Pre Christmas... the only way to go!

What's life without a little Pre-Christmas excitement? The kids and I went up to Phx the week before Christmas to visit my parents and sister and have a little Christmas cheer - early! We planned on getting there at lunchtime, but, had a 3 hour delay on the freeway on the way there... a dust storm caused a huge accident on the other side of the freeway, so, we had some unplanned time together!

That evening, we went to visit the Mesa Temple and their Christmas lights - beautiful! They also had a nativities from around the world display inside - it was really cool to see. I would have looked longer, but the kids wanted to move on and there were really a lot of people looking, so, it was hard anyway. There were nativities from every corner of the earth. The one pictured here was from Amish country. I would love one like this!

The next morning we had gifts - and as you can see, Caitlin had a lot of help with hers from Cocoa, the very busy pug!