This year we didn't have a lot to do for New Year's Eve. We didn't have cable so we didn't watch the ball drop or watch all of the parties going on and IT WAS GREAT!! We found the movie Phantom of the Opera at one of the stores here, had a "snack" style dinner, and spent the night cuddling. It was nice to ring in the New Year with nothing more than each other. We didn't go out with friends or family we just stayed in. Sometimes time gets away from us, we let our lives get so busy that we fail to put our priorities in the right order. Moving to a small town has helped Cody and I give each other more time and slow down a little bit. It has been wonderful. New Years Eve was a great start to a new year and we look forward to many more to come.

Christmas was a welcome break this year. It can be a little stressful, but with everything we had going on, it was nice to step back and just relax with family, eat great food, and share our love with gifts. This year we spent Christmas with my family. But we decided to open our family gifts before heading out. We didn't want to make anyone wait on us so we had to wake Josh up from his nap to open presents. Santa came to our house early, so we pretty much got to have Christmas twice.

My family's Christmas Eve tradition is to have a huge meal of every kind of mexican food you could dream of. We have tamales, tacos, red and green enchiladas, spanish rice, refried beans, tortillas, salsa, guacamole, etc. It is always SOOOO yummy! For the last few years my cousin April has joined our family for our holiday celebrations. We love having her there with us and I know it really makes the holiday for my dad.

After dinner, we all load into the car (now we have to take two) and go out to look at Christmas lights around town. This year there were some really fun houses. One house even had a Santa passing out candy canes to cars as they came by to see their home. It was a lot of fun.

Then we head back and have Christmas pudding. My mom makes it every year. It is layered with green and white pudding with red sprinkles in the middle. But the real fun is that in one of the cups there is a whole almond hidden. Whoever gets the nut, gets to open one of their presents that night. Now that we are getting a little older, my mom gets a gift specifically for the person who gets the nut. This year, I GOT THE NUT!!!! Woo Hoo!!! I got a special massage pillow. It was awesome! Then we all snuggle and watch the Christmas Letter which we have named Letter Day. It's an old movie but we love it. Especially me. Sadly this year things ran too late and we had to skip the movie. Little ones change things and it was already nearly 11:00 when we finally wound down so it was well past his bedtime. But we'll watch it next year.

Somehow we failed to take pictures during dinner, lights, and pudding but my mom got some so I will have to get them from her and post those later. Here are a few pics from our little families Christmas.

Our tree after Santa came (he visited our house early this year). It's sad, I know. There two decorations that are on there my little sister made for us. We just didn't have the energy or time to decorate the tree to be taken down again in just a few days. I figured that Josh didn't really know the difference and it helped keep him out of trouble.

The jumbo legos were by far Josh's favorite gift, from us and Santa anyway. It's great because Cody loves them too so the boys have a lot of fun together with these.

I had one of these when I was little and I spotted it at the store one day and decided to let Josh give it a try. I wanted to see if he liked it before I bought it. Well it was a bad idea because he LOVED it and threw a huge tantrum in the store when I put it back. He had never done that before and hasn't since. So I asked Santa if he said he was sorry for being naughty if he would bring it to Josh. Guess he really felt bad for being naughty in the store. :)

Jammies from Grandma and Grandpa Smith. They are rockets and super adorable!! And so soft. He really likes them.

This was Cody's "big" gift. I had to be pretty deceiving to keep it a secret. I guess it was worth it because he was pretty surprised when he opened his new Wii! It's been a fun way to spend time together and we do more exercise by laughing than by doing exercises or playing the games. I hope you liked it Code!!!

This is Josh's "wow" face. He was really excited by something and Cody caught it in a picture. I just love how expressive he is at this age. It was a lot of fun seeing that at Christmas.

Cody was super, SUPER sneaky this year. He got very creative in his wrapping and totally threw me off which was great! I like being surprised. I can't help but try to figure it out. It's just who I am, but I really don't want to know. REALLY!! So he did great and had me very surprised and happy this year. Here I am opening one of my three cricut cartridges he got me. Good job honey!

It was close enough for us! We woke up to a white coat outside on the morning of the 23rd! It was a lot of fun to have even a little bit of snow. It stuck most of the day. I was a little sad because I had a photo shoot up in Tucson that day and had scheduled Joshua a doctor's appointment the same day to avoid having to travel more. To make it on time we had to head out pretty early and missed a lot of the fun. But it was a beautiful drive that morning. The snow covered everything all the way to Benson. I had never seen it like that. Our car still had snow on it when I pulled into Josh's Dr's office parking lot two hours later. I was hoping it would hang around for the next couple of days, and that maybe we would even get a little more, but it melted that same day. We still enjoyed it while we could. Here are a couple of pictures that I took that morning before heading out.

The move went ok. As well as we could have expected it with the circumstances. We had two weeks from the interview to find a house, pack up, and get moved so Cody could start his new job. The commute from Tucson would have been close to three hours round trip and it just wasn't logical. So we decided after a lot of prayer and talking that it would be best to make the move right away. I was in the middle of finals, Cody had a mid-term, and it is the holidays. We ended up having about three days to pack. Needless to say not everything got done, and nearly everything that we did manage to get packed did not end up the way I had planned. We are so thankful for our wonderful families who were there to help us watch Josh so we could pack, load the truck, and deal with the chaos of a VERY unorganized move. We moved the 19th, so that left us with four days to try to get somewhat settled before Christmas. Even with all of the chaos, we made it to our new home with almost everything that we really needed.

We have a wonderful new ward that we are really enjoying being a part of. There were a handful of members there to help us move in and some of them even brought us treats to help us feel more at home. They were all so sweet.

We really wanted to attend our new ward the next morning. We were tired and worn out, but we have so many things to be grateful for we wanted to show our thanks to our Heavenly Father. Our new ward met at 9:00 a.m. and we were up and getting ready. Cody grabbed a shower, I told him the box we would need with most of our important clothing and I headed in to take a shower. When I got out, I asked Cody if he had found it. Unfortunately, we some how left that box in Tucson. I didn't have a dryer that worked yet and we were up a creek. I rummaged through a couple of duffle bags we had brought up a few days earlier and luckily I was able to find some of what we needed. The rest I threw in the washer, and then we went down to the only laundromat in town and used a dryer. I thought that it would be pretty dead, but it was packed! I was dying.

We eventually finished up with drying our clothes. We had already missed out meeting, but we ran home finished getting ready, found enough Sunday clothes to work, and attended the other ward at 1:00. It was Christmas Sunday so I really didn't want to miss church. I am so happy we went. It was a great meeting and really reminded me of the true reason of the Christmas season.

Here are a couple pictures of our new home. They were just taken with my cell phone. As soon as I get some better ones I will post those.

We had a really great Thanksgiving this year. We were blessed to be able to share it with both sides of our family. Because the Smith family is growing, we decided to try having Thanksgiving at the church this year. It worked GREAT! There were 11 grandkids there and everyone chipped in to get a jumping castle. It was a lot of fun to watch them play in it and also to see how quickly there attention would switch to another game, or riding their scooters. Joshua was hilarious. I was surprised that it took him a little while to warm up to it but once he got going it was pretty funny. He liked to bounce while sitting, and he liked it better when it was just him and cousin Adam who is a year older than Josh. Dinner was yummy and we had a lot of fun visiting.

After we finished up with the Smith's we headed back to our house where my family was spending the day. Originally my family was supposed to be in Safford at my Mom's but because of last minute changes it was better for everyone to be in Tucson. It was a very fun day. Cody and I were spoiled with two delicious meals. We came home to most of the second already prepared. My family always goes to a Christmas movie on Thanksgiving night. This year things were a little chaotic and we all decided that it would be better to stay home and just enjoy a movie there. We had pie and hot chocolate and just kicked back in our pj's. It was wonderful!

We have so many things to be thankful for. Our families are a big part of that and I would be lost without them. We are so grateful that Heavenly Father has provided us with so many wonderful people and things in our lives, and that he has also given us trials to help us learn to savor the sweet moments in life. Thanksgiving 2009 was a great holiday that gave us many things to be thankful for.

With moving, the new job, my photography, and the holidays I have done a terrible job at keeping up on our blog. I realized that it's half way through February and I haven't even posted Thanksgiving pictures yet! However, because I look at it as a way to journal, I thought that I should catch up even if the posts are terribly late. There are new things that I would like to post too, but I keep waiting until I get caught up so the older events don't get forgotten. So, please forgive me for the overload of new posts! They were really great times so I want to write them down. :)