We got to go watch Allison play her cello in the school concert before Christmas. This is the second year she has played and she is pretty good. Imagine how good she would be if she practiced!! It was nice to hear her play. Grandma and Grandpa were able to come watch too. Enjoy!
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.
Ryan has been working at his company now for almost 11 years. He is the first employee they hired and him and the two owners have now grown to 40 employees. For the past year he has been expanding his role and wearing two hats. He has done his regular job in business development but has been helping new business development people learn their roles and the business. The owner and him have been working out the details for a bit and last week he made it official and made Ryan the VP of Business Development! He has several jobs that he is going to finish he has already gotten started but then he will transition to the new position full time. He is pretty excited about it. I am proud of his hard work and his drive to improve and develop his career and provide for his family. He is a good man, I am a lucky lady. He took Allison Christmas shopping this afternoon and went hitting with Matthew at the batting cages. He tickled and wrestled around with Emilee and took me out on a date last night after the ward Christmas party. I love that he loves his family and purposefully spends time with us together and individually. I know he enjoys his job but has been stressed and extra busy at work the past few months. He leaves it at the door when he gets home and lets all of us know he loves us and likes to be with us and spend time with us. I have been feeling extra appreciative of him lately.
This photo popped up in Ryan’s phone the other day. This is from 3 years ago. Emilee would be 6 and Matthew would be 12. Probably a school fundraiser night at Culver’s.
That’s it for 2021! Bring on 2022!
After a relaxing at home after Christmas, it was time for another party! Our friends the Beashore’s invited us over to celebrate the New Year with them. We ate lots of pizza and snacks for dinner. The rest of the evening was spent playing games and visiting.
They taught us a fun game they play every New Years Eve called Saran Wrap. I actually don’t know what they call it but that is what I am calling it. The kids all get in a line around the table oldest to youngest. The youngest gets to start with the ball. The ball is a bunch of little candies, gum, giftcards, coins, cash, anything you want rolled up in the saran wrap every few feet. When you start the person with the ball unwraps as fast as they can while the next person is rolling a dice. If they roll a three or a six they ball is passed to them. Anything you unwrap you get to keep. As soon as the ball is passed the next person starts rolling the dice and the new person unwraps. It keeps going until it is completely unwrapped. Then you can trade or bargain or keep whatever you got when you are done. It was a fun idea. I am sure our kids will want to carry it on next year and make it a tradition of ours too.
The other games we played were Taboo, ping pong, pop a shot, darts, occulus games, and dancing and boxing games on the play station. At midnight we cheered and lit off a few fireworks and confetti canons. It was a fun evening.
On our way home we saw that Grandpa and Grandma’s lights were still on so we stopped for a few minutes to say hi and tell them happy new years. Then we went home and went to bed!!
One of the gifts that our family got was a game called, Awkward Family Photos. We have played it a few times and it has some pretty funny pictures.
The Sunday after Christmas, Dad wanted to take a family photo of everyone before we changed out of our church clothes. It quickly evolved into taking our own awkward family photos. The first picture is the only one we didn’t intend to be awkward.
Countless times throughout the year anyone of our children is known to sleep through their alarm, purposefully not set an alarm, or have to be dragged from their bed kicking and screaming that they are tired and don’t want to wake up for one reason or another.
However, for the last ten years without fail or deviation of even one minute on Christmas morning, without an alarm, they all pop up like daisies at the predetermined earliest allowed to wake up time of 6:30am. Let that be an example of what the human brain can do with the right motivation.
This year was no different, they all woke up and then came in to get Ryan and I. Grandma and Grandpa Terry also came over to open presents with us at 6:30. Once the adults are in the living room and ready with their cameras the kids can come down and see the presents and stockings from Santa. Stockings are fair game and anything found in them can be immediately opened or eaten. Once everyone has had a few minutes to look through their stocking we take turn opening Santa presents one at a time. Once those are opened everyone starts opening presents at the same time. The wrapping paper goes in a general large pile and occasionally someone will take a break from unwrapping and stuff it in a trash bag. If Grandpa is there and you need a knife or scissors he loves to whip the one out of his pocket he carries with him at all times. If Grandpa isn’t present Ryan will whip out his pocket knife that he carries one day a year for a few hours on Christmas morning.
It was a very happy, blessed, fun Christmas morning for everyone this year. Once everything was opened we started breakfast. This years options were a breakfast casserole or all the favorite high sugar cold cereals. Grandma and Grandpa stayed a few more hours while we checked out our new stuff, did puzzles, watched a movie, listened to Christmas music, took a nap, or enjoyed relaxing.
We were on our own for Christmas this year. My family did our Christmas get together in October in Florida. Ryan’s family was spending it with the other half of their families.
Roger and Rhonda were planning on going to Texas but then changed their minds and stayed here. We invited them and the McDonald family over. We have done Christmas with them before and it has been a few years.
We decided to go and see the new spider man movie in the theatre. Emilee didn’t want to go so she hung out with Grandma. Matthew and Allison invited Campbell and Caylin. It was 40 minutes late starting because there were projector issues but once that got figured out we all enjoyed the movie.
We had a yummy ham dinner together. Ryan smoked the ham, Rhonda and Roger made the rolls, I did potatoes, corn and green bean casserole, and Lori brought coconut cream pie. It was a delicious festive dinner.
We sang some Christmas songs together, read and acted out the Christmas story, Emilee read a book, and there were several piano, cello, and clarinet musical numbers played. It was a great evening with friends and family. After we were all done hanging out and visiting everyone went home we opened our matching pajamas and took our Christmas eve family picture. Then we hurried off to bed so Santa could come!
It was a very wonderful day. I love Christmas time. The Christmas Spirit permeates everything and everyone is happier and friendlier and you take the time to appreciate family and friends. I am grateful for the birth of the Savior and His life. It isn’t just a nice story. He is real. I know because of Him and what he did for each of us we can have eternal families and be together forever. I am grateful for the atonement to repent and improve ourselves. I am grateful for my family, and the very blessed life we have and all the amazing friends and family we have in our lives.
December was a fun, busy, wonderful month! We usually put our decorations up the day after Thanksgiving but I did it right after Halloween this year- and I don’t regret it! 😁 We paused the Christmas festivities and were thankful and grateful at Thanksgiving then we were right back to the Christmas spirit!
We tried to focus on service this month so we did something each weekend to do service. We brought Grandpa along with us as much as we could.
The first week we did The Giving Machine at Crown Center. Each Christmas season our church does a #LightTheWorld. They have a few vending machines called Giving Machines that they have in a few places around the country. You can go and punch the number in for the item you want and just like a vending machine it drops the card to the bottom but instead of taking something you leave it there and they distribute whatever people donate to the different charities. There was local charities for food, clothes, and blankets or a safe place to stay. There were also world wide charities you could donate a chicken or water or things like that. This year we got to have a giving machine in Kansas City. They placed it in Crown Center, it is an area downtown that lots of people visit and do festive things for the holidays. We were all really excited to go and see it and pick a few things to donate. We did a few of the festivities while we were there too. We walked through the train and light exhibit, ate lunch at Spin City Pizza together, and some of us window shopped while the rest of us went ice skating. We of course visited the giving machine and donated some chickens, an acre of sweet potatoes, some food, blankets, and a goat. The kids loved it!
The other weekends we volunteered at the Johnson County Christmas Bureau. We were supposed to be there for 4 hours but we were only there for about 30 minutes and they told us they were done for the night. We told the kids it still counts for service and we will volunteer again next year and hopefully have better luck. We made a lot treats and then delivered them to friends and neighbors the following weekend. We also tried to volunteer at Harvesters food bank but they changed their age requirement to a minimum 16 years.
Allison had two gymnastic meets within the past month. One was here in Olathe, the other was in Columbia Missouri. We drove there and back in one day. She didn’t say this but I think she loved having a travel meet that took the entire day like her brother has travel for baseball sometimes. She did great at both meets. Her best event was the beam at our home meet and the bars at the Columbia meet-she nailed her kip. She also added a few back hand springs to her floor routine and did great at those too.
We did a lot of puzzles this month too. Something about Christmas makes me want to put puzzles together. If it is a Christmas puzzle even better! Matthew was my most frequent helper but everyone joined me at some point for a bit. We would watch a Christmas show, or listen to Christmas music and drink some hot chocolate while we puzzled away.
Allison had a Christmas concert for orchestra. She did great. I had a hard time getting a picture of her because she was behind another kid but it was a well done concert and they sounded great. Her favorite part was going to dinner with Caylin afterwards.
The French family was still with us for Christmas Eve. The Ross Terry family joined us and we had a New Year’s Eve party at our house. Matthew went and did his own thing with friends but returned just a few minutes after midnight and ended the night with us.
Ryan smoked some pizza’s for us, and we had way to many snacks and and treats to munch on. Allison put together some minute to win it games. We rotated through them all then the winner of each team challenged each other to win the final championship. Jovee put together a scavenger hunt that was boys versus girls. Leah put together a Jeopardy game for us to play. It was pretty fun and she did a great job at the questions. It was challenging for the adults and the kids. Before the adults played their own game and the kids did their own things we had a glow in the dark dance party. It was fun! I like dancing in the dark, you can dance however you want and enjoy yourself without worrying about looking like a goof ball. Most of the dads watched and cheered us on but everyone else got our glow in the dark dance moves on.
We all had sparkling cider and watched the ball drop in New York at midnight. A lot of crappy things happened in 2020 (pandemic, riots, earthquakes, fires, killer hornets so name a few) but it wasn’t all bad. There were a lot of good happy moments too and despite a global pandemic we were able to see most of our family between Thanksgiving and New Years. Nothing magically changed when it became 2021 at midnight but it is nice to have a new year to start fresh with and make the most of. Here’s to a great year in 2021!!
