A Little More Utah

Between the family lunch and wedding reception, we snuck over to my cousin's house for a couple hours to catch up and see my aunt and uncle as well.

It had been way too long !

My dad's twin sister is one of only two of his siblings left. 

We had a great visit with all of them.

After the wedding, we still had two days to spend with family up in Utah. 

We went to a park to meet up with my brother and his kids.

Played a little pickleball. It was a first for Daddy-o and I, and unfortunately, didn't end well for Daddy-o. He was trying to take it easy since his ankle is still not 100%, but must have been favoring his left leg because he ended up pulling or snapping something in his right leg. He heard a loud sound and felt instant pain. He was gobbling pretty badly for a couple days, but can still walk, even if he can't drive.

We spent New Year's Eve at Uncle Jeff's place, 

playing card games, Jackbox games, 

watching fireworks in the backyard, and eating way too many treats and snacks. It was so fun.

And then, we went over to Cam's house for New Year's Day--had brunch, and played more games, and exchanged Christmas presents.

We love all the time with cousins.

We love seeing these kids!

And even got to talk to Bug while we were there, so he got to see everyone, too.

Even though there is a pretty big age span between all of these cousins, they have so much fun together.

And we got to do another Christmas!

This cute girl loves opening gift bags! And she has the best facial expressions when she sees what's in the bag.

We got the kids some fun gifts, but maybe the most fun thing was leaving behind almost 100 tiny plastic ducks, hidden all over their house. Just before we left, they started finding them, and then, when they realized what we had done, the kids went crazy looking for them. I think they will be finding those things for a very long time, haha.

Friday morning, it was time to drive home. We got lucky with the weather--mostly blue skies with only a little rain in the beginning and end, but no snow, despite the storms on both sides of us. It's a long drive, but Bean and I did it (so glad she was with us! I hate doing that drive alone.) 

Welcome to 2025!

Here we are, another year. I have so much I want to record here from the last 2.5 months, but I'm jumping in and will work on catching up over the next couple of months.

New Year's Day was spent as a family at the beach with friends. We let the kids sleep in so we got a late start, but it was nice. It was a perfect winter beach day--sunshine, warmish weather, lots of shorebirds. We even saw a dolphin right before we left.

Bug and his friend surfed, while the rest of us enjoyed from the shore.

We played lots of Mollky and football, went for a walk. It was such an enjoyable day.

And then we came home for dinner and some hygge time by the fire with our books.

It's been so nice having the college kids home for the holidays and all being together again. We had a lot of fun this fall, all on our various adventures, but there really is nothing quite like family and home.

End of the Year

Busy house to end the year. After church, Bean's friends came over to decorate Christmas cookies (little behind this year).

We finally did it right--only one batch of cookies for 6 kids was the right amount. Usually, we have so many cookies, and we still had plenty, but it seemed more manageable.

Peanut is still the little brother, but he seems more and more part of the gang.

And then we had friends come over for the evening. With so much illness going around, only one of the three families was able to come. 

But it was a fun group. Lots of food, lots of laughing.

We played a few different games,

the kids played the Wii,

And then everyone left, and it was just the five of us to ring in the new year. 2023 has been such a full year--can't wait to see what 2024 brings!

Welcome 2023

No pictures of us saying goodbye to 2022, but we welcomed the new year with some time in the sunshine with friends. December 31 was rainy and kids were going different directions. I couldn't hear hardly anything all day, people napped, read, watched movies, worked on puzzles and we did play a couple games, but it was a pretty lowkey day and night.

Then, the sun came out! Most of the family made it to 9 am church (I decided since I can't hear anyway, there wasn't much point.) And we all got out of the house for an hour in the afternoon to go for a sort-of hike on one of the paved trails here in town. Considering how much flooding happened yesterday, pavement seemed like a better option than the muddy trails everywhere else. We met up with the McClouds and walked for an hour (a slow walk because of me, but it was so nice to be out!)

Then, this little Peanut and I learned how to play my new game I got for Christmas, Wingspan, which looks like it's going to be a lot of fun, once we figure it all out. I've been eyeing this game for a couple years now, so pretty excited about finally owning it!

And we finished off the first night of this new year with some planning and sharing of goals. Bean even made a slideshow of her plans for the year. While we all have individual goals we're working on, we did come up with a few family goals, too.

1) 70 family hikes in 2023. At least 2 of us have to be on the hike to count it, and they have to be at least 1 mile long. 70 might be a stretch, but I think we can do it. And I'm glad that we started off with all 5 of us together on hike #1.

2) Eat at least 5 servings of fruits and veggies every day. This one is really a focus for January so we can get back in the habit of eating better foods (and maybe fewer sweets by extension), but it would be great if it continued all year.

3) Spend a few minutes studying the Come Follow Me lesson for church each week. We even came up with a plan to include Bean in this one!

We've got some travel plans in the works as well and those will be hashed out as the year progresses, but we're off to a good start.

New Year's Day Hike

We don't do it every year, but I feel like we've hiked on New Year's Day often enough in recent years to call it a tradition. I love starting our year off with something outside and active, and we seem to luck out with pretty great weather most years.

The hills were gorgeous, and we went to Vargas Plateau which is probably the closest hike to us with bay views along the trail. 

These three are so great. Glad that they let me drag them around on these adventures.

Here's to another year of spending as much time outside as we can, and grabbing every moment where the 5 of us can be together.

 

Post-Christmas Fun

We've been having a lovely, relaxing week of fun with the family. Bean did a painting class with Rara and then they watched La La Land, which is one of Bean's favorite movies. 

Peanut has loved having time with Unkie. They played several games while everyone else watched the movie, and Peanut was pretty happy.

We FINALLY made it to Deacon Dave's. Don't know why we hadn't been before the end of the month, but we hadn't.

712,325 lights this year.

and a Ferris wheel because why not? Always impressive to see what they come up with.

We taught Rara and Unkie how to play Nerts. It's such a staple in our house that it seems wrong to not teach anyone who is around for more than an evening.

And more games. We don't play as many games in a normal week as we used to, but holidays are game time for sure.

And then, it was the end of the year. Rara and Unkie had to leave us in order to beat a snowstorm home, but Grandma and Grandpa came for New Year's Eve. We had so much food. I'm in love with charcuterie boards and just can't stop making them. Snacky foods for the win.

We had a crackling fire, some people watched a movie, games and shenanigans occured--it was a fun evening.

And I'll just leave it with this view of the creek near our house. All the rain the past couple weeks has led to a few days of crazy deep water. Would be fun if we actually have a flowing creek this winter.

 

Goodbye, 2020!

Last sunrise of the 2020. I'm glad I got up early enough to see the year out in this way because I've seen a LOT of sunrises this year with all my early morning walks, so it seemed right.

This was the only photo I took on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. We had a pretty low key celebration. Daddy-o and I were both working all day on NYE (he had several move in/move outs to oversee so was in the office for a full day and I had a ton of printing to do for science kits) while the kids watched movies, played Mario Kart, drew, and read.

We did a snacky dinner, worked on a puzzle, more Wii games, learned how to play Rook (game #4 from our Christmas stash--I'm really proud of us for only having one un-played game left from our new games! Now if we can only catch up on all the thrift store finds I bought in 2019, haha.)

At 11, we started the movie Soul, which meant that we had to take an intermission to ring in the New Year, and then didn't get to bed until after 1 so we could finish it, so it turns out I can still stay up until 1 if I have to. I'd been joking that since we didn't have anyone over this year, 

I was going to bed at 12:05😁.

New Year's Day was very lazy. The kids didn't wake up until 11.  I had worn everyone out with our big day of hiking on Tuesday, so had already promised I wouldn't make anyone go for a New Years hike this year. And no one had any plans of even getting dressed until the G family mentioned that they'd be down at the church again to play, so everyone did end up leaving the house for a couple hours. 

Otherwise, there was lots of reading, movies, and drawing going on again. The kids got a knock-off Apple Pen for Christmas and bought a drawing app for the iPad and have been having so much fun learning what they can do with it. It's a pretty amazing app--you almost don't have to know how to draw at all to make incredible pictures!

Here's to hoping that 2021 brings hope and healing and happiness.