Thanksgiving 2009

For Thanksgiving we did a family tour. We went to my brother's house for Thanksgiving day and had a wonderful feast and took some family pictures. A fun time was had by all. Jon has a HUGE back yard so the kids were outside most of the day. The weather couln't have been better, 75 degrees and sunny, this is the time when Phoenix is HEAVEN!! Here are some pictures from that event.

Kenzie's photography skills in action. This is an intermission between individual family pictures.

More of Kenzie's fine photography, Paul, my dad, my mom, me and my sister-in-law Amy standing around waiting for the pictures to finish.

Kenzie once again, you can tell from the low angle:)
This is my brother Mike and his family, less his oldest who was celebrating with friends.



This is the newest addition to the Holdsworth family, Ella, isn't she so cute?

Kenzie and MacLaren (MacDaddy for short). Kenzie was happy to have someone her age there, even if he was a boy, they played very well together.

For the rest of the family tour we went up to Blanding, Utah to celebrate Paul's dad's birthday, which isn't until Tuesday, but that is when everyone could get together so that is when it was celebrated. Paul's oldest sister just built a BEAUTIFUL home with a huge basement and a lot of land for quad riding. Kenzie spent the day Saturday in the basement, if I hadn't forced her to come upstairs to eat I probably wouldn't have seen her all day. We had so much fun with everyone and it was nice to see Paul's family after so long. It had been over a year since he had seen his brothers and sisters. Even Charlie and his wife Rochelle drove clear from Louisiana to join in on the fun. We also had family pictures taken there, luckily since our camera stayed in the suitcase the whole time, true to the Paul and Kate Melo form. When we get those pictures I will post them here for all to see. We were happy that we did it and Kenzie did so good on the long car rides, it was 8 hours from Blanding to Vegas. Luckily we were able to stop over in Flag for a couple of hours so she could get her wiggles out. We are so thankful for family and the opportunity that we have to get together. We are so blessed to both have families that get along so well together and all want to see each other at holidays! We love them ALL so much.

Kenzie's birthday was yesterday, that post to follow, I can't do more than one in a day, seeing as I usually have nothing to post about, I have to spread the events out.

A Little Catch Up

Since we have moved out here and go to see family almost every other weekend I haven't been blogging a whole lot. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family, it was nice to see all of Paul's family again after almost 2 and 1/2 years. Nicky's house is gorgeous and we were so happy to get to see it for ourselves and dream of the day that we would be in a house like that. I will post about Thanksgiving later, save some of the events to post about and then maybe I will post more often. Here is what we have been doing here in Sin City.

Kenzie with her new hair cut, I actually cut it pretty straight the first time, I was very happy with it.

This is the view from Paul's fancy office, I think anyway, it may from his bosses office, I will have to show this to him when he gets home and check to make sure.
Here is Paul in his office, I know this one is Paul's.


We went to a Veteran's Day parade that went right in front of Paul's office and the people next to us had this huge dog that Kenzie fell in love with and the kind woman let her hold the leash most of the parade, until it would try to walk away and almost drag Kenzie with it.

My sister has a dog, named Pepper, and she is not allowed upstairs at my sister's house so she will lay on the bottom step until Heather comes back downstairs. This is Kenzie pretending to be Pepper while I am pretending to be Aunt Heather, this is a loved game at our house.

Where's McKenzie?

I was getting things put away under our bed in these tupperware and I had an empty one so Kenzie decided to climb into one and play hide and seek. Before you call CPS they were never out of my sight and they were never closed all the way, she could get the top off whenever she wanted to.

Sorry it's sideways, the computer usually fixes that for me and I don't know how to do it after is downloaded on here.

Random Information

Well, I have been slacking greatly on our blog but nothing too exciting has been going on. But here are some pictures of what has happened to us lately. A lot of pictures of our apartment, just a warning:)

We went to see Rob and Marnee's beautiful baby girl and on the way home we got stuck in traffic. A semi-truck was on fire and traffic was completey stopped. A trucker told us it would be at least 2 hours but 30 minutes later we were rolling down the road again, thank goodness!

Kenzie was Snow White for Halloween. We only went to the ward's trunk or treat but she had fun getting the candy anyway.

And for those of you who said you wanted to see pictures of our apartment here they are:

This is what you see when you open the front door, the stairs and door to the GARAGE! It is only one car but it is more than what we had before!

I just put the letters up tonight, this is the first thing you see when you start up the stairs

This is your first view of the apartment from the stairs

These are our new couches! I love them because they are way more neutral than the blue couches my sister so graciously gave to us. We decided to leave them in Michigan and start fresh out here and I am glad we did! (I still want to get some curtains to warm up the room, slowly but surely, right?!)

Our new "entertainment center". It isn't really an entertainment center, it is two book shelves and a tv stand but it is a whole lot nicer than what we had before.

Our dining room, without the table. It was supposed to be here about 3 weeks ago, hopefully we will have it by the end of this week so we don't have to eat on the floor anymore.

Our nice, spacious, open kitchen. Only those who saw our kitchen in Lansing could appreciate why I think this is so huge.

And a PANTRY! Once again, only those who knew what our apartment was like in Lansing could appreciate my excitement.

Our bedroom, much more spacious and brighter than our last.

Our HUGE walk-in closet, another Lansing thing, our last apartment really was small.

HUGE bathroom #1

Kenzie's new room with her big girl furniture, it was mine while I was growing up.

BIG bathroom #2!!! We only had 1 tiny bathroom in Lansing, now when people come they can have their own bathroom to get ready in. (hint, hint mom:))

That is it, maybe I will post some pictures of our Lansing apartment so that everyone can understand why I think this apartment is so spacious.

All systems go

We are finally moved in! We got the internet yesterday and I just downloaded the pictures from the camera so I thought I would write a new post and add some pictures this time.

We decided to go on a picnic while we had some time together in Flagstaff. This is one of my favorite spots on earth, up on The Peaks.

You can see the self painted fingernails in this one, Paul let her do it, and her toes too

:)

Exploring in the woods

A little father daughter time

Cheese-o-rific

When we were leaving she decided that she needed to rest so she just sat down on this rock on relaxed for a few minutes.



This is the view from SnowBowl, which is a little higher up on the mountain from where we had the picnic. This is my very favorite place on earth




We also went down on Sierra Vista to visit with Paul's parents for a couple of days and Kenzie loved jumping on the trampoline.

Spending time with Dad and Grandpa in the garage working on the old car.



My Dad, picture taken by McKenzie

McKenzie and Thad, she has loved living by all of the cousins who play and play with her

We are moving

Paul got a job. We have been so blessed to be able to find this in this economy and we are so grateful to have this new opportunity. He will be working for a small new firm in...Vegas!!!! They do bankruptcy and foreclosures so he will be super busy! He is still planning on taking the Arizona Bar in February so we will see where that takes us next May. For now, though, we will be living it up in sin city, woo hoo! Come and visit us when we find a place and get settled. We are going on Monday to find a place to live, hopefully, and HOPE to be moving in by next weekend but who knows what will actually happen.

Waiting...

Well, law school is officially OVER, Paul got all of his grades back and he passed all of his classes with flying colors and we have been in Flagstaff for a little over a week now and we are staying at my mom and dad's house until we find out where Paul is going to work. Paul has signed up to take the Bar in February so until then we have to find a job that will pay enough for us to at least live on and give Paul enough time to study for the Bar. He has applied for several different jobs so we will see where we end up. The options right now are, Flag, Prescott, Phoenix, Tucson and Las Vegas. Waiting is very hard to do and I think Paul is losing his mind sitting around. Luckily for him our new car broke down 2 days after we bought it and he has been able to fill his time fighting with Sundance about paying for it since the work isn't covered under the $1500 warranty we bought from them, it has been a headache to say the least but it is coming to an end, hopefully we will have the car back tomorrow and check to cover part of the work in the mail in a few days. It is a little frustrating to think that we traded in a good - working - car for this Tahoe. Oh well, live and learn, right? When we get to plugging in our computer I will try to upload some pictures.

For the Grandma's

This is what Kenzie looks like when she is totally enjoying herself.

Grandfather's Grandaughter

Yesterday Paul went to Meijer (a Wal-Mart type store for you westerners) to get some stuff for our new trailer and while he was deciding what to get, Kenzie did really well, patiently waited for him to decide what he needed so he told her that she could pick out a special treat at the store. He found some generic barbies and a fishing set complete with fish and rod. He showed her both and she picked - with great excitement I might add - the fishing set. Paul said she was jumping up and down and cheering. For those of you who don't know my dad, he is an AVID fisherman, goes to Alaska once a year to catch salmon and halibut, even misses his anniversary because that is when the salmon run - Mom, I am working on that for the 50th, he really can't miss that one. So this proves what I have been saying all along, she was cut out of the same clothe as my dad and his mom, way too much energy, ALWAYS busy and now a fan of fishing. Here are the pictures of the first "fishing trip".

We have been up to...

A whole lot of nothing, I just got tired of writing the same thing every week! We did go to Lake Lansing this week, which, for us, was a big adventure! We did buy a trailer yesterday and got to see yet another new place in Michigan - Coldwater. It is bright red and stored in our wonderful friend's locked garage since we have some kleptomaniacs around our apartment complex. Here are some pictures from the week.

Kenzie cleaned off the top of the microwave for me. I walked in to the kitchen to see a nice and tidy microwave, but none of the stuff was locatable until I opened the microwave to see this -

Kenzie and baby Callie at Lake Lansing

Kenzie in her new summer hat (this is the lake, all that white area in the background is the water, quite different from the lakes out in AZ)

Kenzie helping me to do my streches. I have been exercising in the mornings and she likes to lay on my back while I am doing it, it actually is quite helpful!


I don't really remember why I took this picture, but here is Kenzie laying on Sadie's changing pad, trying to be like Sadie.