Christmas in Ohio

Our kids hadn't been on an airplane since their last trip to Ohio in 2013.  Which meant that Jasmine doesn't remember flying on a plane at all.  She was very excited for this adventure.

One of our first orders of business was to head to the tree farm.  One of my favorite Christmas traditions in my childhood was our trip to this tree farm on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  We would all take off in various directions and try to pick our favorite tree, and then get lost trying to find it again to show others, and try to somehow debate the merits of trees we couldn't see side by side.

Utah doesn't have tree farms, though.  So this was the only chance for my kids!

This late in the season, we were nearly the only customers.

I think the kids really liked trying to use the saw.  They did a great job.

Though, as always, the hot chocolate was the biggest highlight.

My mom insisted on buying toys for the kids right when we got there. I tried to hold her off, since I knew Christmas presents were right around the corner, but I'm glad she overruled me.  It gave them something to play with for the week before Christmas came.

For Tyler, it proved that he really would spend hours and hours working on perler beads, given the chance.  He made an entire Minion army, with some help from Jasmine.

Every Minion needs a banana, you see.  Very important.

We helped set up the Christmas Village, which is a daunting, but fun task.

And we found some local Christmas events to go and see.

A nature center near Kirtland had a "life sized Candy Land" game where we used game cards to walk around an learn nature and trees and such.

And Kirtland was a great trip.  They had a "scavenger hunt" page for the kids to find certain nativities, and Kaitlyn got really into that.

My brother had a friend that hooked us up with hockey tickets, which was great fun.  Kaitlyn was quite miffed at us for leaving before the game was over to beat traffic.  We were supposed to see the WHOLE thing!!

Gary and his family flew in on Christmas Eve with their family present- a Nintendo Switch.  Tyler had seen ads for it and wanted the Mario Odyssey game very badly, so he was thrilled.

In fact, Tyler had watched so many youtube videos of people playing the game, that he would watch over Gary's shoulder and tell him where to find all of the hidden objects.  Which was a little concerning, since he's never even played the game before, but quite helpful.

I usually buy semi-coordinated jammies for the kids, but this year, I just didn't see what I was looking for.  So I thought it would be better to sew them.  It was cheaper, I'll say that much, but they were more work than I hoped.  Kaitlyn gave me pants to copy that were 6 inches too short, I didn't have a good pattern for Jasmine's, and I ran out of fabric for Daddy's.  But it did make a nice Christmas Card picture.

And the kids were excited to wear them for Christmas.  I have a lot of memories of waiting at the top of the stairs until 7 am, since that was the soonest my parents let us down to open presents.

And then, time to see what Santa brought!

Jasmine was absolutely floored when she opened her big present.  Kaitlyn got a "mer-ican girl doll" for Christmas last year, and Jasmine had been quite happy with the cast off "crazy hair dolls", which were knockoffs with terrible hair.  But she loved playing with her big sister so much, that Santa must have realized that she would take good care of the doll, even if she was a bit young for one.

There were a lot of doll toys this Christmas, actually.  Clothes and ice skating outfits and a tiny little violin, too.

Tyler got an R2D2 that is controlled by an iPad app.  I liked it when he made the robot "dance" to the cantina song.

After Santa and breakfast, it was time to sit around and open everything else.  We have traditionally set the kids loose to buy each other presents in the dollar store, so this year, we had them buy presents for everyone that was there Christmas morning.  (I assured my brother that he didn't even have to take them home with him: it was all about letting my kids think about each person and get them something.  Dollar store items don't need to be kept long.)

Kaitlyn decided to get Gary an air horn.  Which we all sorta regretted, but it was totally hilarious.  Maya got a little dry erase board, and Gary spent most of the morning writing riddles for Kaitlyn to solve on there.

Kaitlyn's favorite present was the ice skates we bought her.  She had been asking for a long time, but skates aren't cheap, and we wanted to make sure she really was going to stick with it a bit first.

I made my mom a smaller version of my mountain picture.  I was pretty happy with how it turned out, even if packing it to check with our luggage was interesting.

I landed a spot at the kids table for Christmas dinner!

And then it was time to get back to the Oddysey.  And the puzzle.  And the biggest crossword puzzle of the year.

After Christmas, Kaitlyn's first order of business was to try out her new skates.  I'm glad Maya came along with us.  The rink was . . . not the best.  Ice was bumpy, and the rental skates were bad.  But we had a great time.

My friend Kavitha was in town to visit her family, too, and I'm so glad they were able to stop by and visit!

We discovered the "most awesome library EVER!" It had a huge area with lots of games and things for the kids to investigate.  Kaitlyn loved the wooden skittles game, and Tyler loved some games along the wall to make balls fall down in patterns.  I think Jasmine's favorite was the little mice in the cage.

But we had to hurry home because Kevin's family was coming over for gingerbread houses!  Kevin just got his Great Dane puppy, Zane, a few weeks before, and he was the sweetest, chill guy.

Tyler asked for a "picture of all the family all to-ged-der", and I'm so glad!

My neice Madison brought her new baby Brayden, who was absolutely adorable.

First great grandchild!

My brother Mike sent my parents an Amazon Home for Christmas, which meant my kids spent days saying "Alexa!" and then asking crazy questions or asking it to play music.  (I don't want one of those any time soon!)  Jasmine especially liked dancing along to music she picked out.

It was a lot of chaos in two weeks, but we had such a great time!

December in Ohio, mostly

My dad collapsed shortly after Thanksgiving, and was rushed to the hospital.  The first few days were rough for my family, and it was tough to be way over here in Utah and unable to help and comfort them.  The toughest part of medical issues is always the periods where you don't know what happened or what is going to happen or how to fix anything.  It was just scary.  When we figured out that we had enough frequent flyer miles to send me out, I flew out by myself to help my mom.

Thankfully, it turned out that his heart had caused a mild stroke.  The new pacemaker they put in should prevent future problems, and the stroke missed critical areas.  So while there was a lot of recovery and re-learning to happen, he has continued to improve ever since.  I'm glad I was there, though.  My mom needed the extra ear to listen to all of the doctors and organize all of the information that came in from all the sources.  I am amazingly grateful that my husband had the perfect job for me to be able to do that trip.  He travels all the time, so he had frequent flyer miles, but when he is in town, he can work from home if needed.  And no one wants to be audited in December, so he was available to take the kids everywhere they needed to be.

I told my dad this was his victory picture. He was SO excited to get out of that hospital and away from all of his awful wires and tubes.

And I was able to help get a lot of Christmas decorations down from the attic and spread around the house.

And then I flew back home. I had ten days home in December, so they were busy days.  I had to prioritize things, and some things just went out the window. I have made calendars with family pictures for both sides of my family for years, and this year I just had to ditch that.  We didn't even put up the Christmas tree.  It needs to be re-strung, and we weren't even going to be in town to enjoy it.  Instead, I sewed like crazy.

We went to Jasmine's show, too.  She has been going to my friend's "Singer's Club", which is adorable.  The night of the show, I was doing a favor for a friend that is a hairdresser, and she offered to do Jasmine's hair so that I could help longer.  Deal!  Jasmine felt SO special with her head of curls!

I'll save you the "Where's Waldo" in the group shot.

Jasmine told me the other day that she wishes she could go to Singer's Club every single day.  :)

She even still had her curls the next day for ice skating lessons.

Later that week, we went to Christopher's work party.  Which is actually a lot of fun.

And that turned out to be my last outing with long hair for a while.  I've often had long hair, and often short.  This was probably the longest I have let it go, though.  I've never had it get stuck when I sit in a chair so I can't turn my head properly.  That drove me crazy.  Time to chop it off!

We even squeezed in a trip to the newest Star Wars movie.  Jasmine has fallen asleep every year we go.

And with that, we all headed back to Ohio for Christmas with my family!

November

Not too much happened in November.  I played piano for the Primary Program, and that always absorbs a lot of time for practicing.  I took the girls to Disney on Ice, which was a huge hit.

We went to some BYU football games as well.  That season tanked pretty badly.  But Tyler found a bratwurst in a big giant donut, so he was happy.

I spent (probably too much) time making matching Christmas pajamas. I've always bought them before, but this year I didn't find ones I liked at a good price. 

After all that effort, I decided that would be our Christmas card pictures for the year. 

We also installed a new front door.

They ended up being a much bigger project than we hoped.  We found out when picking the doors that our opening is actually too small for double doors.  We looked into a single door with side lights, but we knew we would regret that when we had big furniture to bring in.  So we only had a few options for skinny double doors, and went with ones that fit the style of our house.  And then the one day, "pop them in the old opening" project turned into two long days of frustration, but they are hung.  We even got a code entry, which is awesome.  Painting will have to wait until spring, since you have to take them off and to paint and let dry before putting them back in. We like them in the meantime, at least!

Halloween

The first costume that we finished was actually the least enthusiastic participant.

But since his name is Chewy, it was kinda inevitable.

In all honesty, Chewy is the most attached to Christopher.  He loves that dog, and gives him all kinds of food.  The adult that gives the most food wins, in the dog's eyes.  But we got the dog partially for Tyler, and so we've encouraged the dog to bond with Tyler as much as we can.  He seems to view kids a bit differently, but he knows that Tyler is his friend that takes him on walks every day.  So we made Tyler into Chewie's best friend, too.

And since I already had a Leia costume, I figured I would join the group.

That left the girls.  Kaitlyn decided that she wanted to be a figure skater for Halloween.  The good news is that any costume I got her would get a lot of use at ice skating lessons.  The bad news is that figure skating dresses can get expensive very quickly.  By a tiny little miracle, I managed to find a perfect costume at the thrift store for only $2.50.  She has worn it almost every week to practice since then, so it was a fantastic buy!

Jasmine, on the other hand, couldn't quite decide.  She was planning on the Moana outfit for a long time, but then went through almost everything in the dress up closet the day before.  She finally settled on the skirt that hides butterfly wings, and that works for me!

All three girl costumes had detailed hair, which was new for me.  I'm not the best at hair, but it was a fun stretch.

I had also found the ice skates at a thrift store, but when I took them to a guy to sharpen them, he told me that they were old and made to flimsy for real use.  I'm glad we had them so that she could "wear" them for her costume.  That alone was worth the $6.

We had fun at the annual neighborhood party.

And we went to the pumpkin patch as well.  The corn pit is always their favorite place.

And of course, we carved our pumpkins at the last minute, too.

I helped Tyler make a decent gecko.

The other pumpkins weren't as successful, however.  I could pretty much tell Kaitlyn made an ice skate, but Jasmine's cat completely fell in.  She had fun making her blob, though!

September rolled into October

I enjoy getting back to the routine of a school year.  This year has been especially nice.  I get three hours to myself every morning, but also some extra time with just my buddy Jasmine in the afternoons.  I still get my 20 minutes of time with just Tyler in the mornings, since the girls start school earlier than he does.  (That ends next year, and I'm really sad about that.)

Kaitlyn really loved the ice skating lessons over the summer, and begged to continue them.  I wasn't sure at first, but when her gymnastics teacher said that she wasn't going to be teaching this year, we caved.  I wish the rink wasn't a half an hour away, but she really does love it so much.  I decided that if I was already driving down there, we might as well sign Jasmine up, too.  (Tyler told us he didn't care for it.  "It is too slippery.") So Tuesdays were now taken over by ice skating lessons.



A few weeks into school, Kaitlyn asked if we could start violin lessons for her, which was actually a big step.  She had asked to quit piano because she didn't like the extra work of practicing, and she knew we would expect extra effort if she was in violin lessons.  Thankfully, she stepped right up to the plate.

She has even been helping Jasmine learn.  As much as Jasmine's pride will let her listen to her big sister, at least.


Let me see what other pictures I can find . . .

We had a Harry Potter themed meal for September 1st.  I love that Kaitlyn is old enough to share my nerdy love for those books!  The butterbeer was the best part of that meal.

Every time I go to the school carnival, I am really grateful that my girls go to such a small school.  Fun, but not totally chaotic!

Kaitlyn had fun building a castle for her school project.

And then, we lost track of Daddy for a while.

He has been dreaming of putting solar panels on our roof for years.  He's had a lot of practice with the system at the cabin, and then on each of our trailers.  He even planned it out and got the permit with the city a year ago, but we saw the power company trying to make policies that weren't good for homes with solar.  And then he heard about the final version of that plan, which had a very quick deadline for you to be "grandfathered" in.  Which meant it was now or never on the solar system.  Before I knew it, my garage was filled with panels and rails and wire and conduit, and within weeks, it was all up and running on our roof.  We had companies popping up constantly for the last couple of years offering to install a system for us.  He even got quotes from many of them (most of them were rather taken aback at the guy that knew more than them and started quizzing them about every detail about their quotes), but the lowest ones were close to $25,000.  We ended up paying about $12,000 in parts, but will get $5,000 back in a tax rebate.  We decided there was a reason there were so many solar companies- they were making a big profit! It was a lot of work for him to do it himself, but I think he also really enjoyed that project, too.

I started a project of my own, in part just so I could be out there working on something while he was.  I had planned this out slowly for a year, but finally took the plunge.  I found out that it was much easier than I thought it would be! 

From the inspiration wood lath art on etsy (that cost hundreds of dollars) . . .

 To the sketch . . .

To the final project . . .

that looks great on my wall.

It is quite huge, actually.  Which is on purpose, because that wall was huge.  I had put up pictures low by the piano when we first moved in a decade ago, and have since decided that I should have something big and high to show off how tall that wall is.  And since wood lath is cheap, my project cost $40.  I'm really proud of it!