The week between Christmas and New Years day it very unique. I love it. Ryan and I usually take it off and of course the kids are out of school. There is no structure. You bounce back and forth between constructive activities, and wasting time. There is no time. You don’t know what day it is. It doesn’t matter because there is no schedule, no demands. If there is something scheduled it most likely will be forgotten. Sometimes you go to bed at 8pm. Sometimes it is 2am. Sometimes you shower and get dressed for the day, sometimes you don’t. I get to be my true introvert self and rarely leave the house. A lack of a plan is the plan. We love it.
We had lots of relaxing, family time activities. The Bourne’s were at Grandma’s all week so my girls spent most of their days playing with them. The weather wasn’t to bad so they even went to the park a few times and got to be outside. I took them to the church one afternoon to play in the gym and draw on the giant chalk boards.
Grandpa Terry, Emilee and Jovee all gave talks on Sunday. We had a family dinner with everyone at our house afterwards to celebrate getting to go to three sacraments. Lots of games were played and football was watched. I caught Ryan getting a little extra snuggle time in with Emilee while he explained something about football rules to her.
Becky invited me to go to a paint class with her so we filled one of our afternoons painting a winter sunset scene. I really like painting. I never know what to do with it when I’m done, it is not good enough to hang up anywhere. It is a fun thing to do and I like learning the techniques and creating things.
Ryan and I worked on some projects together. He made some awesome shelves for my holiday decoration boxes. I can now take one at a time out without having to restack or take other boxes out of the way. I LOVE IT. I went through all my decorations and storage stuff and organized it and cleaned it out. So satisfying. We got a new security system that Ryan installed too. We live far enough away from people that there aren’t that many people but not far enough that I don’t think a weirdo wouldn’t wander by. Ryan got a dart board for Christmas so we hung that up and put a frame around it to help protect the wall a little from wayward darts.
Look at that beautiful organization!
We celebrated New Years Eve at our house with all the Terry Family. We had lots of food and yummy treats. We watched movies, played games, ate and visited while we passed the time away until midnight. I made a balloon drop with confetti for the kids to pull down when we got to midnight.
It was a fun night to celebrate the last day of the year and the starting of a new one. It is pretty crazy to look back over a year and see and the things that happened and how things changed. It is weird how things change and don’t change at the same time. I think 2024 was good to us. We had some good times and made new memories together. No broken bones. I waited until 2025 had started before I typed that. We are not perfect but we are blessed and grateful for our good health and the comfortable lives we all have. There is a lot of crazy stuff going on in the world right now and we are mostly untouched by it. 2025 will bring a new chapter into our families lives. The foremost in my mind is Matthew will graduate and is planning on going on a mission and the dynamics of our family will shift from how we have known them for the last 18 years. For the last picture of this edition of my blog I thought I would put this picture. I wish I had one of our whole family doing this but this one will work. Ciao 2024
It was Ryan’s families year for Christmas. The Bourne’s came from Idaho and the Ross and Ryan families are already here. The Lee’s couldn’t make it.
Christmas Eve we spent most of the morning cooking a preparing the meal. We had ham and cheesy potatoes, green bean casserole, rolls, jello salad, and Ryan smoked a brisket. It was all very delicious. We ate dinner around 4pm. After dinner and pie and cookies for dessert, the cousins continued to play and have fun together. Some of us watched a movie and played games or took a nap. When everyone was rested and not stuffed from dinner anymore we had a little family gathering. Emilee, Jovee and Tyler started us off by sharing a little thought they each wrote about what Christmas means to them and what some of their favorite parts about Christmas are. Then most of the grandkids shared some kind of talent. We had several piano numbers, a flute, a trumpet, dancing, and even a little acrobatics. Grandpa then gave us a Christmas message and we all had a family prayer together.
Later that night when we got back to our house we opened our Christmas Eve PJ’s and did any last minute wrapping and headed to bed.
Christmas morning we plan for 6:30am at the earliest to wake up for presents. The kids have the option to sleep in longer if they want but so far they have not taken us up on the offer. This year Allison woke us all up at 6:30 sharp with excited cheering that it was Christmas morning. The kids wait at the bottom of the stairs until we get into the living room and then they come up and we start opening presents.
Matthew got some golf clubs and a guitar. He pretty recently decided that he wants to learn the guitar. It isn’t the piano but I’ll take it. Allison wanted lots of clothes and some fancy head phones. Emilee wanted some lego sets to put together and she is currently collecting palm pals and had a list of those she wanted. I didn’t do a very good job of taking pictures this year. Here are the few I did remember to take. Last year we did a scavenger hunt for the kids for the family gifts. They seemed to like it so we did it again this year. The family gift was tickets for one of the Chiefs play off games in January. It will be a fun family event! I’ll post more about it after they go to the game.
After we opened presents and ate breakfast and chilled for a little bit, we went back over to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. We opened more presents there with them and then the Chiefs played at noon so everyone came over to our house to watch the game. We ate snacks and leftovers, played games and hung out together.
December was just lovely. It flew by really fast but it wasn’t chaotic and out of control with to much going on. It was perfect.
We made treats, did puzzles, listened to music, looked at lights, drank hot chocolate, did toys for tots and the giving tree, wrapped presents, watched Christmas movies, went to Christmas parties, celebrated with family and friends. It was an awesome month.
Allison had another wrestling match. It was an away meet so we didn’t go but someone recorded it for us. Spoiler alert-she wins! I finally figured out how to combine her videos so we can watch all her matches for a meet in one video.
Ryan and I went on a brief overnight date to downtown Kansas City. He gets a free weekend night as a perk through his Hilton credit card so we usually use it in December. We went with our friends Dani and RJ. We booked a few reservations at some of the Christmas pop up places they have for appetizers, dinner, and dessert and had a nice relaxing night with lots of visiting.
Christmas was on a Wednesday this year. The kids finished school the Friday before and Ryan and I had our last day of work on Monday. Then we had the next week off to celebrate Christmas, New Years and enjoy being lazy, and getting things done around the house that we wanted to. Ryan built some shelves for all the decorations in our storage room. I haven’t taken down all the Christmas decorations yet so I will wait to take a picture when its all packed away and finished. He installed a new security system around our house. I was in my purging our house of things that we don’t need anymore and customizing/organizing a few areas. I did Ryan and my closet, the pantry, and the storage room- which like I said is now just waiting on the Christmas decorations. We played games with the kids and hung out. There is a touch of a sad note for me this year because it will be the last Christmas before our kids start leaving the house and we start tip toeing into a new era in our lives. That is another reason I really wanted to soak everything in as much as possible.
I am just putting a little ‘good job’ note in here for me. On December 12, 2024 I got all the way caught up on my blog. I have been several months behind at any given point for the last year or two. Woohoo!
For part of our church Christmas party this year the youth were asked to do some kind of performance. One of the leaders came up with a shadow nativity. They basically act out the life of Christ to a song called Halleluiah behind a screen with a bright light so you can just see their shadows. It is about a 5 minute long song, so it is short but very sweet and touching. Emilee was willing to do it since no one could actually see her and there were no speaking parts. She was actually put in charge of turning the lights on and off when they needed it and thought that was perfect. Allison is living at the school gym for wrestling right now so she didn’t have time. Matthew said, “No thanks.” The leader in charge texted me and asked if I thought Matthew would be able to participate. I told her he would love to and let Matthew know that he was voluntold to do it. They went to the first practice and when they came home I anticipated a little push back from Matthew for making him do it. Instead I got a play by play of the rehearsal as he speed acted/sang through the song and all his parts. The reason the leader had asked for him specifically is because she wanted him to play the adult Jesus because he is older and able to be more mature and reverent than other boys that were participating. Matthew ate that up and was all in. It reminded me of the time I signed him up for a summer play of The Greatest Showman. He was not happy and protested the whole way to the first practice. Then I didn’t hear much protesting after that and he said it was going pretty well. When we went to the performance he was literally swinging from the ceiling on rope ribbons while he sang his little heart out. He definitely has a drama side to him, he just doesn’t let it out very often. It was cute to see him be excited about it. Campbell caught wind of it and said she was coming to watch and she told Ramey and he came to watch. Matt did a great job and Emilee nailed the lights.
I recorded it…I must have been holding my phone upside down though because it is sideways and I can’t get it to straighten. Add it to my list of mom fails. 🤦♀️ Just turn your head to the side while you watch it.
Shorty after we had Matthew and were living in Wichita, Ryan surprised me with a piano for my birthday. This is the awesome piano I have had for the last 18 years. It has been a great piano and I have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours playing it. We moved it to four different houses with us and every time the movers told us it was the heaviest piano they had ever moved.
Many good memories playing songs on this piano.❤
When we were building our new house, I decided that at some point I wanted to get a baby grand piano and planned for a spot for it in our living room. Nay Sayers-like my husband (and specific friends he asked because he knew they would agree with him) said it wouldn’t fit or it would look weird. I ignored them because I knew they were wrong and it would look beautiful. I didn’t know for sure when I would get one but it was on the list. I went and looked at pianos a few times and met a nice guy named Blair at one of the piano stores that kept an eye out for what I was looking for and would send me some options every now and then. A few weeks ago he sent me one that really caught my eye so Ryan and I went over to look at it. It was lovely and I liked it but I didn’t get it. I did however, see another one while I was there that I really liked and I ended up getting it instead. We bought it and a few days later it was delivered and was my early Christmas present. AND I LOVE IT!! It fits perfectly and doesn’t look weird at all. It is so pretty and all my kids and Ryan have said they will start playing again or want to learn at least one song. Will they?? …probably not. But it is so pretty they wish they could play it. 😂🎶 I can play it! And I love to play it! John Cazier helped me break it in and my sister and mom over Thanksgiving too. I’m excited to play it for years like I did my last one.
I have been so excited to decorate for Christmas this year! I wanted to put everything up early but since I was hosting Thanksgiving I thought I should keep my Thanksgiving stuff up at least until then. I did put my outside lights up and my tree without decorations on it early. It has been two years since we have had our decorations up. I forgot what some of them were! Two years ago we had just moved into our rental and only had room for a few things. Last year we moved in to our new house two days before Christmas so I put our tree up and that was about it. This year is was a little like Christmas opening up all the boxes to remember what I had. It was very fun to get it all up. The kids and Ryan were excited too. It feels nice and Christmassy around here now. We were in our last house for 7 years so I had a spot for everything. I have a few things that don’t work anymore or some areas that I don’t have the right decoration but I will tweak it a little each year and eventually it will all pull together. My goal this year was to get a bigger tree. We went from 7 1/2 feet to 12 feet. It is big! I love a beautiful tree but don’t love the setting up. I might get a little tired of setting it up every year, but I think it fills the space pretty good. I also got the garland for the stairs. Allison had a really cute idea to put ribbon on the kitchen cupboard doors with a bow so it looks like presents. I thought it turned out pretty cute! Ryan and I attempted to do the lights ourselves this year. He even crawled up on the roof for our tall front porch. The smaller eve next to it had a 30 foot drop off the one side so we decided it wasn’t worth the risk of our lives and ability to move all our limbs. I ordered a grinch and stuck him in the yard to make it look like he was stealing our lights, then we didn’t have to put them on that eve. Next year we need to get some bigger lights I think…and see about finding someone else to install them.
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.
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.
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.
We also turned Allison’s grumpy picture into a meme.
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.
