Christmas!

Look at me, already writing again.  I've discovered that if I try to write on Sundays I keep up a lot better.  Anyway, we had a great Christmas.  We started out the week with a Spjute Christmas party.  Lots of yummy food of course (although the stinky ham somehow turned into stinky turkey which isn't nearly as good).  Some caroling, talents (we use that word loosely in our house) and testimonies followed by pie.  It was wonderful.

We went skiing twice this week, which is also wonderful.  My kids finally got to experience skiing in new snow.  It was awesome.  Sage is hilarious to ski with.  She yells, "wahoo!" and "this is awesome!" the whole time.  Which makes it awesome for everyone else.

Christmas was great, pretty low key.  We continued our tradition of skiing on Christmas Eve.  It was so cold that Sage had to go to the lodge to warm up after one run.  I had to work that night, so Jake took the kids up to his mom's where they had good fun.  I made the kids wait for me to open presents on Christmas.  I assured them I would be home by 7:30, but of course that didn't happen.  As usual, things went crazy right at shift change and I didn't get home until after 8.  Needless to say, they were very excited to see me.  They opened presents and we had breakfast, then I slept for a few hours while they played with presents.  In fact, we've hardly seen the kids the last few days because they've been playing so much with their new toys.  Which makes me happy because it means they liked what they got.  Success!  We did manage to go sledding on Christmas.  It was lots of fun, especially watching people go off the jump.

Anyway, we had a great week together.  We're super blessed and grateful for this time of year when we can remember the birth of our Savior.

Our group for the Christmas Bus - there are a lot of us!

The kids waiting for me to get home

Opening presents

Sledding fun

Sage rocking it on her own

Snow angel

The Christmas Bus and Other Fun Things

We got to experience the annual Christmas Bus last night.  My kids count down to this event almost as much as they count down to Christmas.  This year my sister Mel and her family braved horrible roads to drive from Seattle and experience the Bus.  It was good fun.  Wonderful chaos as usual.  This year we went to an apartment complex in Salt Lake where elderly people live and did a program.  All of the kids participated and it was great.  The old people didn't know what hit them with all of the noise (I mean beautiful music).  Temple Square was beautiful and chaotic as usual.  The red tree was up this year, which is always awesome.  We managed to make it back to the bus without losing anyone, always a minor miracle.  On the ride home we had hot chocolate and cookies while listening to "The Polar Express".  Awesomeness.  My dad and Kathy are pretty amazing for pulling this off.  I'm sure it takes them a few days to recover from their hard work, but my kids sure love it.

On another, more sinister note...  I've included a frightening picture of Santa that Zack made at school.  For some reason, known only to Zack, he decided to make a vampire santa.  And its scary.  So scary that his teacher had to move it from the hall into the classroom because she got so many complaints.  Maybe we need to do some therapy?  Hopefully this is somewhat normal boy behavior.  He just laughs when we ask him about it.

Most of the kids.  See, its a miracle no one gets lost

Sage is peeking her head out somewhere

Kate helping Grandpa with the program

The kids singing

Frozen yogurt!

Super creep Santa!

Our first ski trip of the season!

Merry Christmas From Linz!

I know Mom and Linz are around a lot.  More than we'll ever know.  And every once in a while they make their presence known.  I love it when this happens.  This year, Linz sent my siblings and I money for Christmas.  The State kept calling my dad to let him know that Linz had money they were holding.  He could have it as soon as he showed them her death certificate.  Long story short, my dad finally got what he needed and sent it in.  Soon a check came in the mail.  We don't know what it was from, maybe a pay check she forgot to collect.  Anyway, my dad wasn't sure what to do with it.  Gut instinct was to buy some food storage, because that's what he does these days.  But then he says Linz made it known to him, very clearly, that she wanted it sent to her siblings for Christmas.  So, for the first time in lots of years, we got a Christmas present from Linz.

I told the kids about it, and we of course decided we needed to do something fun with the money.  Because Linz was all about having fun.  So we all went ice skating at the outdoor rink in Midway.  It was so much fun!  My kids were a little nervous because they'd never been, but they ended up loving it.  We all had great fun and can't wait to go again!  Thanks Linz!

Sage loved cruising around with this walker thing.  By the end she was going really fast!  Zack fell a million times but loved it

Kate did let go of the side, and really ended up having fun.  Which surprised her I think.

And this is an unrelated, hilarious, picture of us at the Midway Creche.  

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is over, soon Christmas will be here and I haven't bought a single Christmas present.  I'm in trouble.

But before I jump to Christmas, we need to talk about Thanksgiving.  We had a great weekend.  We started a new tradition of running a Turkey Trot as a family.  It was so great.  I was going to have Sage ride her bike, but she really wanted to run.  So all of us ran and it was awesome.  The kids did great, especially Sage.  I was amazed.  She's never even run even close to that far before, but she ran pretty much the whole way.  She was passing people left and right and just kept going.  She ended up finishing in just under 34 minutes.  Crazy!  She was super tired after and took two big naps in the car that day, but I was impressed.  It was a lot of fun to run a race with the whole family.  Definitely a great tradition.

For our feast, as my kids call it, we went to Greg and Tracy's.  There were at least 50 people there, but of course Tracy managed to have plenty of food, and even managed to make all of the tables look beautiful.  It was great to visit with everyone and eat lots of yummy food.

The rest of the weekend has been pretty chill.  We finally finished painting our garage.  Its been a huge disaster since we moved in and I finally couldn't take it anymore and told Jake we were painting it or else...  We had to paint it so that he would put shelves in so we could get all of our junk off the floor and actually park two cars in the garage.  For the first time in like 10 years I have a nice, clean, organized garage.  We still need to put more shelves in, but I can now go in there without getting a major headache.  The kids worked hard to help us finish.  It was definitely a family project.

I had to add this.  This is Sage's traumatic face after losing her first tooth

Ready to race!

Gratitude, Dinner, and Choir

I should probably make this into three separate posts, but that will probably never happen.  So here it is, like a run-on sentence.  November is Gratitude Month, for obvious reasons.  And I have been feeling really grateful lately.  The last couple of years were really tough, and while we definitely still have hard things, life is really good right now.  Its so nice to be in our house, finally!  And I love everything about it.  Everything.  And even though it about killed us, I love that I can look anywhere in our house and know that we did it ourselves.  Its kind of cool to live in a house that you really built.  I love that Jake has to walk 100 feet for his commute.  That's pretty cool.  I'm grateful that we're busy with work and that this business we've (mostly Jake) worked so hard for is a real, true, successful business.  That's pretty cool too.  And all of these things that are pretty cool I know have come about through blessings from God.  I know we did not get here on our own.  I know without Him we are nothing.  And I'm so grateful.

Next post.....

We actually had friends over for dinner.  This is a big deal as we don't do it much.  And we really need to do it more.  This was an extra fun dinner because I didn't have to do any cooking.  The people we bought our appliances from send a chef over to cook dinner for you and friends as kind of a demo of the appliances.  So we had a for reals chef cook for us in our own kitchen.  It was awesome.  The food was delicious, even more so because I didn't have to cook it.  We had yummy shrimp, salad, steak with potatoes shaped like mushrooms, and bananas and pineapple foster.  Super delicious.  Every course but the salad involved sauce with liquor (don't worry, we didn't drink it), and thus some big flames.  All of the boys helped cook with the big flames and loved it.

Next post.....

Kate has been singing in a community choir the last couple of months.  She loves it more than I thought she would.  It totally takes me back to my madrigal days.  Its a small group of girls and they sing in fancy dresses with character shoes.  Oh yeah, there's dance involved too.  Anyway, her first performance was Saturday night.  She looked beautiful and did a great job.  It was really cute to watch.  Grandpa Spjute and Grandma Tracy even came to watch which made it extra special.  Kate got to curl her hair and wear makeup so she was feeling extra fancy.  It was a great experience!

I actually attempted to make this old table look nice for the dinner

Chef Vaughn on the left with our friend Jeff.  There was some big flame that you can't see

Super Girl Sage (don't ask)

Sage found old halloween costumes (again, don't ask)

Beautiful Kate ready to sing her guts out

Singing the "Star Spangled Banner" (second from the left)

Kate and Grandpa Pirate

A blurry picture of Kate and Grandma Tracy

The fam

October Happenings

I cannot get my act together with this blog lately.  I think about writing in it, but I can't even think of anything to say.  Not sure why.  Writers block or something.  I know nobody reads this, but I will never scrapbook.  This is my way of keeping track of things and so I've got to do better.  On my list of things to do soon is get some books made of past posts so that we have them to look at.  Must do must do....

This month was fairly calm.  Yes, the business is crazy as usual.  Yes, there are plenty of things happening.  But nothing too newsworthy.  We had fall break and ended up doing a stay-cation.  Sometimes those are awesome.  Much less work.  We went bowling, went to a movie, went to the zoo, and Zack even made it to Frightmares at Lagoon with some friends.  He was in heaven.  Only he and one other girl had the guts to go on Cannibal.  Kind of funny.  Halloween was yesterday.  I'm glad my kids love it because its definitely not my favorite holiday.  I love the decorations, but that's about it.  This year Zack was Harry Potter, Kate was Hermione, and Sage was a princess (or an evil queen depending on her mood).  They got way too much candy and had a great time.  Happy days:)

Sage is ready to ski!

We did family pictures and this was Sage's pose

Zoo fun

Aunt Heidi and Baby Sofie came with us to the zoo!

The only picture I got of the Witchy-Poo Party - which doesn't do it justice because its my kids' favorite day of the year

Beautiful girls with a beautiful view

Sister!

Beautiful Princess

Hermione

Harry Potter

Fun In The Sun!

We've been trying to make it to St George for a while, and finally made it happen.  Greg and Tracy have a nice house down there and they let us hang out with them (lucky us I know).  We pulled the kids out of school so we could have a little bit longer weekend.  Jake and I went on a fun mountain bike ride.  He's nice to wait for me and act like it doesn't bother him.  Other than that, we pretty much spent our time swimming.  The kids were in the pool for hours and hours and loved every second.  It was super nice and relaxing and great to get away!

This is where we spent most of our time - Sage cracks me up

Looking at dinosaur tracks

School!

School has begun and we're loving it!  I may have forgotten to take first day of school pictures, as usual, so you'll have to use your imagination.  I will just say that they all looked cute:)

Zack is in 6th grade and doing well.  His teacher this year has a great love for art.  They do art almost every day.  Good thing he likes art, I would be dying.  His teacher is also a believer in recess, so in 6th grade they get three recesses.  Just like Sage in first grade!  I'm trying to let it go.  This is the last year this can possibly happen, so he might as well enjoy it.

Kate is in 4th grade and has a long-term sub until Christmas as her teacher just had a baby.  She likes her sub and gets to spend lots of time doing busy work (this makes me crazy).  We're going to roll with it and just be glad that she's really good at busy work.  She's also on the student counsel for the first term and she's had a lot of fun meeting with them and helping with things at the beginning of the year.

Sage is in 1st grade doing spanish dual immersion.  She struggled the first couple of days with the spanish, but has now embraced it.  They're not allowed to speak english in their spanish class, so apparently when they have something to say they tell the spanish students who then tell the teacher.  Sage is convinced that her spanish teacher, Mr Shepherd, does not speak a word of english.  This is hilarious because he's super white, tall, and definitely not latino.  But he obviously does a very good job of just speaking spanish to the kids.

And I have to admit that I'm really enjoying having more time to get things done.  Sadly, I haven't yet had time to lay on the couch eating bonbons.  Turns out that I have plenty to do to keep myself busy.  It is pretty amazing though the amount of things I can get done before the kids get home from school.  There are two things that I think I love most about having them all in school:  getting a little bit of quiet time.  The house is so quiet.  I don't feel like I need to run away anymore to get a little peace;   and because I'm able to get my things done while they're gone, I feel like when they get home I'm able to really focus on them.  This is awesome I think.

So all in all I think we're having a great year.

Zack getting his arrow of light

We look like a tractor store right now while our landscaping is happening.  Yes, our landscaping is being done.  By other people.  Its the most amazing thing I've experienced in my life

One Last Week

We are officially back in school.  Summer is no more.  But we sure crammed a lot into our last week.  Summer definitely went out with a bang.  We went and played at the lake, went to Cowabunga Bay, and spent the weekend in Sun Valley, Idaho.  It was awesome.

We've never gone to Sun Valley as a family before.  It was definitely a last second trip, but so great.  We decided to just get a hotel and not worry about camping.  We wanted a super relaxing trip, and that's what we got.  We took our time on the way up and stopped at Shoshone Falls.  Very beautiful, but in the time we were there Zack got stung by a wasp and Sage fell and scraped her knee and got a big goose egg (or goose bump as she called it).  Shoshone Falls were not good to us.

Sun Valley was beautiful, although a bit smokey.  The kids spent hours swimming in the pool and having a great time.  I spent hours relaxing by the pool and having a great time.   Jake and I managed to go mountain biking, each of us by ourselves, but at least we got to go right?  We spent lots of time walking around the little shops, playing at a park, and really doing whatever we wanted to.  Saturday night Kenny Loggins did a concert at Sun Valley.  We listened to some of it for free on the grass.  Nothing like a free concert:)

It was a great weekend.  The perfect ending to the summer.  And now we're already in the thick of school (well the kids are while I eat bon bons on the couch).  More to come on that…

Sage getting the most of her drink

Zack is always so excited

Kate got her ears pierced!

Shoshone Falls before tragedy struck

Waiting for the concert to start

Right after this Sage jumped off the rock and was shocked to land in water - she didn't realize it was a water fall.  Pretty funny