys wanted to get in it to check it out.  The bus driver did one better and let them sit on the driver's seat!

Thumbs up from both Graham and Charlie!

Photos and videos from the HSBC Championship tournament to follow!  Yes, video - Bobby's 1 minute of fame!!! :-)

Off to Phoenix!

Dec 20th and we are finally on our way back to Phoenix.  It's a short 1.5 hour flight in comparison to the long almost 16.5 hours from Abu Dhabi to San Francisco!  I'm glad the boys are such great travelers now and don't fuss too much:

Well, Charlie is the one now that didn't last the drive back from the airport to the house:

Graham goes straight to the yard and digs up the toy bin.  These toys will be littered in the yard pretty much the entire time we are at "home":

The next day... see what I mean!

Lunch time - Welcome back to America!!!

 Dec 21 - Time to set up the Christmas tree!

We didn't have a tree set up last year as we were celebrating it in Abu Dhabi.  Graham and Charlie were so excited. Tada!!!

Close-up of Graham and Charlie.  Awwww... so lovable!

Ahhh... so tired after all that work.  Funny how Graham loves to lay on all the sofa cushions! :-D

How we miss seeing clouds!  It actually did rain, which was a really nice change:

Low clouds/Fog the next day - almost unusual though.  We normally get lots of sunny days here!

Dec 23 - We always try and hit some of our favorite restaurants, so off to Scottsdale! On our way there, Graham said that his tooth was bothering him. And so what does he do??? He proceeds to pull it out himself in the car!!!

Well, glad Graham was able to take care of that by himself! :-)  We were not as fortunate with the restaurant though.  The one we were looking for had already been closed for over a year now! Anyhow, we did want to take photos by this LOVE sign as well, so it was not all a lost:

Look what I found!  Graham was only a few months old here :-)

And here we all are now - 6 years later.  Mommy is getting better at this we-fie thingy!

Boys are loving the photo-taking session:

After  breakfast, we head over to Papago Park.  Bobby is determined to find this particular rock that Graham played peek-a-boo years ago!  I don't think this was the one, but it will have to do :-)

Boo!!!

Oh! Look what else I found!!!

Haha... Graham was just over 2 years old here.  And here is that rock I was talking about.  BOO!!!

Yup, this rock is definitely a lot smaller!   Okay, moving onwards!!!  The boys love to hike and climb:

 Men, men, men, men...!

Thankfully the boys didn't have issues going downhill:

Busy day!  Some golf after lunch and nap:

Graham prefers to clean up:

Off to the golf course while there is still some sunlight.  Lots of oranges to pick!

A couple of hot air balloons fly right over us while we were on the golf course.  We were yelling "Hello" and the people in the balloon could actually hear us and were yelling back!

Ahhh... we love this place!

More photos to follow...!