you might want to sit down for this

It feels weird to skip an entire year on the blog and just jump into posting about last week. Those of you that are closest to us have been 'in the loop' so to speak, minus the photos. And since I, myself, like to look back on all of the old posts, I'm going to do a big fat update while trying to keep it short and sweet. But like I said, it's been a year, so you might want to sit down for this. In a nutshell:

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Spencer:
Spencer turned 6 last Fall and had an awesome Pirate themed birthday party. We went to a fun indoor kids place called Amazing Jake's and had a blast.

He also started kindergarten! Wow, time flies. I know I've said that before, but really, where do the years go? Spencer attended full day kindergarten, five days a week. He learned to count past 100, do some crazy complex math problems and READ and write sentences with punctuation. Kindergarten sure has changed since 'our days'. At the end of the year he had to pick a sea creature (he chose the Red King Crab), create a poster board with facts and pictures and present it to the class. He was even graded with a rubric scoring sheet by the teacher. Whaaaaat?! All in all he had a great year with Mrs. Rosenfield and sure did grow a lot. He even lost his first tooth!

First Day of School: Aug 2012

Last day of School: May 2013

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Mason:
Mason attended his last year of preschool. He moved from his favorite classroom with Ms. Pat to Ms. Janis - both awesome teachers. He finally started  to break out of his shell a little more and really soaked in a lot of info in his 2 days a week! The rest of the weekdays he was home with Micah - and he was happy as a clam about that. In May we celebrated his graduation and he will be ready to start kindergarten at the end of the summer. He's ready for it!

First day of School: Aug 2012

Graduation: May  2013

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Other high points from the year: 

Halloween: This year we had a pirate and a knight. It was another year with more candy than any one person could eat. Great trick-or-treating though!

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Christmas: We had my mom and Zach here for the traditional St. Nick's party. We decorated houses, ate lots of cookies and enjoyed having our family here.

Being cool like Zach

Decorating with the one who started it all - Grandma :)

Then we rolled into what we always be known as 'the year of the 2 Christmas Trees'. I could write 2 pages about this alone, but I'll spare you. Long story short, we always get a live tree. This year was no exception. 2 days before Christmas we come home to a rotten smelling tree with no signs of what could have happened. I did my usual go to behavior and Googled it. I freaked myself out by reading horror stories about impaled rodents stuck in tree branches.  Mind you, the tree was FULLY decorated. So it was either death by said bad smelling tree or swap it out for another 2 days before the holiday. We chose the latter. (We actually had a third option, which was to 'have Christmas' by our smallish, artificial/fake tree in the family room. But that didn't really seem like an option). So while Micah went on a search for a new live tree, I pulled all of the decorations and lights off the bad one. Then we ditched the old one, put up the new and redecorated the entire thing. It. Was. Nightmarish. But worth it!

Moving on - Christmas was amazing. We did our usual baking, had a nice dinner and celebrated with many great gifts. The only thing missing, as usual, was our extended family :(

The 'fake tree' that was too wimpy to celebrate  
Christmas with, but didn't give us any grief either

Our 2nd live tree during the 'year of the 2 Christmas trees'

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P!nk - I have an awesome husband that planned a fabulous surprise for me: he bought me P!nk tickets and coordinated a behind the scenes surprise to have my BFF fly down here for the concert. I hadn't seen her in two years.

Me & Beth

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St. Patrick's Day: In line with our traditions we had a fun party- complete with Irish music, green everything and celebrated the night away.

PARTY! 

That pretty much brings us up to current. Now I can begin posting about more recent happenings. Let's see if  I can keep up!

it's been long enough

I can't believe it's already been almost a year since our last post!
The blog is officially under construction: new laptop in use = updates to come.
I realize at this point I am blogging pretty much just for me (and a grandparent or two out there)....but it certainly is nice to look back at the little snippets of the boys and our adventures over the last few years. Especially seeing the photos :)

More to come....soon!

four

Hard to believe, but Mason just turned 4! We had a wonderful time celebrating our sweet, funny, independent little boy.

As usual, I put together a quick year in review. As you all know, I love nicknames, so the nicknames in this house are a plenty. Mase recently decided he would like one of his nicknames to be 'Gummy Bear.' So, without further adieu, here is 'call me gummy bear':

sedona

One of the most beautiful places to visit in Arizona is Sedona. We recently spent a few days there - the weather was amazing, the trolley was fun and the boys loved all of the exploring.

the graduate

Spencer graduated from Pre-School and will be on his way to Kindgergarten in August! So exciting!

catch-up

Woah, where have we been? Not blogging apparently!

Here's a quick recap of the last two months:

In February we had a Superbowl bash. The boys were a little disappointed that the Packers weren't in the big game, but they still got super wrapped up into all the excitement. We had actually asked them one night if they had to choose would they rather go to Green Bay for a visit or Disneyland. Their initial response was Green Bay! Then they said, 'both!'.

In March we bought (and assembled) a little outdoor playhouse for the boys. The assembly part was a little nightmarish (as to be expected) but the finished product is cute and a fun hideout for the boys. We've been reading a series of books called 'The Magic Treehouse' and the kids go to different places and times via the treehouse. Before we knew we'd be moving back to Arizona I had been talking to the boys about building a treehouse. Well, Spencer's elephant memory coupled with these Magic Treehouse books created the perfect opportunity to get them a little 'house'. Unfortunately, we don't have a tree to make it a treehouse, but it'll do for now :) They call it 'Lizard Lounge'. 

The boys started swimming lessons - which they really enjoy and are quickly becoming good little swimmers!

We've had some amazing weather which has enabled Mason to become an excellent bike rider! He is doing a great job keeping up with Spence now.

We also celebrated St. Patty's Day in our usual traditional way. Green attire + green food + Irish dance party = good times!