Nutcracker night

Tonight we are going to see Ballet Arizona's Nutcracker, Yay!! In honor of the ballet here are a few of my favorite dancers for you to take a gander at : ) Have a nice day!

Franksgiving!

Frank's first birthday was on Thanksgiving this year so we called it Franksgiving : ) My parents and brother came out to celebrate with us and we had a GREAT time!! Here's a little bit of what we did.

First thing on his birthday
Frank is awesome at opening presents, he was really excited by them and didn't need any coaxing or help

Ma'am and Dadgum got him this tractor to haul all of his stuff in, it is hilarious!

We all had a little turkey and whatnot, Frank approved of his birthday dinner

We all played a lot of Farmville

and the catalog game

Tiger Woods was a big event also, Gelsey was kind of the champ even thought she wasn't really focused on it which was funny

and of course there was birthday cake

he loved it : )

Hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving!! XOXO, the Murphy's

Misc. stuff : )

Frank is in a front facing car seat now
Josh put together a recording studio in our house, it is really cool!!

Here's our new buffet

With hidden drawers and a secret pull out compartment... very cool!!

Table full of CHINA baby!!

Before we can get to the table full of china, I have to tell you how we got there : ) We ordered this piece of artwork for the niche in our sitting room that has sat empty for far too long (four years to be exact). Josh hung it on Saturday and it is perfect! As we were appreciating it we couldn't help but say how nice it would look if we had a buffet in the niche under it. So on a whim today we went out to look at buffets just to get an idea, and we found "the one." Now I don't say that lightly because for the aforementioned four years I have been looking for a buffet that would work in that spot and have come up empty handed; because, although I could find some gorgeous stuff, I am not willing to spend $4,500 on a single piece of furniture. Our buffet will be delivered this week and I will post photos to show how spiffy the one we found is. It is (as Josh said) a grandma's buffet. Not because it is old fashioned or anything but because it has the neatest hidden drawers and compartments to hold silverware and stemware. Anyway, now that we finally have a place to put it all, I can get my china out!!! Yippee!! As you may already know I have a bit of an obsession with china and have two fab. sets one of which belonged to my grandmother.

This is a pattern I picked out, it is simple but very pretty

Mama Butchies Haviland china

I had to throw in this picture of the girls all dolled up for our formal dinner last weekend

Happy Halloween!

Frank was James Bond for Halloween -- very cute!!
Josh was just very fun looking : )
The girls were both Hermoine from Hogwarts

Bobbing for donuts

The girls didn't stand still long enough for me to take a decent picture but they were both really cute too. We had a great day and ended it with a cookout with our neighbors which was a lot of fun. Hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween!!

Frank walking (well sort of)

Pumpkin Carving

Front Yard Landscaping Project

I know it seems like a strange time of year but we live in Arizona where it is finally a reasonable temperature to be outside. That said, today we did a family landscaping project in the front yard. It was of course more work than we bargained for, but it turned out better than we expected so it was worth it!! The "soil" in Arizona is little more than very rocky mud so we really had to dig out the whole bed and add several bags of potting soil to help cultivate the area. We had a ton of fun doing it as a family and have decided to do a little additional landscaping in the front in the next couple of weeks.