Jasmine's 6th birthday

Jasmine's birthday comes last, each year, but hers was planned the earliest this time.  I took the girls to a Disney on Ice show last fall, and we all really loved it.  So when Christopher got an email that he could by tickets for the next show, which was a week after Jasmine's birthday, for $10, he bought a dozen of them.  There were moments where Jasmine wasn't entirely certain about the birthday party she didn't pick out, but we knew she would have a great time (and she did!).

On her actual birthday, we mainly opened presents.  She got a gift card to Bath and Body Works from Grandma and Grandpa Jones, since Grandma got to see over Christmas how much she loves that store.  Jasmine was totally in heaven picking out her big stash.

And then, a week later, it was time for the party!  I'm so grateful that her Aunt and Uncle said we could have the party at their house downtown.

She told me she didn't want a cake this year.  Just ice cream.  When I asked her if she maybe wanted an ice cream cake, her eyes went wide.  "What's that?!?"  Dairy Queen had a lot of cool flavors of cake, but the Minion won her over right away.

It was actually a LOT of ice cream for us all.  But totally worth it!

Then we walked over to the arena for the show.

We had quite the crew!  Our family of five, her Aunt, Uncle and two cousins, and then three friends from her preschool class last year.

I bought a 24 pack of foam light sticks for party favors.  Light up toys are all the rage at these shows, we found.

Goofy kiddos!

A birthday snapshot of Jasmine:

*We generally call Tyler by his name, and Kaitlyn by hers, but Jasmine has many nicknames.  Jas-Jas, Jas-ah-mah, and sometimes she likes to go by her middle name, Marie.  She's just too spunky for a boring name!

*She has ended up with many hobbies that match her sister, which I sometimes feel bad about.  I want her to be her own person, too.  But she really does love to do things that Kaitlyn does.  She was thrilled to bits when the thrift store had Heelys in her size so that she could learn to skate around all day like Kaitlyn does.  She loves to have an American Girl doll just like Kaitlyn.  I put her in ice skating lessons just because we were already driving there, and the first session was a bit rough for her.  But now, she loves to zip around the rink almost as much as Kaitlyn does.  And she felt left out of violin lesson, so we arranged for our half an hour lesson to be 25 minutes of Kaitlyn, and a 5 minute session for Jasmine.

*She is such a bright little girl!  She started on easy readers last summer a bit, and then for the first half of the school year, I would read to her for her homework.  And then one day, I handed her the book, and it turns out she could just  . . . read!  I love seeing that whole new world open up for her.  She loves to be included in that secret code, and wants to read everything she can.  And she is nearly the top of her class in math!

*She loves Singer's Club!  She loves to sing and dance around, and being on stage is a lot of fun for her, too.

*She absolutely LOVED school this year with Mrs. Orton!  Every day when I picked her up, she would ramble on about what she had for snack that day, and what all of her friends got up to.  But she has a truly special place in her heart for her beloved Mrs. Orton.  She runs her classroom with exactness and kindness, and is just amazing.  The day before her year-end test, Jasmine asked me if she did badly enough, could she stay with Mrs. Orton again next year?  I assured her that Mrs. Orton knew how smart she is, and "throwing" the test wouldn't actually change anything, but I had to just laugh.

*She is almost done with mispronouncing words, but I refuse to correct her on the last few because they are just too cute.  A primary song sings about how a father "protects me", and she sings "por-tec me", for example.

*Jasmine also really, really loved going to Grandma and Grandpa's house.  She has asked many times since when she can go back.  I hope we can make that happen again soon.

*She has recently become enamored with babies.  Tyler has barely outgrown that stage, I think.  But Jasmine sees a little toddler or baby and dashes over to say hi and try to help it with  . . . something.  Which is quite adorable, even if sometimes a bit intrusive.

*Jasmine told me recently that when she grows up, she either wants a job giving  "maj-jah-jes" (and she really is good at massages), or else she wants to work at McDonalds.  Which is I guess high on her list because I generally refuse to take her there.  She told me that it is very busy there, so it would be a lot of work, but lots of people means she would get more money, so that sounded good to her.

*And most of all, I love her sweet snuggles!

Valentine's Day

Tyler has basically aged out of Valentine's Day at school, but the girls still had some fun.  Kaitlyn needed to make a box, and decided she would like a Stranger Things box. With cute Harry Potter Valentines to give away.

One character really likes Eggo waffles, I guess, which for us meant that we had enough frozen waffles to last months and months.

I signed up to do a "center" in her class for many of the holidays this year.  When I searched Pinterest for a Valentine's activity, I found an awesome idea to create Binary code from pony beads on pipe cleaners.  It took a bit of work to make sheets for everyone, but her teacher absolutely loved it!  My favorite part was switching it from putting all the beads on a bracelet, like the Pinterest person had, to forming the pipe cleaner into the letter of the code they just made.  I had trouble figuring out how to keep the letters on there- I tried staples - but poking a hole though and folding the pipe cleaner back worked perfectly.  And I think the kids had fun, too.  I told them they were learning a special "robot language".

Kaitlyn was sad that "you never help in MY class!" so I volunteered in her room, too.  I manned the cookie decorating station.

Bryce Canyon

We found the cheap deal for a hotel at Bryce in the winter again, and decided to go for it.  We really love that park!

Our first order of business in the morning was to check out the ice skating rink.  It hadn't been open the other times we had traveled there, and since the girls had been in lessons since last summer, they were really excited to check it out.  I think it might have been the last day it was open in our unusually warm winter, but at least it was open!

And we had the entire rink to ourselves.  For the $2 to rent Jasmine's skates, since Kaitlyn and I brought ours.

We were in heaven.  The workers even played Disney music for us to skate around to.

The only reason I was eventually able to convince them to leave was because Kaitlyn had a minor fall and finally decided she was ready to meet up with Daddy and Tyler.

Previously, we had only walked along the ridge, or visited overlook trails.  But this time we decided that the kids were good enough hikers to hike down an into the valley.  Kaitlyn was worried about her hurt knee from ice skating, but afterward, she agreed that it wasn't nearly as bad as she thought it might be.  And we all loved the scenery!  It was a great hike.

I'm terrible at selfies.  So Chris decided to take a picture of me trying to take a picture.

One of my husband's favorite parts of the visitors center is geeking out at their solar panel station. 

And of course, we had to spend a lot of time at the pool!

I told the kids they could each get one small item in the shop, and Kaitlyn picked this non-descript geode to break with her class.  In fact, her teacher had bought some geodes to break together that very next week.  The ones her teacher bought were pretty boring looking inside, but Kaitlyn's was amazingly sparkly! 

As a side note, Kaitlyn's class reward system involved tickets.  You got tickets for doing good things, and could turn them in for rewards.  But the kids started their own black market with tickets pretty quickly.  They would sell each other bits of their lunch for tickets.  And in this case, Kaitlyn made a killing selling off the bits of her geode that broke off to everyone in her class.  She said that by the end, no one else had any tickets left but her!

Kaitlyn's 10th birthday

We knew what Kaitlyn wanted to do for her birthday party a long time in advance.

Ice skating party!  They basically give you a discount on the "public skate" admission and a table to have cake at, which was just great.  We cut a lot of matching scarves to give the kids as party favors, which doubled as a way to tell which kids were part of our group in that sea of people.

They had a great time! 

A little bit about Kaitlyn:

*She loves all things FLUFFY.  Hence, this was some of her favorite birthday presents:

Fluffy and soft and unicorns and slightly nerdy, glittery phrase on it.  Totally her.  She isn't into pink or frilly.  Nothing too "feminine" or dainty.  But "soft" will get her every time.  She sleeps in a nest of about 17 blankets on her upper bunk perch, usually with small piles of books surrounding her.


As a good example of herself, this is what she picked out with Grandma's gift card.

Unicorn knee high socks, a book to read, something to create with, and a Bop it.  She really like all of the pillows, but they took up too much of her gift card all at once, and this was about getting LOTS of things.

*Something I'm really proud of this year is that she CHOSE to take violin lessons.  I need to explain why that is big.  She took piano lessons for quite a few years, but it became a little battle, both with herself and with us.  She liked piano when it was easy, but got quickly upset when it didn't come easy.  We were the enemy for enforcing the metronome.  And I get it: piano is hard, and metronomes make no one happy inside.  But when she was just miserable about struggling through new song after new song, and begged to quit, we let her.  Both her mom and dad had exactly one year of piano lessons, so we didn't feel like we could do otherwise without being hypocrites.  And we felt like it was okay since she would get violin at school.  In the end, if she wasn't willing to put in the work, then we shouldn't pay for lessons. We were clear with her why she was quitting: if you aren't willing to put in the work, we aren't paying for lessons.

4th grade is a big change in the orchestra world at her school.  Kindergarten through third, all children learn the violin together.  But 4th-7th graders were placed into an upper and lower orchestra (upper and lower half of each grade), and they can switch to cello or viola or base.  Kaitlyn ended up in the upper orchestra, first violin, but came home after the first couple weeks of that and said she wanted violin lessons.  We reminded her of what we expected if she was in lessons, and she told us that she would put in the effort.  She just didn't like having the teacher's time so divided among the sections, and wanted help to keep up with all of the older kids.

At her first lesson, I think she said about two sentences total.  She mostly nodded with wide eyes.  So I wasn't sure what she thought of this new teacher.  When we headed to the car, I asked her if she liked it, and she said "THAT WAS AWESOME!!" She loved to have the personal advice on how much bow to use and what in particular she needed to work on in each piece of music.

Since then, she has continued to practice hard every day, and by the end of this school year, she was the third chair of the first violins.  As a 4th grader, in a 4-7 grade orchestra! 

*Speaking of violin lessons, her violin teacher has twin girls who are nearly two years old now.  She has been talking a lot lately about babysitting next year, and has been practicing with our own family.  We go out on dates and leave her in charge often now, and she does a great job.  I told her that if she wants babysitting jobs, then the best way to get them is to play with kids she meets.  Parents want to hire girls who genuinely like playing with their kids, and who they see their kids enjoy as well.  So she decided to work on these twin girls, who always eyed me with suspicion because they don't like mom being occupied by violin lessons.

And now they adore her.  They get so excited to play with "Kaken" and love to chase her around their backyard.  They are still pretty attached to their mama, and Kaitlyn gets a little sad when they get shy, but she does a great job taking care of them whenever she can.

*And of course, this is the year she fell in love with ice skating.  She has been asking for lessons since the first time we took her skating, and I finally caved last summer.  Since then, she has flown through all the lessons at the rink.  I wish she had picked something closer to home and cheaper in the long run, but sometimes you can't help what you fall in love with! 

*She still loves Studio C, but her biggest favorite right now is an online game called Roblox.  She would stay on there all day if I let her! She also loves Stranger Things (a scary show on Netflix), Sherlock, and Harry Potter.  She's almost done reading the entire series.  Oh, and Imagine Dragons. 

*Mostly, I am just so impressed with how kind and happy she is! 

New Year's and Tyler's birthday

Christopher's brother wasn't able to come up for New Year's this time, but we still had a nice time at the cabin. 

Daddy spent a long time trying to figure out how to make the snake into a ball, but never got it.  And then Tyler figured it out one day!

Great snow for sledding!  Okay snow for snowmen.

Kaitlyn was just about the only one still awake at midnight.

Unfortunately, by the time we got to Tyler's birthday, Jasmine was sick.  I gave Tyler a lot of options for what kind of birthday party he could do, and I thought for sure he would invite all of his friends from school to go swimming at an indoor pool.  But he asked to bring a neighbor family and go bowling.  (Dad was his scout leader, and the oldest comes over all the time to play, so that was a great choice.)

Both families had some bugs going around, so it was mostly Dads and kids bowling.  I brought Jasmine at the tail end with some pizza and cake.

Happy 12th birthday, Tyler!

The annual snapshot, late as always:

*Tyler still loves his lizards.  He talked about Yoda a lot this year, and it took me 2/3 of the year to figure out that it wasn't because he likes Star Wars, but because the pet gecko in his classroom is named Yoda.  It might seem like that should have been obvious, but the word "Yoda" just popped up in otherwise normal sentences.  "That's Yoda-awesome!"  "Could you hand me the book, Tyler?" "Is it a Yoda-book?"  Or sometimes, it was just all the lyrics to a made up song.  "Yo-da, yo-da, yoooo-da".

*One of Tyler's favorite conversation starters is "would you radder."  As in, "would you radder be really, really super amazing fast . . . OR  . . . have a cheeseburger?"  His other favorite is "what would you do if there was a machine that could ________?"  Sometimes the machine can take you places instantly, or make lots and lots of something random, and sometimes the machine can do  . . . whatever Tyler was just doing.

*Tyler has taken over the job as the official dog-walker.  He does a great job leading his buddy around the neighborhood, and now Chewy's ears perk up when he hears me call Tyler's name, just in case I'm telling him it is time to go on that walk.  He is also the only one in the family that actually likes Chewy licking them.  Once he gets going, Chewy will just lick and lick and lick, which everyone else sees as a bit gross, but Tyler just loves it.  And if he licks all the way up his arm, Tyler will end up in fit of giggles while getting his ticklish armpit licked. 

*Tyler plays Roblox with Katilyn a lot, and Mario with Daddy, but when he is on his own, his favorite is a Transformers game on his kindle.  He is always telling me about the next character that he is saving up to buy, and how much it will cost.

*He has done a good job passing the sacrament at church, now that he is 12.  There have been a lot of details that make us laugh as quietly as we can, like the time he took his scripture case with him, or how he sometimes leans against the pews in a GQ pose while he waits.  He often stares at people while he waits for them, and has a funny little spin he does when he figures out he is facing the wrong way.  But the deacons have been really kind in helping him figure it all out and letting him keep the same route, and I think it has been really good for him.

*Tyler's friend Brenden has been coming over to play ever since he stayed at their house last summer, and it has been great.  They often play a bit separately - Tyler on one thing, and Brenden on another - but Tyler is pretty new to the idea of playing together with a friend the whole time, anyway.  I'm just so happy he has a friend!

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!