What we've been up to

It's been a crazy, but wonderful few weeks!  Our Nana has been here for a visit and it's been wonderful!  She was here almost 3 weeks, and sadly, I managed to get through almost the whole time with very few pictures... We got a few this morning before we took her to the airport.

Thanks to Nana's visit, I was able to get away with Jason for a full week to attend a conference in Austria.  It was wonderful and exhausting all at the same time.

One of my favorite parts of our get away was going somewhere where I was able to see the fall colors. I love autumn and well, it just is not quite the same living in the desert...  More pics on our trip later, but here's a preview...

Before Jason and I left, we had almost a full week with Nana.  Jason was pretty busy, but we still got some fun family time in.  Nana is the stocking queen and even though we're a few months early, we celebrated Christmas together one morning with our traditional cinnamon rolls and this year we added sausage balls to the mix.  The girls were plenty excited to have Christmas in October!

Anabelle loved her new slippers!  We do Christmas pajamas every year also, but like I said, my picture taking skills were somewhat lacking this week!

Maddie is super excited about her new cookbook!

AJ is all about the Hunger Games these days..

Naomi and AB opening their Christmas pajamas

Nana was such a trooper to come and take care of the girls for a whole week while we traveled.  She couldn't drive while here (and wouldn't have wanted to!) and she doesn't really know the city well enough to taxi, so we had helpers lined up for her throughout the week and a schedule of events that we went ahead and arranged transportation for.  We found out about a week before Nana arrived that the girls would actually be out of school for the majority of the time we were gone, which ended up being a good thing because they got lots more quality time with Nana.

Maddie and Nana did so much baking that they ran out of gas for the stove even though we'd replaced it right before we left.  Very thankful to our wonderful landlords for helping them figure that out!  

Sweet Anabelle got sick a few days before we got home.  Very thankful to a dear friend for making a house call and helping Nana get her started on an antibiotic.  She's pretty pitiful still but seemed to perk up a bit tonight.  She and I both had a long nap this afternoon (after a long night last night...)  Here she is on the way home from the airport this morning WAY before nap time.  

It was a fabulous visit with Nana- just way to short, like all family visits!  We've had fun re-uniting as a family today- lots of games and laughter.  So thankful for family.