Christmas Vacation

 We went to St George for all of Christmas vacation.  It was glorious.  So nice to get away for an extended time with the whole family.  We did some biking, of course.  So nice to be able to do in December.  We used the grandparents Christmas present to go to Top Golf.  We're pretty much pro golfers.  And we did a lot of Jeeping.  Jake and Zack were very excited about this.  Kate got to try driving and did a great job on a hard trail.  Jake's dreams came true when we went with the Dixie 4X4 group on a Jeep ride.  We did Milt's mile with Milt himself.  It was fun to do some hard obstacles with good spotters.  Makes a huge difference.  I'm not a good spotter, in case you were wondering.  I had to get out of the Jeep a lot.  I can't handle staying in on scary parts.  I closed my eyes as Zack tried to do crazy things in his Jeep.  The fact that it's his daily driver doesn't seem to stop him.  Which is terrifying.  Anyway, we had a great time.  Jake and Kate made us good food and I cleaned it up.  Totally happy with these roles.  We celebrated New Years.  Kind of.  We're like the worst New Years people in the world.  We ate some food, played some games, and I think even the kids were in bed by 11:00.  Party people we are not.  

Most of December

 We started December out with our annual neighborhood food drive.  I think the same few people come every year, but as long as people come we'll keep doing it!  It always feels good to pull up to the food pantry with a car full of food.  

We got to spend a day with both of our extended families.  We got the annual Spjute rest home performance back on track after missions.  Always a good time.  We went straight from there to celebrate Greg's 80th birthday with everyone.  I hope I look as good as he does when I'm 80!

Our next weekend was a musical one.  Friday night we went to our annual Charlie Jenkins concert.  I love going to that every year.  We even got Zack home from school to join us!  The next night we went to a Peter Breinholt concert in SLC.  That was a blast from the past!  We walked around and looked at lights for a bit, and finished the night perfectly at Crown Burgers.

Christmas was so great.  We went to the Spjute homestead for Christmas Eve.  Really great to have everyone there (except the Ball Family).  It was a most excellent night.  Christmas with all teenagers is a different beast.  Definitely a holiday where I miss having littles around.  Jake and I just hung out reading and stuff until the kids finally woke up at 9:00.  I thought for sure Sage would wake everyone up earlier.  Even she is now truly a teenager.  The kids seemed happy with their stuff.  I was relieved to be done acquiring gifts.  The rest of the day we actually did nothing.  It was quite enjoyable.  A lazy Christmas with everyone here.  I'll take that every year.

Our small but mighty food drive.

Kate and Sage played a long song together.  This is how Sage arranged her music.

The traditional male singing of 'We Three Kings'

A few of the 60+ people gathered for Greg's birthday

Sage randomly made delicious brownies.  We all appreciated them.

Good ol' Peter

Jake's favorite new toy is the floor cleaner for the office.  Sage got to try it out.

Loved having Christmas Eve on a Sunday!

Delicious Christmas Eve dinner!

I love that the Dittos brought us the tradition of the burning of the goat!

Kate filled in for the kids.  She was the right size;)

Christmas Eve jammies!

The aftermath

November

 I really thought I posted about November.  Drat.  Anyway, we started the month off with sinus surgery for Jake.  He went in thinking it was going to be no big deal, and it was kind of a big deal.  He was pretty miserable.  Some people get all happy and nice on heavy drugs.  We learned that's not the case for Jake.  Kate tried to joke with him and it was not well received.  It does seem like a pretty miserable surgery, so I understand his misery.  

We had a fun weekend with all the family when everyone came up for Cousin Megan's farewell.  A bunch of us went to Top Golf.  That was our family's first time and it was fun!  Jake golfs, but none of the rest of us do so it was entertaining.  The whole family was at Megan's farewell.  She did a great job and it was fun to see everyone!

Thanksgiving was good fun.  The Johnson's joined us in St George, and it's always a party when the Johnson's are around.  We got to St George Tuesday night and the fridge wasn't working.  This is never a good thing, but especially not for Thanksgiving.  I almost told the Johnson's to turn around.  Luckily Zack was with us, and he's a genius when it comes to fixing things.  We experienced the miracle of the fridge in that the fridge worked enough to get us through Thanksgiving.  Kate put it best when she said, "you can't have miracles if you don't have problems."  Wise words.

We started off Thanksgiving day with a turkey trot along the dam.  Followed by a polar plunge into the reservoir.  There wasn't a ladder back up to the dock so after we jumped in we had to swim to the shore.  It wasn't very far, but it felt like I was swimming forever.  We immediately went to the hot tub where we discovered we could make water shoot up from the side of the hot tub.  So Sage sang and led us in a fountain performance.  It was just like the Bellagio in Vegas.  Then some of the boys entertained us with belly/back flop contests. 

We sent the boys off on a Jeep ride so we could get dinner ready.  Dinner was mostly good.  I still haven't managed to make a good turkey, but I don't care enough to do anything about it.  All in all it was a good weekend.  We did some bike rides, some jeeping, spent time with family, and ate good food.  Doesn't get better than that.

 

Random pic of our primary after we finished our program

October

 We finished up the bike season in October.  By the end of the season we're all pretty tired, so we're enjoying the break.  We had a race in Manti and then the state competition in Cedar.  Sage had a great race in Manti.  This whole year she and two other girls have finished really close to each other.  At the Manti race she was feeling really good the second lap, but for some reason decided she should stick with her to teammates.  They got to the section leading to the finish line and Sage slowed down, reached for her friend's hand, and they crossed the finish line holding hands.  I have to admit I was a bit surprised to see this.  Sage is a pretty intense, competitive girl.  But good for her I thought.  When race times were posted turns out the friend that she slowed down for actually crossed the line before Sage.  Of course.  On the way home Sage was very upset with herself.  She said, "Being kind does not feel good.  I'm never doing that again!"  Jake was happy to hear this;)  I would rather see her racing like that than taking everyone out so she can win.  Lessons were learned.  Just not sure what kind of lessons...

Kate got her tonsils out over fall break.  Poor girl.  She got them out in same day surgery in PC, where I work, so that was kind of fun.  For me at least.  Everything went well and the doctor said they definitely needed to come out.  Right after surgery we headed to St George so we could hang out there for the break.  Getting her tonsils out was definitely not fun, but Kate handled it really well.  Towards the end of her recovery she got pretty tired of it all, but I'd say her recovery was about as good as you can get for her age.

Sage had her state race in Cedar over fall break.  Our fall breaks mostly consist of mountain bike races these days.  I guess that won't last forever, so I'll try to enjoy it.  The race was in Cedar this year, and the league went out of their way to make this course difficult.  Sage did a great job.  She didn't have the race she was hoping for, which is a bummer, but her season overall was amazing.  She made huge improvements from the beginning to end of the season.  It was fun to see her hard work pay off.

Zack dumped his Jeep in a ditch.  By himself, in the evening, when no one knew where he was.  Miraculously he got out and made it home.  Not so miraculously he messed his axle up and spent most of fall break in St George trying to fix it.  

We made it to the St George temple open house.  Beautiful!

We road Gooseberry Mesa.  It was beautiful, but too technical for me.  And Sage.

Sage got an MRI because she was having sinus headaches.  But then her sinuses looked good.  So now she's just having headaches.

Reaching for the hand

The trio that road together all season

All the freshman girls.  They're fast!

My birthday bike ride.  All I'm going to say about my birthday is that it's not super fun having it over fall break, right before a race.  That is all.

The coaches Jake works with all year on the team.  They hang out in the finish zone to catch the kids before they fall off their bikes.

We actually carved pumpkins this year.

Kate had a Halloween piano recital for her students.  It was so great!  It's pretty amazing what she's done as a piano teacher.  I was so impressed that all of her students nailed their pieces.  Even the counting!

Kate's dance group.  Fun group of kids, but I think Kate's ready to be done with dances for a while.