Christmas!

Christmas has come and gone.  Crazy how that happens.  So much going on, so much to do, and then poof - its over.  I just took our Christmas decorations down.  Usually I leave them up until New Years, but for some reason this year I was ready to be done with them.  Maybe its because I just want it to be time to go to Hawaii.  Yes, that was our main gift for Christmas this year.  Last year I decided I'd had enough buying more junk for my kids.  They have plenty and can hardly think of what to ask for (well Sage can, but she's special).  So we talked to the kids about it and decided to do a family trip to Hawaii.  We told them they would get one present from Santa and that was about it.  And that's what happened.  They got other things, but it was all stuff they needed for the trip anyway.  It definitely made Christmas a lot easier.

Anyway, Christmas Eve we went to Dad's for our traditional Spjute Christmas Eve.  It was good fun.  We had delicious food, went caroling, did talents, the nativity, and testimonies.  Most excellent.  And then we drove home in the snow.  It's only snowed twice this year and both times has been when we had to drive home from family stuff.  I guess we should plan more trips because we pretty much have no snow.

Christmas day was very low key with just our family.  Like I stayed in my new Christmas pajamas most of the day.   In other words, it was awesome.  We told the kids they couldn't wake us up until 7:00.  At exactly 7:00 Sage started yelling.  That girl was excited.  So we opened presents, had a yummy breakfast, and hung out.  After lunch we went skiing.  Not awesome conditions, but still fun.  Well, fun until we lost Sage for 30 minutes.  We told Sage and Kate to head to the bottom of the run by the parking lot while we did one more run.  Somehow they lost each other and when we got to the bottom Kate was there but no Sage.  She wasn't by the car, we couldn't find her anywhere.  My phone has been having issues lately and picked this moment to die.  This was a problem because my number is the one she knows.  We were headed up to ski patrol when Jake got a call telling him where she was.  She did the right thing finding a ski instructor to help her, and she was remarkably calm when we got her.  None of the usual Sage drama.  Phew.  Kind of stinks not knowing where your kid is for 30 minutes.  Thank heavens everything ended well and we were able to make it home to do more of nothing:)

And I have no idea why some of these pictures have a play button, but I'm too lazy to fix it.

Jake was given a lot of stuff from his subs.  A lot.

Our talent

Cute baby Claire

Grandpa's talent

Nativity fun

Christmas pajamas

How Jake spent Christmas morning

The aftermath

Fun game we got from grandma and grandpa

The Night of Concerts

We had a fun/busy night last week.  Zack has been taking rock band lessons.  Yes, that's a thing.  He and three other 8th graders have spent the last few months learning how to be in a band together.  Zack mostly plays his electric guitar, but he also got to play the bass and a little on the keyboard.  Last week they had their concert and it was awesome.

Each of the kids got to pick out a song they wanted to learn.  Zack chose AC/DC TNT.  Of course.  Then they had two songs by Cold Play and a Taylor Swift.  Zack tolerated the Cold Play, but he was NOT happy about Taylor Swift.  In fact, he's not sure he wants to do the band again just because he might be asked to play more Taylor Swift.  Hilarious.  Anyway, I thought they did a great job.  I mean, it wasn't anything you would pay money to see, but for a bunch of 8th graders it was pretty good.  I should have gotten a picture of Zack with his guitar after it was over because the lighting in the room was so bad that pictures didn't work.  Bummer.

From there we raced up to the Zermatt for a Charlie Jenkins concert.  Jake and I went to it last year and enjoyed it so much that we wanted to take the kids this year.  It was a great concert.  Paul Cardall played with them.  Beautiful music!

Sage got to eat this huge cotton candy at the concert.  She ate every bite.  Of course.

Zack is the dark blob on the left

The Annual Christmas Bus!

The Christmas Bus (better known as the best tradition my dad ever came up with) is probably the thing my kids look forward to most all year.  For reals.  They love it so much.  And this year was the best one ever.  It was epic.

My sister Mel came for the event with three of her kids, so that made it extra awesome.  We went up first thing Saturday morning to have breakfast with everyone.  My dad made his huge delicious pancakes and Kathy made her yummy syrup.  We ate tons of food and got to hang out for a while.  It was so great.  I think that's the most time I was able to spend with my family in a long time.  Jake and Zack went to see Star Wars all morning so I didn't even have to worry about how much Jake wanted to leave.  A definite win win.

We started out at the rest home, and our program is getting pretty good I think.  Just the right amount of piano, singing, and then closing with the nativity, which I think we have perfected.  From there we went to the ancestral home for fun games.  Bingo, minute to win it, and kahootz.  Then we had pizza and it was time to get on the bus.  One of the best things in the world is going to see the lights at Temple Square and not having to worry about parking.  Takes the stress out and just leaves the fun.  The lights were beautiful of course.  We finished the night with hot chocolate and cookies on the bus while we listened to The Polar Express.  Like I said, epic.

We're starting to fill up the bus

Together at last!

My grandma got to come!  The babies: Claire, Henry, and Savannah

Cute Henry

Bingo!

Minute to win it!

Best nativity ever

breakfast chaos

Not surprising that she couldn't finish that pancake

The gang

Thanksgiving

Well, I posted nothing in all of November.  I honestly can't think of anything exciting that really happened at this point besides Thanksgiving.  Guess it wasn't a very exciting month, which isn't all bad.

This year for Thanksgiving we went to St George with just our little family.  It was definitely different from other Thanksgivings, but we had a great time.  When we decided to do this I thought, "Perfect! I won't need to cook a big Thanksgiving dinner for just our family."  Wrong.  Jake was at the grocery store with me and next thing I know he's sticking a turkey in the cart.  Then the kids started talking about the different foods they were excited to eat on Thanksgiving.  So I made Thanksgiving dinner.  I even hauled it all the way to St George because we got there too late to make it to the grocery store.  It was nothing fancy, but still took tons of time.  Jake and the kids got to clean up.  They didn't love that, so maybe next time I'll be able to convince them to get pizza!

The weather was amazing, so we spent a lot of time outside.  We went to Snow Canyon and explored the lava caves.  Those are pretty cool.  We went swimming at the rec center where Jake gave Kate and Zack lessons.  We ran our own turkey trot since we weren't able to do the one in Midway.  The kids did great!  They all wanted to go see the movie Wonder so I told them they each had to finish the turkey trot in 35 minutes or less.  A time that they've all done before, so it was very doable.  Just some extra motivation.  They all made it to the movie.  Sage kept saying 'wonder' over and over for extra motivation when she was running.  The movie was excellent by the way.

We fit in a couple of mountain bike rides.  Only did a small amount of shopping.  And went on a hike in the Kolob area of Zions.  We'd never been there before and it was beautiful.  The hike was 5 miles round trip and the kids did great! 

So it was a different Thanksgiving, but definitely a good Thanksgiving.  We might need to do that again!

Beautiful Kolob Canyon

Turkey trot!

For some reason Sage gets super excited to eat the drumstick every year.  Pretty funny since she normally doesn't eat much

Lava caves

Snow Canyon

How Sage travels

October Happenings

Time to wrap October up in one post.  It was a pretty great month really.  Getting into the swing of things with school.  Enjoying the beautiful fall weather.  And a fun trip thrown into the mix.  Oh yeah, don't forget Halloween. 

The great elk hunt happened in October.  Not sure if I mentioned before that Jake and Zack both drew out for the limited entry bull elk hunt.  This was exciting news.  But also stressful.  And kind of not great timing.  This is Zack's first hunt ever and Jake's first real hunt in a long time.  So I kind of wish they'd drawn for such a good tag a couple of years from now.  But oh well.  They spent lots of time scouting, putting trail cameras out, scouting, etc.  Lots of not fun stuff.  And then the actual hunt came.  And they did lots and lots of walking.  And more walking.  And didn't see any elk.  Not one.  So that's a bummer.  According to Jake elk are an endangered species.  We try not to mention elk these days.  Kind of a touchy subject;)  And I still don't understand why people like hunting.

October was also the month of Operation Save the Chickens.  Raccoons discovered our chickens.  Horrible raccoons.  Before we could blink we were down from 8 chickens to 3.  Sad!  So we got serious and began operation save the chickens.  We fixed holes under the fence, tightened the fence, and put a pallet in front of the coop door.  Now every night the chickens have to go in the coop.  Zack forgot to put them in one night and we lost another one.  Jake reminds him every day how guilty he should feel.  So now we have chickens that have to be let in and out of the coop every night.  Super convenient.  Darn raccoons!  I'm trying to get Zack to invent something that will somehow fix this problem.  He's on it.

We also had the annual witchy poo party.  Grandma and Grandpa always pull out all the stops and the kids love it.  Fun games, lots of treats and yummy food, and of course the witches brew.  Which even Sage said was too sweet to drink, so we're talking intense sweetness here.  In other words, perfect for Halloween.

And then there was actual Halloween.  Sage was Mal from Descendants (all the rage these days) and Kate was a pirate.  Zack was deemed too old to trick-or-treat so he handed out candy dressed as Zack.  I took the girls trick-or-treating with some friends and these friends don't mess around.  We went to way more houses than we ever have.  The girls were exhausted by the end.  And then Halloween is over and we have piles of candy and I think, "Why?"  Glad my kids like it, but if we had to get rid of a holiday I would choose Halloween.  Bah humbug!

Sage with her BFF

We went and saw Thriller with some friends

Operation Save the Chickens

Zack's awesome pumpkin

Witchy-poo party

Purple hair

Costume parade.  Sage was freezing but of course wouldn't cover up her costume with a jacket

Trick-or-treating friends