It was the night before December...
And all through the house...
All the creatures were stirring...
Busily getting ready for Christmas!
The Toys for Tots Tourney was a success!
We all donated...
And then won the whole thing!
First ring of the baseball season for our Stars!
The second tourney was cold...
But we warmed up and won this one also!
Tourney #2 and Ring #2 for this season!
One of the festivities at school in December is the Reindeer Run!
The boys “Donnered” their antlers that day! Ha ha!
Ryan’s Culminating Event for 4th Grade was Arizona Themed.
The kids showed off their artwork...
Posed at the photo booth...
Showed off their models and research boards...
And performed on stage!
They did an awesome job!
Speaking of awesome...
I gave Evan the job of doing a photo shoot for our Christmas Card.
So he Photo Shopped pictures of he and Ryan!
He made this one to look like a scene from “the Grinch"!
And this one is Evan’s rendition of "Home Alone"!
This is the one I chose as the winner.
It was so creative of him because he had to Photo Shop the background
just as he did with the others, but he also took pictures of the snowman mug and towel,
then put those into the photo and added the “hot chocolate” spilling!
Ho Ho Ho!
Merry Christmas!
Time to hunt for the boys tree!
They found a winner!
Ryan had the task of hammering the stand on this year!
Well done sir!
We watched “The Grinch" while we decorated the tree!
Voila!
On the 21st, Daddy turned 40!!!
I put together a surprise evening for him!
I told him to get dressed for a nice dinner with me at Mastro’s.
When our “Uber” showed up,
it was actually a party bus with some very special friends and family!
Here is an indoor shot of the surprise!
There are a few seconds at the beginning of darkness before the bus door opens.
After the surprise and before the drive to dinner, we took a group shot!
We got a private room,
so even the menus were personalized!
I made banners and dropped them off earlier in the week.
He was shocked and thoroughly enjoyed the night!
40 looks good on my Phillip!
On Christmas Eve it’s a tradition for us to take the Ranger out and look at Christmas lights!
Then we open gifts from each other...
Sprinkle reindeer food on the lawn...
And lay out cookies and milk for Santa!
On Christmas Day, we were happy to see we got some cool new Nerf guns and gear!
Thanks Santa!!!
The Winter Nationals Super NIT Tourney was held during Winter Break.
It was in Glendale, so we turned it into a Staycation!
The hotel even had a “Stars” tree for us!
As a 10U Majors Team, we played up in the 11U AAA Division.
The boys went 6-0-0 and took the Championship!
Look at the size of those rings...and the crazy dirty pants!
That means Ryguy played hard...and that also means a lot of laundry for me!
This bracket looks SOOOO good!
Next tourney is over MLK Weekend in California!
Go Stars!
There was a Saddle Ranch near our hotel so we went to dinner.
The dessert was AMAZING!
The mall area was really neat too!
They even had “snow”...
And ice skating which was fun to do!
We had a great December full of lots of celebrations!
In my January blog I will put pictures from our New Year’s Eve Party.
Make 2018 a great year! Take care!
