Long enough

Apparently we missed some blog posts recently. 

Christmas went well. All the kids enjoyed their presents. We made egg rolls and had Mike's parents over for dinner. The only complaint that anyone has was that we didn't have a white Christmas

For the 12 days of Christmas this year we did the following:

Day 1: the Tuesday after Christmas we went to the Gateway Lights On! - we actually went to Gallivan Plaza first accidentally. It was really pretty, but after realizing we were in the wrong place we took the train to the Gateway and saw the lights there. We had Panda Express, played in fountain (the kids thought the risk of getting wet was worth it (and no one actually got wet anyway)) 

One of Mike's Christmas present was a new faucet for our kitchen sink because Mike has hated the faucet we have ever since we moved in. Before going to the light show Mike installed the new faucet and ever since then has been appreciating it every time he turns on the faucet in the kitchen.

Day 2: made homemade Eggnog, had a fire, and read Christmas books.

Day 3: we went to Crystal Hot Springs w/Plastows. It was very fun. The kids all were brave and Elizabeth loved playing a "oh no! You are washing out to sea! I saved you!" game.

Day 4: we made bird Christmas tree ornaments, which is Christmas tree ornaments made from pine cones dipped in peanut butter and sprinkled with lots of bird seed. We gathered the pine cones at the church and went to the nearby park to assemble them and then hang them on the trees. Did the birds actually appreciate them? No one knows. We had fun and would probably do it again next year.

Day 5: we made fudge and went around and delivered it to our neighbors. This year it was incredibly difficult to secure any marshmallow cream so we were only able to make two pans of fudge much to the dismay of many of our children. The fudge turned out well.

Day 6: New Year's Eve. Are perennial tradition on New Year's Eve is to assemble a large Lego set together and this year we got some Lego Dreamzzz (because Lego elves are no longer in production.) The kids enjoyed putting them together and also putting together all of the previous years Lego sets. By now they have a giant Lego elf Castle so that took a decent chunk of the day.

Day 7: New Year's Day. Since Mike had the day off of work we invited the Rogers over and had a game day with them. We ended up playing no thanks and also small world. The kids had a fun time all playing together as well. It is fun to play games with them.

Day 8: on day 8 we had a Christmas movie marathon. We watched lots of traditional Christmas movies which we have owned for many years and we also watched some new movies that we had never seen before (and which we might never see again).

Day 9: we made gingerbread men. They were cute and delicious. The kids enjoyed decorating them and eating them.

Day 10: the planned activity for day 10 was to go sledding, however since there was no snow we prepped for 12th night instead. fix the days 

Day 12: 12th Night -on 12th night we started a new tradition by having everyone go to the grocery store together each person wandering the store until they found something that they wanted to add to dinner and then getting back together and revealing all of our ingredients and trying to figure out what to make using all of the things that we bought. We ended up having bacon sausage hash brown goulash, multiple types of bread, and a salad, and also a smoothie. It was rather fun we will probably do it again in the future. Sarah got the crown and we also ended up watching an Ernest movie.

Rea and Sara have been going to play practice all the time for the last few weeks (they are going to be in an OBT production in February). They are excited about it and having a fun time.

The play will be showing from February 2nd to February 24th at the Draper historic theater, so they would be super happy if anyone wanted to attend on any of those evenings and see them perform. Tell us when you plan on going so that we can see you.

Sara has also signed up for Gymnastics with Brooklyn, and Gideon has signed up for a Ninja course class. Both of them have been once and are enjoying it.

Sara says gymnastics is the best! We get to do bar, beam, floor, and vault. She got to swing all the way around the bar. Mike is jealous, and wants to be a monkey now.

One more thing about Sara, with the start of the New Year Sara has entered young women's. She is very excited about it, and it is fun to have her going to young women's activities with Rea.

Gideon is also now also an activity dude. He enjoyed his first activity too

We have also been making progress on our house addition that we are planning on getting. We have narrowed it down to one contractor and payed for them to draw us up plans. In order for them to have accurate measurements of our house they came through it with a magical camera and took 3D pictures of every single room. Timmy and the cat were very interested in the guy who is doing it and did not want to leave the room that he was i.

Timmy has formed a dungeons and dragons group. Logan Gideon Timmy and Dimitri have met together a few times now and fought bandits explored caves and are starting to adventure in their first dungeon. They already lit a door on fire and dropped a cage on someone so they're up to the usual hijinx. Mike has been having a hard time keeping up with all of the sessions that they want to play because being a dungeon master is actually some work.

Ray was recently called as the young women's president for her group of young women's. She just attended her first meeting and seems to be pretty happy about it. She liked the fact that Logan was also an attendee.

Whenever it is time to make dinner Elsa has been volunteering to help cook with us. Alison is very good at coming up with things for her to do Mike mostly has her paint pans with oil so that things don't stick to them when we cook.

Let's end this post. It is long enough now, so I'm just going to add some recent photos and call it good.