Kings and Princes

Mama’s Holiday Wish List Meme

TodaysMama and GameStop are giving away a sleighful of gifts this holiday season and to enter I’m sharing this meme with you.

1. What is your holiday wish for your family? Health and happiness

2. What is your Christmas morning / Hanukkah Nightly tradition? We take a hike on Christmas Eve and then Christmas morning we always put an orange and apple in the stockings and tell a family history story related to it.

3. If you could ask Santa for one, completely decadent wish for yourself, what would it be? My ideal house complete with huge backyard, fruit trees, huge playroom, basketball court, and kettlecorn popper.

4. How do you make the holidays special without spending any money? We spend it with family and making traditions.

5. What games did you play with your family growing up? Board games and ball games.

6. What holiday tradition have you carried on from your own childhood? Oranges in the stocking, Santa, opening one present on Christmas Eve.

7. Where would you go for a Christmas/Hanukkah-away-from-home trip? Hawaii!

8. Check out GameStop and tell us, what are the three top items on your GameStop Wish List this year? Extra Wii remote controllers, Rock band guitar, and more games...there are so many!

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Hope you all enjoyed a lovely Christmas! We had lots of fun as well. We went on the traditional Christmas Eve hike, which I have grown to realize is actually a ploy to tucker out the little ones so they will sleep Christmas Eve. As an adult, I much appreciate this tradition!! We hiked to the hieroglyphics and it was beautiful weather. We had fun with the family, Sam had fun hiking with his Uncle Spencer, and Jared had fun getting into the cold stream at the top of the hike.


It was fun to see Sam wake up bright eyed and ready to open presents on Christmas day. He was so excited to get started. Here are some pictures of our day. We also ended up having dinner with Ben's parents and then played games and sock football indoors in a gym. It was SOO fun! I loved it and it was good exercise after eating way too many sweets!



MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

This weekend has been packed with lots of holiday activities. Ben's brother, Danny, and his family came down from UT and his sister, Holly, came from Boston so the whole family was there and it's been a long time since that has happened. So we celebrated this weekend since Danny's family will be spending Christmas in northern Arizona. We started on Saturday with Breakfast with Santa for our ward activity. Sam got to tell Santa he wanted a scooter. Jared didn't take to Santa very well.

Then, Ben and his dad and brothers went to see the BYU vs. ASU basketball game. That night we had the big King family dinner party and the kids had fun hitting the pinata and doing the Christmas story and nativity. And, yes, that is my son in a backwards baseball cap...I don't know who let him wear that. Probably the infamous Uncle Spencer!


On Sunday, Ben gave a very nice talk in church about how a simple life is a Christ-like life and a simple Christmas follows therein. And I sang in the choir. I love singing Christmas songs...it really brings the spirit. Sunday dinner was spent with the Darcy King family and we had a nice Christmas dinner and nativity (which I forgot my camera for). Sam has really enjoyed spending time with his cousin DJ. It's been a while since we've seen their family and they were such "best buddies" this whole weekend. On Monday, we took family pictures in the rain with 7 grandkids under the age of 3. It was pretty hilarious! Then we had a Benson family dinner and were able to see more cousins. What a fun time! We will be spending a quiet Christmas morning at home but it's been fun to spend so much time with family.

As an early Christmas present, here is a picture I took of gas prices right now. And since I took this picture, prices have dropped further to $1.49. Wow. I wanted to document this for posterity.

We are really spoiled with the beautiful winter weather in Arizona. The weather was so perfect this weekend, we decided to go on a nature walk at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve right by our house. We had been there before but I didn't realize just how big it was. They have SEVEN lakes with lots of walking paths, birds, and trees. It's really pretty. We walked a path and they had a "tot lot" that the boys had fun on...especially climbing the trees.

You might notice Sam has a bad burn under his lip. He decided to kiss a hot pan from the oven that was on the counter. He was climbing onto the stool to get a better look but got too close. Burns are the worst. Poor boy....