christmas trip, part 5

After church the Sunday we were in Arizona, it was time for a pizza showdown. Braden is a bona fide professional pizza maker at a famous pizzeria (rhymes with Mapa Purphy's) while Austin merely wishes he was a professional pizza eater (who wouldn't want to get paid to eat pizza?)... but he has been known to make a mean pie at home.

Austin went with a BBQ chicken bacon ranch pizza (on the left), while Braden decided to go with classic pepperoni -- with extra cheese and a couple extra toppings. The judges were diplomatic and said it was a tie, but Austin conceded defeat to Braden. It's not easy knocking off the professional chef in these kitchen competitions! (Even though Austin thinks Braden might have gotten the better bag of mozzarella cheese and the better pizza pan, but he's not a sore loser or anything...)

Here's another shot of our adorable little girl in her adorable little Christmas sweater-dress. She loved playing with Grandma's singing and dancing penguin toy!

Speaking of singing and dancing, Grandpa introduced Brooklyn to this video, which was an instant hit and something she enjoyed watching the rest of the trip (and at home). Grandpa loved quizzing Brooklyn on her animal sounds, which she was able to give extremely rapid-fire answers to.

We loved that the weather was nice enough to play outside a bit -- a great break from the clouds and rain we get up here during the winter!

Austin went with Braden to go play basketball with some missionaries on their sports day, which was fun. Brooklyn and Grandma and Laura came over later with a neighbor's kid hoop and Brooklyn loved trying to dunk it.

Austin enjoyed using his new "present" from work -- and someone else figured out the basics pretty quick too!

Brooklyn is a sweetheart and was a good little buddy to her uncle "Be-en" -- awww :)

Braden had to get back to Utah for classes so we all saw him off at the airport. We enjoyed spending time with him and discovered he is taking after Austin and becoming quite the musician!

On the way back from the airport we stopped by a duck pond.

Since we brought bread, we were instantly popular.

Ducks and geese are par for the course, but we had no clue what these funny little birds were. Turns out they're American Coots. They have big Shaq-sized feet and kind of flap their wings and paddle on the surface of the water, almost making it look like they're running.

Brooklyn enjoyed watching the ducks and coots eat but didn't really want to get close.

She loved spending time with "Gah-ma" and "Gah-ma" (up until this week they were pronounced the same way in her vocabulary)

We can safely say that Brooklyn is Grandma Taylor's favorite granddaughter :)

Again, it was nice to be out in nice weather in December!

We tried the soda thing again with B and still didn't get the reaction we were hoping for. Oh well.

We had a great time visiting Arizona. We're so glad that Mom/Dad (aka Scott/Cheryl aka Grandma/Grandpa) were called to serve a mission so close to home and also so glad that we can visit them! We can't wait until they finish their mission service and get to come visit us! :)