Family Time

It was awesome having Jonny and Megan's family here for 3 weeks! We were supposed to only get them for 1, but with the whole Covid thing they ended up spending the 2 weeks they were supposed to be staying with Megan's parents at our house instead. 

I looked out the window and what did I see? Seth and Catherine on the wall by the tree!

We were outside more than I have ever been outside in a single month. We were outside every day for long periods of time. There wasn't much else to do with Covid closing everything, and near the end of December it was the only way we felt comfortable meeting up with Megan's parents, Stephen and Claudia, and Mary's family when they came down. We made multiple trips to Madera canyon and did all the walks around Rancho- to the dirt bike arena, the tree house, around the lake, and to the copycat monster that lives in the drainage pipe (that last one was a much bigger hit than I anticipated). 

Jonny with an armful of babies at the field

Megan introduced us to Honeybee Canyon. It is up in Oro Valley and a 40  minute drive, but it was worth it for the awesome rock climbing. 

I assume this must have been a dam back in the day

Elliot is getting brave these days!

Many a game were played. Megan introduced us to some new great ones like Crypto and Skyjo.

There were always plenty of kitchen helpers

Our Walmart grocery pickup randomly included this impossible meat. We didn't order it. We did side by side taste testing with ground beef for our Christmas Eve tacos. The fake meat tasted great but was less greasy than the ground beef, so it stuck to the pan more. It was a fun experiment!

Back outside, this time in Saguaro National Park. We had to take the twins to show them some Big Cactus. We wore masks most of the time but did take them off when we were the only ones on the trail. 

These two are something else. They would just pace around while playing out some tower defense video game in their heads. They would say things like "on level one the blaster shoots one bullet per second, but then on level four it upgrades to five bullets per second." They are just totally on the same wavelength!

Slapping out some sandwiches and tortilla wraps for the Blood Crew

We spent an afternoon playing field games on the soccer field. Activities included three legged races, bring home the bacon, and picking tiny cactus needles out of Seth's thigh because Catherine put a prickly pear fruit into his pocket. 

The kind of dinner that has a lot of fun but very little eating.

I'm pretty sure this was the night that we jointly celebrated our anniversaries by ordering Kababeque takeout while feeding pastaroni to the kids. There is no casting pearls before swine in this household. 

Back to Madera Canyon, this time with the twins and Claudia's newly released from quarantine family!

Jacob rocking the rock slide. There are some perks to having the stream all dried up. 

Ethan and Annie "napping"

 One of the best parts of the holidays for me was that I got to spend a lot of time nerding out about the Stormlight Archive with Jonny and Megan. Brandon Sanderson is my favorite author, and he came out with a new book in November. Jonny was starting the series, and Megan finished the new book ahead of me. I read a lot, but this book series is the first that has got me diving into fan theories. It was really nice having a book club!