We had an enjoyable Valentine's Day, hope you all did too!  We celebrated with flowers (thanks buttercup) and dinner out as a family, and I made a frozen key lime pie for Dan.  Don't we know how to live it up!  Here's our little munchkin in her pink velvet Valentine's/Sunday dress.  It's probably my favorite one of hers.  I even got crafty and learned how to make hair bows and made one to match! 


Posting these pics per your request Mom!  Enjoy!

 

Never heard of Benson?  Us either...not until we opened our Christmas gift from Dan's parents.  One night's stay in Benson, AZ plus tickets to tour Kartchner Caverns!  The entire MacKinlay side of the family, the locals that is, met in Benson on a Friday evening, had breakfast the next morning, then caravaned to the Caverns for our nearly exclusive tour.  (With 17 of us, we made up most of the tour group!)

Since we couldn't take pictures in the caves, this is the best we could get from the museum/Discovery Center.


I was a little nervous to take Maddy, with her bedtime off, difficulties sleeping in the same room as us, and our tour time falling right at her nap time, I expected the worst.  We weren't allowed to take ANYTHING into the caves, except for a front baby carrier, which we brought but I ended up holding her most of the time.  She did great inside!  Only a few squawks that I thought might bring down some of the delicate "soda straw" formations.  One thing we discovered though, for future road trip endeavors- she doesn't sleep long in the car anymore.  I guess now that she's older, the car will put her to sleep, but it won't keep her asleep, no matter how tired I think she is.  But we survived without too much screaming chaos and it turned out to be a really great time!  Thanks Kent and Debbie for an exciting trip!


 

One Sunday morning last month we spotted an article about the Phoenix Zoolights.  You could get in for free with a food donation and see all the lights!  Not our typical Sunday-type activity but we never went during December, and you can't pass up a free event!  So we went.  It was crazy busy, but Maddy just LOVED the choreographed tree section, we stayed for 2 "shows."  Her eyes were so wide open the whole time and she got so excited.  It made all the people dodging worth it!  They even had a few animals awake on display.  Sorry for the lousy picture...our camera lost its juice before we could take another.


 

As one of my Christmas gifts, Dan got tickets for us to see The Lion King.  I had heard wonderful things about it and I was excited.  Dan doesn't really get excited for these things and didn't have high expectations.  But when we left, even just in the opening scene, we were BLOWN AWAY!  The set, the costumes, the dancers, the voices were all unbelievable!  I would have loved to see the creative path that led to the costume creation.  The actors couldn't have done a more realistic job at turning themselves into whatever animal they were portraying.  In fact, it was sometimes difficult to even see where the actor was in the costume and it was easy to forget there was even a person inside.

I kept getting chills throughout the show, and Dan even admitted to some chills of his own. ;o)  I can't rave about it enough and if you have the opportunity, don't hesitate, GO SEE IT!!


I obviously wasn't able to take pictures myself, these are just some I found in a google search, but they don't even do it justice.  They had elephants and the elephant graveyard set, and about a dozen other animals.  Timon and Pumba (and Zazu) were of course the comic relief and they didn't disappoint!


Thank you sweetie!  I had a wonderful time!