tales from a far-land

We began our Thanksgiving weekend adventure at 4:30am Thursday morning by loading up the mighty Prius to initiate our drive out of Phoenix to travel to California to spend the holiday with Josh's family.  We have discovered it is much easier to travel with the child when she is asleep for more than half of the trip.  Thus, the early start time.  By mid-mroning, we had arrived at Alisha's apartment ready to visit and enjoy the meal being prepared for us.  Alisha has spent the last two semesters in culinary school and was very excited to host her "first" official Thanksgiving meal (with the help from her father and mother).  We felt very blessed to be able to share this accomplishment with her.  And believe me, throughout the years, I have watched my mother cook for this holiday and Thanksgiving dinner is a ton of work and mess.  Anyway, while we waited for traditional feast, Madi enjoyed playing with Cody (Josh's parents' dog) and crawling all around the apar

Uggh, I cannot believe I have not posted a blog entry in over two months.  The holiday season was just a whirlwind!  Anyway, I wanted to update you on our holiday season and the events that transpired for the Farrell-Landers family. The "holiday" season officially began the weekend before Thanksgiving.  We had decided in mid-summer that it would be a fun experience to take Madilyn to The Polar Express  in Williams, Arizona, for her first Christmas season.  We invited several other families to join along and the only crazy ones willing to join this adventure was the Barber-Rytke family all the way from California.  And so our adventure began.  The BR family drove into Phoenix on Friday afternoon to visit with us and the Gillis family before we headed up to Williams on Saturday.  Below are some of the photos taken while the kids played Friday night and Saturday morning. Anyway, mid-day Saturday we began our caravan to Williams, Arizona.  The BR family in one car and our fam