December

Sadie was trying to get in Junior National Honor Society and she had to do service hours so one of her services was to make cookies and deliver them to a few families in our neighborhood.

Sara took the boys to an event I didn't even know was happening, but I think it was at McCowin Park.

The boys played in a fun little 3v3 tournament called Beat the Freeze.  Kaden's team came in second place (always second place...)  There were only four on a team and Connor was supposed to be on our team but he was sick so they played with three for the first few games and recruited Cohen to help for the last game.

We got together as a group just to have lunch together!  Crazy!  It was really fun.

Grandma invited all the grand daughters to come have a girls trip with her in Arizona.  

We had our Christmas Eve get-together and played games and had fun.  We played two rounds of Left Right Center and Kylee won one and Kaden won one.  It's always a good time.

Christmas morning!

Remember the toe drama?  It just keeps going.

I actually got home from church and took my shoes off and realized my toenail was gone.  We were laughing pretty hard about it floating around the church somewhere but then I found it on the carpet at my house so it's all good.  Now the slow process of growing it back.  And least it hasn't hurt for a few weeks.  I asked Instagram what they thought happened.  They did not guess right.

My friend works at Kelly Canyon and said she had free passes that needed to be used by the end of the year so Sadie and I jumped on it!  We had a lot of fun that day and Sadie is doing so good on the snowboard!  Until the annoying catwalk we attempted and learned that we have been smart in avoiding it all these years.

Shortly after that we went to Targhee to get these boys in a lesson.  But that didn't work out very well because we got stuck in traffic for 45 minutes and missed the start of the lesson even though it was a private lesson so they weren't starting without us, but Jen cancelled the lesson because we weren't going to get our full time out of it.  At that point we had lost an hour of the half day pass anyway and I couldn't leave Kaden because he didn't have a lesson, so even though it killed me, I didn't buy a pass for myself.  I bought passes for the girls and sent them on their way.  Sadie didn't love it because it was foggy up there, which makes it hard. And she doesn't know the mountain.  And it was some deep heavy snow.  But we all survived. I was just a little grumpy.  A season pass would make this so much simpler.  Stupid traffic and holiday crowds.  The boys had fun on the bunny hill.  They learned the basics.

Dylan and Sam started building an igloo in Sam's backyard.  Soon more people started joining in the endeavor and it became a really big thing that most the neighborhood was involved in.  They tried to sleep in there but I think they started a fire, not sure if they had a chimney?  And they ended up smoked out and camped out in Brynlee's (Jen's) living room instead.  Smelling like smoke.

My end of the year music "wrapped" was kind of embarrassing and kind of predictable.

This surprised me a little, but Kaden and I had jammed out to this song often, whereas I didn't choose any specific song by the other artists to play on repeat.

That's a wrap on 2024!

Thanksgiving in Arizona

 Ryan and I decided Thanksgiving break would be a good time to go visit Arizona and get some golfing in.  Dylan and Kaden said they wanted to come but the girls said no thank you.  We found flights on thanksgiving day.  So we made an early dinner, slightly non-traditional, but with the favorites for my family.  Rolls, stuffing, sweet potato casserole (only liked by Ryan and Kylee and I but that's ok) and instead of mashed potatoes that nobody really likes, we made twice baked.  And instead of turkey which nobody really likes (I like both mashed potatoes and turkey) we had steak.  It was pretty good!  When we got to Arizona, Cheryl had cooked a thanksgiving meal complete with turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, sweet potatoes, etc.  So we definitely got our fill and we had real thanksgiving foods too.

Ryan and Cheryl and I golfed every day.  Usually Cheryl and I each played 9 and would trade off.  One day we had Kaden and Dylan out there with us too.  The last day Ryan said he didn't need to play all 18 and he offered to go hang out with Kaden while I played.  Going from playing no golf to playing four days in a row and 18 on the last day, my forearm was REALLY sore.  But it was a lot of fun.  We were often paired with two other strangers and I feel like I did well enough that I didn't ever embarrass myself.  Getting to that point in my golf game is a big deal.  Respectable ability I think.

We were laughing at how big Dylan looked compared to Ryan in this bottom picture.  I told them it was definitely perspective and so that's why I took the top picture too.

What beautiful weather we had!

Mesa temple has some fun Christmas displays.  It's a beautiful grounds!

Out of nowhere I ran into my cousin at the temple grounds.  She lives in Mesa so it's not that surprising but still.  I got to see her cute family and her dad who was visiting (my uncle Jerald, my dad's brother).  Funny enough she said she recognized Dylan first and then saw me.

I had a few really nice runs in the beautiful weather and enjoyed to unique landscapes!