Arizona Trip- Ryan, Sadie and Kaden

We talked about taking the family to Arizona again in December.  We wanted to drive (because if we fly the whole family, we have to rent a car and that is really expensive there in the winter). Kylee and Dylan were both not very interested.  Kylee was hoping to snowboard.  Plus she was signed up for the 3v3 tournament and I didn't want to pull her out.  Dylan is just a homebody.  I wanted to go but I was stressed about driving in a storm.  And when I looked at the weather in Arizona, it was not even warm.  So I thought it would be better to stay and snowboard.

But Ryan wanted to go and the younger two kids wanted to go, so he bought plane tickets sort of last minute and they went.

The weather was pretty chilly when they first got there, so they took the kids to OdySea Aquarium.

The weather cleared enough for them to go swimming and play at a cool park.  And of course golf.

They had a great time!  And Kaden prayed "thankful we could go to Arizona" for like four months after they got back.

December 2019

December is always a fun month.  Besides the Christmas fun, we did some other things too.

Kylee and Sadie had their piano recital.  They are both very talented!  Though they both whine about practicing and often wish they could quit piano altogether.  Sorry not sorry.

We drove down to Salem for my nephew Oakland's missionary farewell.  The sunsets and sunrises in December are pretty awesome!

 We decided to do our Christmas gift exchange during this little get together too.

 We really enjoyed the farewell and were happy we got to be there!  There was a storm coming through, in fact it had rained/sleeted during the Sacrament meeting and it was WET outside!  So much slush.  We decided to head for home before too long to try and miss the storm.  We figured we could pull over and find a hotel if it got bad.  But thankfully we made it without any trouble.  Traveling in winter is such a pain.

Winter sports!  Sadie loves basketball!  Her team played up this year, meaning they were playing in the 4th grade league even though they are all 3rd graders.  This was good because we didn't have to play against boys.  But it was a big learning curve.  We got beat a lot.  Some teams we were pretty even with though.  Sadie plays point guard a lot.

 Indoor soccer.  Always soccer.  I had fun playing with my new phone camera (Iphone 11 Pro, and I love it!!)

 Kylee played in a 3v3 tournament over Christmas break, which was pretty fun!  They didn't have enough teams so we had to play against some 15/16 year olds.  Her coach put a few teams together with the people who were in town to play.  Our team was Kylee, Willow, Jerzey and Averi.  Kylee is tall, but the other three are really quite little.  So when we went up against older girls, there was a big size discrepancy.  It was kind of funny, though.  Because the older girls would always think it was going to be easy to squash us.  But we dominated!  Those girls played really well together and we won our age group.

 I coached an indoor team for Kaden and we had a lot of fun with him and his little friends.  I had Kylee be my assistant coach most of the time, with help from Averi at times too.  And Dylan helped at the end (because Kylee had to leave for swimming.)  It was fun.

I enjoy swimming laps early in the morning.  Kylee always wants to come with me, so during the break we planned to go.  Sadie heard us talking and said she wanted to go too!  We explained it was just lap swimming but she didn't care.  So I woke her up early to go and she was so tired.  I said, do you want to sleep or swim?  She said "both."  She asked if we could just go later but I said no.  It was Christmas Eve and we had some plans.  So she dragged herself out of bed and came.  It ended up being really fun having them there.  Kylee did a little lap swimming with me and playing around with Sadie.  Usually they only allow lap swimming during those hours and no free swim for kids.  But since it was a holiday, they had different hours.

 Kaden and Jason get to hang out together once a week.  This week I took them to ijump.  They enjoy their cousin days!!

 Kylee and Dylan and I were left behind when Ryan took the two younger kids to Arizona last minute. (I'll get into that later.)  So we tried to find fun things to do still.  We made a trip to Rexburg for Gravity Factory (along with the rest of Eastern Idaho, haha)  We were all sore the next day, lol.

I saw this pattern for Starry Night once and told Dylan to make it for me.  Dylan is always looking for fun things to make from perler beads.  We found all the colors he would need online and ordered them and he spent a LOT of time putting it together.  It was huge!  And turned out really cool!  I can't tell you how stressful it was for him to try and iron this, though.  There were a couple problems and he was devastated thinking the whole thing was ruined.  But I convinced him that the few spots were not noticeable and he finished it up.  Then I found a frame for it so we could display it. 

 Dylan's class party for Christmas was a Buddy the Elf party.  They had a lot of fun.

 Kaden is my buddy every day.  As much as I'm looking forward to my free time when all my kids are in school, I will miss this one-on-one time I have had with him.

 Kylee has been baking a lot.  She loves to make treats. (Not so much actual cooking, but maybe some day I will convince her to do more with me in the kitchen.)  I felt like New Year's Eve needed a treat, so I told her to make my recipe for caramel popcorn.  Yum! (I think I actually got the idea from seeing that old popcorn popper in my pantry covered in dust.  I know I need it, but it sure doesn't get much use.  But it did on New Years Eve!)

Christmas 2019

The kids get their Christmas pajamas on Dec 1 so they can wear them all month long.  Of course, I don't always end up getting them Christmas themed pajamas, in fact I try to avoid them.  I love Christmas in December but don't love it any other time.  And I don't see the point of pajamas you can only wear at Christmas.  Anyway, I started doing this some years ago and now the kids expect it.  I will sometimes give them a book as well.  Kaden has so many pajamas that I decided to just give him a shirt instead.

Gingerbread houses.  A tradition that I don't love but that we HAVE to do every year.  It's better these days now that Kaden is the only one I have to help.  I told the kids their houses had to stay together or they weren't allowed to eat them, haha.  No piling as much candy as possible on a graham cracker just so you can eat it.

 I told the kids I would have Jingles (our elf) choose his favorite house, and that would be the winner.  He ended up by both Sadie and Kaden's houses so we called it a tie.

 We had the time free this year to go see Santa in his tent.  It's our favorite Santa.  They have reindeer (who were running late this year which meant we got to go to the front of the line because we didn't care about waiting for the reindeer) and they give out hot chocolate and scones and stuff.  They ask for toy donations or food donations.  It works out well.

 Kaden had the Grinch come to his preschool party too.

 We always look for ways to serve others at Christmastime.  But I've been burned out of it all, and a little skeptical too.  I hate that I feel this way, but I feel like a lot of those angel tree families are taking advantage of other's generosity.  I know it's probably not the majority of them, but still.  So I had put it off this year and finally felt moved to look for a family to "sponsor".  I reached out to a friend who had posted about similar things.  And she connected me with the Facebook group that shows all these families with needs.  I looked through the names and came across one family that I wanted to help.  But they had a lot of needs.  I talked to Ryan and we decided to go for it.  They needed a bed for the parents (we bought them a king mattress and someone in my neighborhood had a frame they were willing to donate). Another neighbor donated a toddler bed.  They needed bedding, towels, gifts for four kids, etc.  I got my kids involved and took them shopping.  Then we wrapped all the gifts.  It was a lot of time and a lot of money.  But I felt like it was going to someone who really needed it.  We filled our car and truck and drove it over on Christmas Eve to deliver it to them.  It was a good experience for the kids too.

We had all the cousins over for Christmas Eve dinner and gift exchange. 

 Then Christmas night finally came.

 I was really excited about the kids gifts!  Sadie literally said, "surprise me" because she could not think of anything that she wanted.  It's hard having a birthday a month before Christmas.  And she just doesn't have a lot of wants.  Kylee on the other hand, had a list a mile long.  Every thing she saw in the store she wanted.  She did not get everything.  But she got a lot. 

 The family got a fuseball table!!

My favorite gift that I got for me and Kylee:  Hamilton tickets!!  I was so excited about these and I had to keep them a secret for a long time!  I had to get up early on a Saturday and get in a line online along with my mom in order to snag these tickets.  We got really lucky to have this show coming to Florida the same week we were going.  So we had a few options of days we could go.

I also got an apple music subscription for the family (mostly Kylee and I) and I gave Kylee my old ipod to use which running.  Dylan got a snowboard, Sadie got skis.  And I am excited to take them all skiing this winter!!