Category: December

We spent the week between Christmas and New Years continuing to get settled into our new house. Ryan had most of the week off so it was nice to hangout around the house and relax while we got stuff done. Sleeping in until you want to is a luxury I will never get tired of.

It was relaxing but I was anxious to get the house mostly unpacked and organized. I tend to have tunnel vision when I have something I need to get taken care of so that was my main focus. New Year’s Eve was on a Sunday so there wasn’t a lot going on. Ryan and girls decided to go to Arkansas and spend the weekend. The Torgerson’s are good about having family get togethers and celebrating together. They went to Jen and Dave’s house and had a good time. Matthew and I stayed home and had a low key holiday. We all loved it and had a great New Year.

We found a few bugs that had to be worked out in our house too the first few weeks we were in it. Almost every system in the house had a few kinks. The electricians had to come rewire and change a few things. Our furnace intake was ‘to open’ so it kept getting snow in it and then it wouldn’t turn on. This of course happened when it was a mere -10 degrees outside for a week. One of our tanks for the septic system was cracked when they backfilled so it was filling with water which made the pump run 24/7 which caused it to burn out so the alarm alerting us our system was full went off. I felt bad for the company that had to come fix it. The timing couldn’t have been worse. The weather was cold and rainy and it was a giant mud hole they had to dig in to get the broken one out and put a new one in. Not to mention it was the sewer system. Shortly after that we had a leak downstairs from the bathtub upstairs. Our builders took care of it all and there is still a list of small fix it items to do but overall everything is good. We are really glad we have at least a year warranty on all the work for the house too!

The beginning of 2023 we had recently moved into our rental and by the hair of our chins we moved in at the end of 2023 so we could get settled and start making new memories and adventures in our new house. Happy New Year!!

Our December this year was busy as usual but a different than our usual December. Starting with our Christmas decorations. I come from a family where several of the women love to get their Christmas trees out and set up early. My Grandma June has been known to leave her tree up year round more often then not. Sometimes she changes the decorations for each holiday, sometimes she just leaves it Christmas all year. When we were younger my mom didn’t put our tree up as early but now she usually has a small one if not the full tree up by October at the latest. My sister Sherri usually has hers up by September. I have my tree up by the Friday after Thanksgiving at the latest. Usually a week or two into November I get the itch and put it up. This year, since we didn’t know for sure when we were moving we decided to not get any decorations out in out rental and just wait until we were in our new house. When we missed the November 1st move in dead line by the time Thanksgiving was approaching I pestered our builders pretty hard for a move in date. They finally said their goal was to be “done” with the house by Thanksgiving and then have a few weeks to go through and catch anything they needed to fix or change and the week of December 18th would be a good move in week. Thanksgiving came and went and the house was close but not quite what I would call “done”. The builders hadn’t said anything about moving the date up or back so I decided to tell them that I had scheduled movers for Dec 20th. They never really agreed but they said ok. We packed up the rental and got things ready to go with no Christmas decorations…it was a little bit gloomy I must admit. Decorations really add to the festivities and atmosphere. There were still Christmas parties and church school activities to help it feel like Christmas though!

Emilee’s class took a field trip to downtown to see some of the choirs singing at Union Station. She asked her dad if he would be a chaperon on her field trip and was pretty excited when he said he would love too! They watched the choirs and then broke into small groups and got to do a little Christmas shopping and eat lunch. Emilee had a great time and loved that her dad was there.

Allison has been doing some babysitting lately and finds it to be quite lucrative. She is incredible at it too. I was a boring babysitter, I didn’t really love doing it and I preferred the kids to entertain themselves while I supervised. Allison has awesome activities and games planned and makes a fun evening of it for the kids. She makes scavenger hunts, seems to have an endless supply of balloons, and gives them lots of attention. She watches a friend of ours son named Ethan with Emilee a lot and every time we come home they have new fun ideas that Allison has come up to do with them. This picture is one of the crafts she did with them sometime in December. These were little pictures them made. There was also giant almost life size gingerbread cookies hanging on the wall that they had made of themselves.

Emilee sang her very last time in Sacrament as a primary kid. She will be in Young Women’s after the New Year. I will have no more kids in primary!! That is so crazy! Allison snuck a picture of her singing for me. Her and Reese are inseparable.

Allison started her gymnastic season in December. She has decided that she wants to focus on weightlifting and wrestling so she is going to finish this Meet season for gymnastics then take a break. She has done a great job in gymnastics and always works hard at keeping her flexibility and learning her routines. We like watching her perform her events. Here are a few links to some of her best ones so far, in my opinion. Also some pictures from different meets she has done so far this season.

https://youtu.be/MB0es-oSbDQ (Allison Bar Routine)

https://youtu.be/kedxhCSiRQA (Allison Floor Routine)

As the day to move into our house arrived we weren’t sure it was going to happen until the actual day we moved. You never know with builders. In my limited experience they will never say when they will be done. They have to have a hard deadline and they will push it up to the second of that deadline. This time they made the dead line though! I told them we were moving in on December 20th but I actually didn’t schedule the movers until the 23rd. From the 20th-23rd we brought as much of our stuff over as we could that we didn’t want to box up. Lots of car loads. We got a lot of stuff taken over. There was pretty much just furniture for the movers when they came on the 23rd. The kids helped a lot and Matthew even recruited a few friends to help him load his car and take over a few loads. The first thing I took over was the Christmas tree and I set it up right away with a few decorations. I wasn’t going to have our first Christmas in our house with no decorations. It immediately felt like Christmas. That and the Christmas music made it a great time for moving.

Just to keep things extra exciting and as busy as possible on the 22nd of December Matthew had to have another procedure done on his arm to help get more of his mobility back. They had to put him to sleep but they were able to do what they needed without cutting him open again so he was able to recover a lot quicker then his initial surgery. We were worried he would have a pretty crappy Christmas break but other than a day or two afterwards he felt pretty good and was able to do the things he normally would have.

We used the same movers that moved us into the rental to move us out. They showed up at 9am Saturday and were supposed to be done around 1-2pm but for some reason they decided to bring a smaller truck this time then they did the first time…so when the truck they brought was about half full they realized it was not going to fit everything and they were going to have to do two trips. That made an already long day a little longer but they finished about 6pm and we had all of our stuff in our new home!! We got beds set up for everyone and spent the first night in our new house on December 23,2023. A week shy of two years from the day we bought the land and decided to build.

The next morning we all woke up refreshed and ready for Christmas Eve. We were actually pretty tired from working nonstop for three days to get everything done but we were very happy to be in our home. It was Sunday so we went to church and enjoyed the sacrament program. The Christmas program is one of my favorite weeks at church. There was beautiful music and great talks and thoughts shared. We came home and spend the rest of the day settling into our house, playing games and making Christmas treats. It was a Jones year for Christmas but my family usually doesn’t travel at Christmas because we are all spread out and no one wants to deal with the weather. Grandma and Grandpa Terry came over and joined us for a Christmas Eve dinner of pizza, salad, sparkling grape juice with Christmas Crunch and rolo pretzels for dessert. We same some Christmas songs, read the Christmas story from Luke in the Bible and watched a Christmas movie together. I usually like to have 95% of my shopping done by December 1st and then have it wrapped early in December but that didn’t happen this year because we didn’t have a lot of places to put things and I didn’t want things to get lost so for the first time in my life I had nothing wrapped on Christmas Eve. Ryan and I did it when everyone went to bed. It was fine we got it all done and weren’t up as late as I expected but I prefer my usual method. It is a lot more relaxing. I was pretty stressed that I would fall asleep and forget to do it before Christmas Day.

Christmas Day was a great day. The kids were debating on what time we should all get up. Some of them argued that we should sleep in but in the end the usual wake up time of 6:30 decided on. We opened gifts from Santa and each other and family and then the last gift I opened was the start of a scavenger hunt for the kids for some family gifts from Ryan and I. We were excited with how excited they got about the scavenger hunt. Even Matthew was into it. They figured the clues out pretty quickly and found a family game, a punching bag, and a ping pong table. After the scavenger hunt it was time for breakfast and then relaxing and spending the day assembling gifts and hanging out. Later in the day we went over to Grandma and Grandpa’s to see how their Christmas morning went. Yeah, it was a great day. I love Christmas and I love that we just get to relax and hang out together and not have to do work and other things.

https://youtube.com/shorts/0Ww2OcD-PJc (Christmas morning 2023)

Ryan worked a little bit through the next week until New Year’s but the kids and I were out of school and work. It was great to get to catch up on things I had gotten behind on and get settled into the house and not have all the normal stuff to do as well. We got a little dusting of snow a few of the days.

As most Decembers are, ours was pretty busy. I did a poor job of documenting it with photos. I can still write about it.

We did a lot of our usual traditions. We drove around and looked at lights while listening to Christmas music and drinking hot chocolate.

We did some service-this year most of us were able to help with the local Christmas Bureau. They set up a giant store basically for people that need a little extra help and then they can come shop at the store- but it doesn’t cost money. We helped man the store while people were shopping and take it down and store everything left when it was over. Allison enjoyed helping people pick out a coat if they needed one.

Ryan and I went to a White Elephant party. All of us went to the ward Christmas party. It was a lot of fun. Yummy food, good music, lots of visiting. There was a photo area and we had full intentions of taking a family photo but we couldn’t locate all of us at the same time to take it and missed our chance. Matthew got one with his buddies though.

I didn’t think about leaving out some puzzles from storage for Christmas. We usually have a puzzle out to work on most of December. We were able to borrow a few from Grandma and we got a new one to work on too. Lots of Christmas music, hot chocolate, Christmas movies, wrapping, buying, gifting. We decorated a ginger bread house. We made and decorated sugar cookies. Our elf Bubbit sent his cousin and reindeer so we found them each morning too. It was a nice month, I think we all enjoyed the family time and celebrating Christmas together.

Christmas Eve was supposed to be at Grandma and Grandpa Terry’s house with a big dinner and then reading the story together, singing, and hanging out while we played games. Becky and her family came from Idaho and brought Covid and RSV with them so we stayed away for a few days. So we ended up doing all the things I said but we did them with just our family at Ross and Lauren’s house. We did go over later on Christmas day and we had a family dinner the day after Christmas with everyone.

Christmas Day we were up and ready to open presents by seven. We opened everything and had breakfast and checked out our new gifts. Emilee got her roller skates, Allison got lots and lots of squishmallows, and Matthew got his air soft gun. Then we went to church. It was just sacrament meeting and it was a really nice service. There was lots of music which I love. Then we had a the rest of the day to eat junk food and play with the new toys and games.

Between Christmas and New Years we had an artic wind blow in. It was -5 degrees for about a week. Gross. We played with cousins a lot. Emilee really wanted to see the new movie called Puss and Boots so we all went to that together. We went to Urban Air one day and let the kids all get their energy out on the trampolines. My sister Sherri and her family came to visit about mid week. We found some space to squeeze them in while they were here. Matthew moved to the basement. He had snacks, a fridge and a TV down there so we didn’t see him to often. One day was warm enough we went to the park down the street to play. We caught up on the movies we hadn’t had a chance to see. Sherri and I got our nails done and went shopping together. It was a fun visit.

For New Years Eve Sherri and I got some things to play some games with the kids. Ryan made some BBQ and we had lots of snacks to munch on. We played the games we did and then the kids played while we watched a movie. When it was almost midnight we busted out the glow sticks and celebrated the new year. Matthew is now old enough to go out with his own friends and do his own thing so we didn’t get to enjoy his company New Years Eve. He went to a Stake Dance with his friends, then to Twisted Sugar to eat to much sugar, then to Campbell’s house to finish the evening.

2022 was a pretty good year- hopefully we keep that trend going in 2023.

It is always a little crazy to look back over the past year and realize how much happened in a year. Some of it we expected some of it we didn’t. The highlights for me are usually the trips and family events we do. Ryan and I had our 20th anniversary trip to Europe. We decided to buy a lot and build a house. We went to Branson a few times, one of them a Terry family reunion with boating and Silver Dollar City. A sister trip to Texas. Countless activities with the kids- gymnastic meets, wrestling matches, horse riding lessons, baseball games, concerts. The kids all spent some time in Florida with Grandma and Grandpa Jones. I went to Utah for my Grandma’s funeral. Then we decided to sell the house and move into a rental while they build our new one. It was quite a year. I am grateful we were able to do all those things and more. We are very blessed.

Our Elf Bubbit usually shows up around the 10th of December. This week Emilee found a letter from him hiding in one of the stockings. It looks like we will have some antics from his cousin this year and a visit from his Hershey Kiss Pooping Reindeer.