Whoville, who doo's, wew hoos!

Well it has been an eventful and emotional past week. We are on the activities committee of a ward that is almost too thorough in details and planning, so the meetings for our ward Christmas party started last February and for the past couple of months been doing things all along the way, but for some reason when the day came it felt like pure chaos and nothing had been done. Fortunately everything ended up going smoothly and was actually a lot of fun despite the craziness of every minute leading up to the party that day. We did a grinch themed party thanks to my sisters friend who came up with it for their ward 2 years ago and my family did it last Christmas. It really is so much fun. Although I was bugged that my ward, being the older retired ward was not into the who doo's and pj wearing, they preferred to wear their Christmas sweaters and normal hair. So seeing that I was in the play as a who and I won for the best who doo last year, I thought I would go ahead and wear my who doo and boy did I ever stand out. I've never had so many people compliment me before in my life, so maybe I should do this on a regular basis. Aaron was the grinch in the play and did a phenomenal job, everyone raved about his performance. After the play kids could go up and get a treat from the grinch and get their pictures taken with him. Well, even though Kamaile was well aware it was Aaron (she was yelling "daddy" the entire play) she was absolutely terrified. I forced her to come up and get a picture and the entire time she was screaming bloody murder and frantically yelling "take it off!!!!" over and over again. We didn't have our camera with us so I wanted to try getting a picture with the "grinch" again at home while we still had the costume. We set the timer and since Maile wouldn't let him put the mask on he would run behind the tree and put the mask on without her looking, but there was never enough time and she never wanted to take her eyes off of him in fear that he was putting the mask on. Anyways, I thought these pictures were hilarious cause she was so terrified and it looked like the grinch was sneaking up behind us. It was fun, but it's nice to be done with it all.

Emmy's hair just wasn't quite long enough for a who doo so this was the best we could do for her.

Another event that has drained us emotionally is that Aaron received his offer from the border patrol. They called Friday and said we could choose between these 2 little border towns in Arizona - Naco (population of 850) or Douglas (pop. 17,000) they both have walls that separate AZ from Mexico and of what we heard the Mexico homes look nicer than the Arizona ones. Yikes! and just looking at pictures they looked completely desolate with nothing but dirt roads, there isn't even a ward in Naco. AHH!! I had a really difficult time for a little while and couldn't talk about it with anyone or even think about it cause my eyes would start to water and I would get a lump in my throat. When I finally brought myself to think and talk about it I had my emotional break down. The thought of moving away from all my family and friends is hard enough, but to know that we were going to some place in the middle of the desert made it all worse. Anyways to sum it up Aaron talked with a couple of people who have lived out there and come to find out there is a nice city with about 60-70.000 people, surrounded by mountains (making it 20 degrees cooler than Phoenix), and a really decent looking area that is only 30 minutes from Naco and 50 from Douglas. So, yay! there was our solution Aaron accepted the job in Naco and we plan to move to Sierra Vista. Before that happens though, he has to report on January 3rd for a 5 month training. AHHH! So, me and the girls are moving in with my parents for those long 5 months. It will definitely be an adjustment and really hard, but it would be much harder if I couldn't live with my parents during that time, so I consider us fortunate for that. I thought I was mentally preparing myself for all this cause I knew it was coming, but now that it is actually happening I'm having a hard time being positive about this new situation that will take place so soon. Hopefully this will bring Aaron one step closer to reaching his career goal and it will all be worth it in the long run.