The week after Christmas yielded some quiet days. In fact, I don’t think there was a single event listed on our calendar. We spent a lot of time snuggling near the fire, catching up on movies, and watching Chase devote himself to the total immersion in one of his favorite Christmas gifts, a new game for his PS4. It pretty much completely sucked him in for the two week break. I'm a super good mom. We got a little fresh snow on Christmas and so Troy took the girls sledding one day.
Here’s Emma trying to stay awake for family reading by the fire. She failed but very comfortably so.
Here’s Romney showing off her new dress that was her present from her Auntie Sheri. It’s significant because it’s an adulte size! (XS but still....)
One fun afternoon was spent as the ice rink. Ok, the ice rink itself wasn’t that fun. It was super duper crowded and the ice was so choppy it was painful. But we were in excellent company. Our good friend Heather and her two boys Nick and Luke came to town from California and we got together with them plus a couple of other boys from Chase’s kindergarten class to enjoy some crappy skating and great company.
These boys are just absolutely huge now. All freshmen in high school - so crazy to think that they met as kindergartners.
Then, just a day or two before the new year, Peter and the rest of the St. George crew arrived. We decided to meet up at the Aquarium in Sandy as they arrived in the valley. We had thought that this would be a great idea but since it happened to be the same great idea that everyone else had it was actually a terrible idea. I've never seen the place so packed before. We did not stay very long.
Iva loves her cousin Chase.
I know they were hoping for a ton of snow to play in but there just wasn’t much. We filled our time with trips to the zoo and letting the grownups chat while the kids played and argued and played and ate except for Chase who stayed upstairs with a PS4 and a monitor. He was pretty happy with this arrangement.
We did get a chance to head to the zoo for their annual zoo lights display. Slightly anti-climactic after Christmas but still fun. I've made it to the zoo a couple of times now but still haven't laid eyes on the two new polar bears. Hopefully one of these days
While our cousins were in town we had to abandon them for a bit on Saturday morning to head to the annual Preslar family Christmas Party. Sam and Kathleen very generously hosted and we had a great time enjoying soup and appetizers and a great spread of Christmas cookies. Sam's son Noah has taken to enjoying music on LP records - he's got this cool little record player up in his room that he and Chase and funnily enough Emma went up to enjoy. Troy and his brothers as always really seemed to love being together and talking. Lots of great gifts, time chatting together and a peaceful morning.
As Christmas Eve was on a Sunday, so also was New Years Eve on a Sunday. We knew this would possibly make for a challenging day of celebration. But we wanted it to be fun. Sheri was a hero - she put together a really fun list of minute-to-win-in type games that she orchestrated throughout the day. Every hour or so she’d start up another one. Since we had so much time between post-church (barely past noon) and ringing in the new year (nearly 12 hours later) we spread out the games and invited our extended family to join us whenever they could. We had the company of cousin Kate and her Cameron early in the day. They played a TP-wrap game with us then brought bunnies over for everyone to snuggle.
I'm not going to lie - NYE got very very long. The games were fun - rug racing across the floor, skittles sorting, Kleenex box emptying - lots of fun. And also it was just a long long day. My dad came for a bit, my sister came for a bit, and we tried to get the kids to decide to go to bed early but every last kid was still awake at the stroke of the new year. Long day.
We survived. We survived New Year's Eve. We survived 2017. A lot happened and we welcome 2018 with open arms!
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