Winter?

 This winter hasn't felt like winter.  At all.  I can't decide if I like it or not.  It's weird to not have snow and freezing temperatures, but also nice to not have those things.  But in Utah we can't ever really enjoy a mild winter because it just means we have no water that summer.  The best thing this winter though is that, back in the fall, we decided not to buy ski passes this year.  First time in like 15 years.  We figured we would regret it when everyone was out enjoying the snow, but we were tired of the traffic, crowds, etc.  Well, best decision ever!  It's been so nice not being stressed about the lack of snow because we bought super expensive ski passes.  I'm not sure how that worked out, but I'm glad it did.

Anyway, January and February have been pretty low-key around here.  We started with a bang though visiting cousin Season in the hospital.  Such a good visit.  The next day Sage got her wisdom teeth out.  Poor thing.  I don't have wisdom teeth, so I don't understand her pain.  But it looked miserable.  After the first day she actually did really well.  We're all happy that's behind us!

Jake and I took a couple of quick trips to St George to work on the house.  Sage didn't come with us either time.  Not sure why she would rather hang out with friends than her parents...  There was just enough man-made snow to go tubing at Soldier Hollow with Jake's employees and their families.  We went real fast down the icy hill.  So fun. Greg and Tracy are heading to Montana to serve a mission, so we got to go listen to them speak in church.  It was fun to see the whole family and they did a great job.  We're excited for them, but we'll miss them!

Sage and I went shopping for prom dresses yesterday.  Started at 10:00 and didn't finish until 6:00.  Heaven help me.  But we were successful and she'll look beautiful for her junior prom.  While we were shopping Jake and Zack went to the off-road expo.  I think they got the better deal.  They left with big ideas for future trips.

Work has begun for the future pigs...

A sample of one of the many dresses.  But not the final one.

Sweethearts Dance

Every once in a while Sage gets in the mood to bake.  We all benefit from this.

Chloe and Sage.  Definitely related

And every once in a while Jake cooks.  Usually when I've declared I'm not cooking.

The title of this is, "Misery"

All The Christmas Things

 Trying to get caught up here.  December was busy but also really good.  We started the month off with the annual food drive the whole valley does here.  Each ward in our stake was in charge of collecting 160 boxes of cereal.  We needed someplace for everyone to drop their cereal off, and our barn became that place.  Which means that Jake and I became the people to take the cereal over.  Our ward came through big time.  We ended up with over 200 boxes of cereal!  They were so excited when we pulled up.  A great way to start the Christmas season.

Sage got to go to Disneyland with the cross country team.  I know there are other reasons she signed up for cross country, and she's ended up loving it, but going to Disney with the team was a big incentive for the season.  She had great fun, managed to do really well in the race, and then had to suffer the whole ride home because she was so sick and had a toothache on top of being sick.  Poor girl.

We did our annual rest home performance for Grandpa Spjute.  Jake and I were the only ones representing our family.  Sadly this has become normal.  Most of the time we end up performing for like 3 people.  Apparently this year we found the magic time because the room was full of people.  So great!

I love to take the family to some kind of concert every Christmas.  This year we went to Kurt Bestor in Park City.  It was amazing.  A small venue, so up close and personal.  I really loved it.  Hopefully this is our new Christmas tradition.

We had a Spjute Christmas Eve which is always an adventure.  Greg led off smoking brisket for everyone (hopefully we keep this tradition going), then caroling, talents, and testimonies.  This year we attempted to perform "Un Poco Loco" from the Disney movie "Coco".  We didn't quite know what we were signing up for when we picked this song.  It's hard!  We killed it, as in actually butchered it, but the family still loves us.  

Christmas Day was nice because we just opened presents and then relaxed/played new games the rest of the day.  We had to wake the kids up at 9 to finally open presents.  The magic of little kids being excited has disappeared around here.  I still love my big kids, it just makes for a different Christmas.

We headed to St George for the rest of Christmas break.  We did a good amount of jeeping, with no injuries or wrecks so that's a plus.  We tried to go bowling but struck out (ha ha) and ended up playing mini golf.  We're not very good at mini golf.  And of course a bike ride.  Kate usually hangs out with us, but not this time.  She has a new boyfriend and she was with him far more than she was with us.  I'm trying not to have hurt feelings over this.  Circle of life and all that.

We have a new tradition of going to the Sakura Steakhouse in St George around New Years.  Its so much fun to have them cook for us right at the table.  And the food is so good.  Hopefully next year we'll have reservations dialed in so we don't have to wait so long.

We (minus Kate for above reasons) did a crazy hike one day.  We hiked to the top of Mollie's Nipple (horrible name I know).  This hike is 2 miles long but in one mile I think we gained like 1700 feet of elevation.  It was intense.  The views at the top were amazing.  And now I can look at it from far away and think 'holy cow we climbed all the way to the top of that.'  An adventure for sure.

The view from the top of Mollie's Nipple

Beautiful decorations for our RS Christmas dinner

Truck full of cereal!

November/Thanksgiving

 November was full of family time, which we love!  We started the month off with family dinner at our house.  I think we had everyone here except for Ethan and the Dittos.  We even got to see Season and her family.  It was wonderful.

We started and ended the month in St George.  Kate thought she moved away from us, but we fooled her.  We happened to be down there at the same time that Marcus had a lacrosse game for BYU, so we finally got to see him play.  That was a lot of fun.  Made it to the temple with my girls, and of course did some jeeping.

Thanksgiving was a little different this year.  Tracy had Thanksgiving dinner at her house on Sunday before actual Thanksgiving.  Our whole family was able to go, so we decided we didn't need to do a whole other Thanksgiving meal for the big day.  So we kept up some of our traditions, like starting the day with a turkey trot (the kids love this tradition so much) followed by a polar plunge.  At least as much of a polar plunge as you can do in St George.  This year there was a bit of an algae bloom, so Sage and I were the only ones who got in.  In the afternoon, instead of slaving away in the kitchen we all went and played pickle ball.  It was kind of perfect because everyone else was eating so we had the courts all to ourselves.  And then we had a feast of enchiladas and chips and guac.  My kind of Thanksgiving dinner.  

The rest of the weekend was full of biking, hiking and jeeping.  All in all a good trip.

We had our annual neighborhood food drive and I forgot to take pictures.  But we had a great turnout and collected the most food ever!