Christmas 2017

I liked Christmas Eve on Sunday. It was nice to be able to go to church for sacrament meeting and then enjoy the rest of the day with other Christmas Eve activities. Jason, Victoria, and I sang in the choir for the program. Karissa and the boys managed well enough without us in our pew. I love singing Christmas music, so it was a great experience to participate in the choir for a couple months again. I have also enjoyed singing carols at home with my three piano players! After sacrament meeting, we participated in the annual caroling activity at a Senior Living Center with other friends from our ward. More Christmas singing, hurray! After wards, greeting the residents always brings a smile to my face. Karissa gave out many hugs!

Karissa, Austin, and Erik sat so well on this couch while we practiced with the choir before the meeting. 

If you could ask for the perfect white Christmas, we got it! Most of the snow had melted and they were only calling for flurries on Christmas Eve, not very promising. It turned out they adjusted the weather statement and we got steady snow from 2pm on.! We got about 4 inches and another few during the night and on Christmas Day. Since we had no where to go, it didn't affect us one bit! Only gave us a beautiful white Christmas. Now that the temperature is 0 with a wind chill of negative 3, at least it looks nice! We can play in the snow for about 20 minutes too, before frostbite starts to set in on uncovered skin.

Our house at some point during the day.

Christmas Eve from our front window. Our neighbor's decor and the falling snow were beautiful!

We spent the rest of the day playing games, focusing on the Nativity, eating our dinner of nachos with the "works" that we learned our kids really like, and opening our secret Santa gifts. Victoria headed up a new tradition of drawing names to give one gift to the person's name we drew. It was a secret until we opened them. She was so excited to give her gift of Lego's to Austin, as was everyone else. The boys bought their gifts at the holiday shop at school, so I didn't even need to help them. Erik picked out a glow ring for Karissa and a stuffed cat. Austin got me a necklace (same one he got me last year) and a MOM rock. Karissa painted a clay cat for Jason, Jason got Erik a Nebraska shirt, and I got Victoria an American Girl doll brush. Everyone was so happy to give and receive, it was the best!

Austin was Joseph, Karissa was Mary, and Erik was the donkey, again. He makes such a good ass!

Victoria was the angel, I was the shepherds and wise men, and Jason was the narrator. 

Luke, right before we went to bed. He knew he got a gift from Santa too. 

Karissa made this picture for Santa and wrote a nice letter on the back. 

We told the kids not to come into our room before 7 am the next morning, which they honored. We still had a nice long day of opening gifts, eating yummy food, playing games, and watching movies. If I had cross country skis, I would have gone outside, even if it was dang cold! Jason and I even managed to get our workouts in, because, why not?

Someone was excited! 

The girls got Go Pro cameras.

New pjs for everyone. Victoria got hers early because she was there when I bought them two days before Christmas and had no other pjs.

Enjoying the gift!

Karissa got some modeling clay and paints.

Victoria got a new coat.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Holiday Festivities

There's always plenty to do to celebrate the holidays. We started out the season with Victoria's orchestra concert. Those kids are really good! She's in the intermediate group now and was chosen to participate in the Cluster Concert in January. I'm so happy she enjoys the violin! Even if it does mean I have to wake up earlier to see her out the door each day...

We also enjoyed her choir concert the next week. She's wearing her choir scarf in this orchestra picture. There is a clip with a song from each at the top. (I wasn't able to move them around to where they should be, darn, stubborn computer...)

She's in the back right in front of the bases.

One of the perks for her is that she can see her friends from other schools who also participate in orchestra because they all meet at the high school and then are bussed to their various middle schools. This is her good friend Sabrina.

 We have very good friends from the ward that Karissa fell in love with when Sister Nelson was her teacher a few years ago. Karissa calls them "Mother and Father". Their boys are a lot older, so we've never actually had them over, but finally decided the time was right.

They all had to dog pile them, even the cat!

Erik was so cute with their oldest son, Isaac, and his girlfriend Morgan.

 Last week we got dumped on with snow and even got a snow day out of it. Now it has all pretty much melted because of some rainy days in the 40s...

On our lovely snow day, with the sun shining, the kids made snow flakes and Christmas presents.

And we went sledding with many friends. Here's Ella and Karissa.

Erik sledding

Austin trying out "snowboarding".

Victoria, Hannah, and Emma

Audrey, Edelweiss, and Karissa

Austin and Owen

Erik and Anna

Our snowman with photo bomb Austin.

 The Summit had a gingerbread day on Saturday. The kids got to decorate a paper gingerbread man and then a cookie. They also played some candy cane games, followed by swimming!

They made another snowman before it melted.

We also got to go to the library and see a real live reindeer. It was Sugar Plum, one of Santa's back-ups, and one of his elves. There was little train ride too, but no pictures of that event because my phone is being problematic...

After church on Sunday.

We're ready for it to be Christmas!

New Things

This time of year is full of holiday activities and lots of spending on gifts, but it's also a great time to find killer deals on big ticket items. Our refrigerator was going down hill, so we found a fantastic deal on a new one. We were going to give our old one to DTE for a $50 check, but they were booked until January. Luckily, our good friends from church suddenly needed a fridge because theirs broke, so they helped us take our old one out, which still works, but might be done for in a couple of years. Now they have a free fridge, for now, and we put our new one in, which had been sitting in our garage since Thanksgiving until we could decide what to do with the old one. It was a win-win situation.

It's pretty much the same as our other one, but the ice maker will be more reliable, the freezer will be a little colder, and all the drawers will work a little better!

A while ago, we (or I should say Jason) researched companies to replace our shower. It was an old mold fest. I couldn't keep it clean, no matter how much I cleaned it! We found someone and got a pretty good deal. That was being completed when our friends came to get the old fridge, so we had two big jobs going on at the same time. It's been busy and messy, but now it's done and was worth it!

After the first day. Sorry, no before pictures. I couldn't stand to take a picture of that mold fest!

After the second day.

New fan that actually does its job. 

After the third day. It's very nice!

A while ago, we (or I should say Jason) researched companies to replace our shower. It was an old mold fest. I couldn't keep it clean, no matter how much I cleaned it! We found someone and got a pretty good deal. That was being completed when our friends camed to get the old fridge, so we had two big jobs going on at the same time. It's been busy and messy, but now it's done and was worth it!

Ho and Ho

Over the weekend we went to a ho-ckey game. We also went to the ho-spital. Let me tell you about the hockey game first. That was more fun.

Through Karissa's school we got a great deal to watch USA Hockey's national team development program play U of M. There were many upsides to this. One, it was only ten minutes from our house. two, we got a super good deal on our tickets that included hot dog/pizza and a drink for each of us. Three, our seats were amazing, four, we got to see Santa Claus there, five, it was Teddy Bear toss night (when USA first scored, everyone threw Teddy Bears onto to ice to be donated to a hospital) and six, Michigan won! We have taken our kids to see BYU play football and basketball and they lost both of those games. We took them to see the Tigers play and they lost that game. It was fun to go to a game were the team we were rooting for actually won. The kids loved seeing all the action involved in ice hockey as well.

A big walking teddy bear.

There was a lot of slamming right into the plastic window in front of us!

Teddy Bears flying everywhere and being quickly collected!

The next day, after church, while we were practicing with the ward choir, Karissa came in to tell me Erik cut his finger in the nursery, really badly. I went out to see and found two men helping him. One gave Erik a blessing, which was probably why everything turned out better than it should have. We left right away to take him to the ER where the doctor ordered an x-ray because of the type of wound it was. At that point, we still didn't really know what had happened. The doctor said it looked like a "crushed" wound, the way his finger was split open on two sides and he wanted to make sure nothing was broken.

Nothing was broken, but there was tissue coming out, which we referred to as "guts" since the doctor compared it to a squished grape. When you step on a grape all the "guts" squish out. The same thing happened with Erik's finger. All the insides squished out and it was pretty gross. We didn't even know what it as at first. He ended up getting 4 stitches in one wound and 2 in the other. It was nice having Jason there with us this time, since we had that crazy long time when Erik got his lip stitched and would not let the doctors work, so they had to keep coming back to try again and we ended up tying his arms back. This time, Jason and I worked together to help relax him so the doctor could numb him. The nurse was great too. I think the blessing helped with all of that.

We found out later what had happened. Erik was under the table and pushing it up with his legs. When it fell, it must have only fallen on that one finger and burst it open. The whole thing made me a little sick this time. It didn't help that the guy who came in next to us was moaning and groaning and I could overhear the entire conversation with the doctor. I don't think I'm meant to be in a hospital. Darn these boys of mine keep taking me back there!

We're glad he's okay and still has his finger!

He got to be in pretty good spirits right before the doctor started to work on him. 

The work

All stitched up!

His sweet siblings left him gifts.

Watching the new Nebraska coach speak after returning from the hospital. Erik has suddenly decided that he really likes Nebraska