December Birthdays

 We had more fun in December (and busy-ness) with Owen and Savannah's birthdays.  We did cake and presents the night before Owen's birthday, since Alex and Weston headed on their camping trip on Owen's birthday.  The trick candles were fun on the cake.  We did do birthday breakfast on Monday morning before Savannah left for school and the boys left for camping. Owen wanted hashbrown waffles, so that was a new thing to try out.  They didn't turn out bad, but I'm not sure I love eating potatoes with Chick-Fil-A sauce for breakfast. Owen had BB practice in the afternoon, but we did get to eat pizza and watch Wicked in the movie theater the evening of his birthday.  A few of our friends happened to be there at the movie too.  We will probably do a friend party sometime in January to celebrate his sweet sixteen.

Savannah turned 12 this year!  We had pancakes, bacon, eggs, and strawberry smoothies for breakfast.  She had to go to school on her birthday, but I dropped off Wendy's for her lunch.  She got invited to a friend pizza and movie night that happened to be on her birthday, so she decided to go to that instead of hanging out with family.  We went out to eat the next night. 

She got some make up for her birthday, Owen's old phone, and Alex bought a Durham sweatshirt for her on his recent trip to Scotland.  She was pretty excited about that.  She got a special gift this year - a Bear Bear book, with 10 years of photos with her pink stuffed bear that she's had since she was a baby. That was one of my projects for November.  It turned out pretty cute, but the page describing the book actually made me get a little emotional.  She's had that bear since day one, and it's gone so many places with her.  Although she still sleeps with it, she doesn't cart it around anymore.  It's sort of the end of a season for her - goodbye to childhood and hello to pre-teen / teenager!  

Here's the last page, which I think is pretty cute!

The first page, explaining the book:

Some others - hard to choose just a few - I love them all!

December festivities

 We got our tree put up and decorated.  I got my new missionary ornament for Jared, which I love.   

Alex, Owen, and Savannah went to the ward Christmas party.  Owen played the part of Joseph in the Nativity.  Savannah was an angel.  Alex played a wise man.  I got ahold of a few pictures.  He also participated with the Bishopric in a 12 Days of Christmas song.  I never got a video of that, but apparently it was pretty funny.  I still made cookies and rolls for the party even though I couldn't attend.

I went wild with treat deliveries this year.  I ended up doing 3 rounds, with 4 days of deliveries. I tried to calculate how many I ended up making total.   It was around 318 snickerdoodles (26.5 dozen), 125 cake truffles, and 47 chocolate peppermint loaves.  I also sent out about 60 cards locally and 70 to friends and family far away.  Savannah found a picture online to re-make as a painting for the cover of our Christmas cards.  I scanned her painting, designed, and printed them out on cardstock.  I love how they turned out.  We had a mountain-themed Christmas letter this year, so it went well with our letter.  I didn't send out letters to all the local people, but several got the card and family photo.  It was a lot of work, but I love serving during the Christmas season.

I got to do a few fun things during December.  We went Christmas caroling with a group to older folks.  I took Weston out for lunch on his minimum day.  I also got to eat lunch with friends one day since a friend was visiting from out of town.  Owen is wearing the Christmas socks - just a random funny thing for the season.  He wore them to school. The last collage has a picture of Savannah and a couple good friends at school (sent by a mom).  There's a picture from Owen's choir concert and a screen shot of one of our video chats with Jared.  Nathan has been able to join on the calls from BYU pretty consistently.  I love my Monday phone calls!

December Music

Weston got to participate in marching band with the school.  They spent one morning playing at several local elementary schools.  They also marched and played in a parade downtown.  He enjoyed that, but unfortunately the parade was the same time as the church Christmas party.  Since Alex is the Bishop, he needed to be at the party, so I got to go stand out at the parade for 3 hours.  There were some pretty cool cars in the parade, but it wasn't too exciting standing out there by myself.  My plan was to be near the start of the parade, so that when Weston went by I could go back to the car and get over to the end of the parade for pick up.  However, Weston didn't play until near the end of the parade, so I had to watch almost the whole thing.  And that didn't give me enough time to navigate to the end, so his band teacher was waiting for me for a bit.  Oh well.  

Owen had a choir concert for school in December.  I recorded just a few snippets from that. 

Owen also sang with a small group of 6 at church.  His friend Ollie from school sang with them.  I didn't record them visually but recorded the audio from some of their rehearsal.  They sounded better for the actual performance, but I didn't want to record during sacrament meeting.

December Camp Outs

The youth had camp outs in December.  Savannah and Alex went with the young women the first weekend in December on an overnight camp out.  They did all the normal campfire things at night and then went kayaking the next morning.  

Alex also took the young men on a camp out to Kelso Dunes for a 3-day trip December 16-18th.  Owen and Weston were out of school that week, but Owen still had basketball practice and a game.  So Owen didn't go, but Weston went with the group of 5 boys.  Alex enjoyed hanging out with his friend Morgan while they supervised the crew hanging out in the sand dunes.

These trips are good for the kids, but maybe not during such a busy time of year.  While I was working hard on Christmas things and getting the other kids to their activities, Alex was out kayaking or playing in the sand... who gets to relax like that during December?

 

Thanksgiving 2024

We did Thanksgiving dinner with friends this year.  I didn't host or have to make the turkey, so it was a pretty good deal.  Everyone helped make something as well.  Savannah did the rolls, Alex and Owen made pies, Weston did the green bean casserole, and Owen helped me with the fried chicken drumsticks.  I also did stuffing and pecan pie bars.  We had a fun time with friends.  We all wrote down things we were thankful for and shared them.  However, we decided it had to be more specific things, or if it was general things like family or friends, we had to share more about that.  So we got some very specific things like running shoes, popcorn, socks, chocolate, ballons, Lego Star Wars guys, or family movie nights.  We played games and some participated in a plank competition.  The college girl we invited to join us for dinner easily beat all of us, doing a plank for over 5 minutes (and she could have done longer)! 

Grace (Jared's good friend) had already been set apart as a missionary, so she was in the middle of her home MTC week.  We said farewell to her the next week as she went off for 18 months to her mission in Mongolia.

 

Here's a couple cute pictures she posted on Facebook:

November Misc

Most of the pictures I get from Nathan are game photos.  He went to his first BYU basketball game and all the students got a jersey for that game.  He went to some more cold football games as well.  

Some social happenings:  We said "good-bye" to friends who moved to Indiana (pic with Emilee and Alanna).  We had a lunch visit with friends who moved back from Washington (about an hour away now).  We welcomed Devan back from his mission.  Savannah had a couple of friend days.

Savannah participated in her last jog-a-thon.  She did great, running nearly the whole 30 minutes.  I jogged the last 10 minutes with her to give her the extra motivation to keep running. 

Savannah and I went out for lunch for one of the days that was early out for parent-teacher conferences.  

Pretty rainbow and sunset.

The youth did some fun activities - a fall bake off competition, which involved making cupcakes to be judged.  Savannah made the sign for the activity.  

Devan did a missionary night to report and share pictures from his mission.  Savannah got to hold a kitten that night since the host of the activity had a few kittens there.  

The youth went on an early morning temple trip.  

 

Swim Team

Savannah participated on the YMCA swim team this fall.  She did conditioning with the YMCA during the summer, but the season of competitive swimming started in September.  To get on the team, she had to swim 8 laps and then also swim 4 laps in under 2 minutes.  They do one meet per month, so she participated in the September and October meet.  She was all set to swim in the November meet and then I forgot to sign her up for the meet... I was supposed to register her by the Wednesday before the Saturday meet.  We had even talked about what events she wanted to do before the practice that day.  I still forgot.  I bolted awake Friday morning realizing I hadn't signed her up.  I tried to see if I could still register her but they wouldn't accept any late registrations.  I felt so bad about it (not winning any parenting awards for that mistake)...  

She swam the 50m backstroke, 50m breaststroke, and 50m freestyle in the 2 meets and improved her time in each of the events by the 2nd meet.  She even got 1st place in one of her races.  She has a couple of good friends on the swim team, so it's been fun for her.  She's a pretty good swimmer too.  

By December, we had to temporarily quit swimming since it directly conflicted with basketball.  She'll get back on the swim team in February or March.