Welcome to 2022! It's been a very crazy couple of years, so we are heading into this one more by peeking around the corner than leaping through the doorway. So far, it's still weird. But there are many blessings to count and much good to go with the bizarre stuff!
We rang in the new year with Peter and his family. They joined us last year as well, and I'm happy to say that as far as we can tell, they didn't deliver the same covidy gift they did last year. (wink wink). The rest of my family has opted out of cousin/sibling gift exchanges but Peter and I have decided that we still like to trade presents. So, pretty much as soon as they got here we all wanted to open presents. Of course we gave things like Dune t-shirts, Darth Vader pen-holders, Over The Garden Wall art and night lights, Harry Potter books, Mario legos...we are fanboys to the end. The only non-pop culture item given was to Iva - I gave her a sea monkey kit. I wasn't sure how it would go over but reports from St. George seem to be that the family is enjoying the new teeny tiny pets. We in return got equal measures of Star Wars books, Dune comics and the like. I myself got a big set of cool pens - my heart was all a-flutter. I do love me some colorful pens.
We got quite a bit of snow the day after Christmas, and it continued coming for a few days. About halfway through December we had had a huge storm, dumping nine inches at our house that Troy and I shoveled for hours. Then nothing much, even mostly melting away, until the 26th. The new snow was very welcome, despite the shoveling it required. It also afforded us a really great day of sledding on New Years Eve. Not everyone joined us - Sheri and all four of her kids of course but only Emma and I went along. We had a little trouble finding a sledding hill that wasn't packed, until I had the idea to go to our "Matthew Park" up above the capitol and just as it does every May, it provided a great park with beautiful views and few visitors. The sledding was slightly precarious as many of the really steep hills led directly to the road or to the playground equipment. I decided to take up a position at the bottom of the hills to stop any major collisions from happening. Iva did hit a tree pretty hard (oooops) but she wasn't hurt, but I'm pretty sure I stopped a couple of bad crashes into the playground even if I was slightly over-cautious on other runs.
We got home from sledding, grabbing a little pizza along the way, and after eating it decided we also needed a zoo trip that day. After all, getting outside and getting moving isn't that easy sometimes in the winter, especially with the crappy air we get around here in January. So why not? Plus this time we convinced the dads and Romney to join us. It wasn't a long visit, but walking around in the snow was grand.
How do you know when cousins are at our house? Because this:
Also there are people everywhere.
That night I tried my hand at the currently-sheik charcuterie board. I did ok, but not super great. I don't actually have a very big board at my house. But since I already had a ton of the types of food needed, I decided to put one together. They really are very pretty, even if you're a novice. And people just hover around you as you put it together, waiting to pounce on it as soon as you take one picture and then say GO.
We all agreed that we could not bear staying up all the way until midnight. We were just so tired! So...we found a youtube video with a live broadcast from Times Square in NYC so we could celebrate at 10. I had bought some cheap stuff at Smiths like party poppers and kazoos (that was a mistake) and 2022 headbands and stuff like that. I had also bought these bigger cardboard tubes filled with confetti that were supposed to blast the confetti into the air. We were frankly a little overwhelmed already by the amount of clutter and noise and craziness at our house. Like I said, the kazoos were a mistake. So I decided to not pull out the canons and just go with the little party poppers. But....they turned out to be totally lame and barely popped at all, the strings of confetti basically just falling out on the floor instead of shooting into the air and fluttering down gracefully. So at the last second I grabbed the canons and...they did NOT disappoint. Oh my gosh. They BLASTED absolute clouds of big confetti into the air, which we are still finding here and there. It was awesome!!! And also a huge mess. I'm so mad I didn't take a picture. They were totally worth it. Basically as soon as they were shot off, we cheered for the Happy New Year, shoved the cousins out the door to their hotel, and started cleaning up. I almost got it all straight by our actual midnight.
The next morning was the first Saturday after Christmas, which is when we traditionally have our Preslar family holiday party. We all decided we did not want to meet at a church and exchange gifts. We decided instead to get together to DO something. The only problem was....we couldn't figure out what that would be. Carol isn't super mobile and the cold winter doesn't have a lot of choices for activities, especially on New Years Day. We decided to at least start with brunch at someplace that felt old-school and traditional, settling on the Little America Coffee Shop. I went down about an hour and a half early to get in line for a spot, and it's a good thing I did - it was mobbed! It still took another half hour to get enough tables for us, and we weren't even all together. At least we were close!
We put the kids at one table - a much smaller group than on my side of the family. I loved just ignoring them and letting them get whatever and talk and laugh together. We were with Sam & Kathleen, Rick's son Jake, and Carol too, leaving Rick and Tonja at a table with Tyrell and his wife Viri. I was sad we weren't with them, but there was no way we were going to get a bigger table sooner than another hour.
I'm not sorry we went - it was super fun to have a good old fashioned diner breakfast and feel festive. After breakfast we were thinking of things to do and we just ended up all sitting in the lobby, which had cleared out quite a bit, and talking in groups for over an hour. That was really the best thing! And the hotel lobby had much more comfortable and cozy seating than any of our ward gyms ever do!
That afternoon was spent cheering on our beloved University of Utah Runnin' Utes, who had made it to their first Rose Bowl ever. What a season! We had a rough start to the season with a new quarterback who just didn't work out. We even lost to our hated rivals for the first time in 10 games with them. But then that quarterback left and we went back to Cam Rising and the season just took off. We ended up with a fantastic season, becoming the Pack 12 Conference Champions, and going to the Rose Bowl, where we were underdogs against Ohio State. I've never seen a game like that in my life. It was incredibly exciting, high scoring, and very tense. I even sustained a clapping injury on my pinkie finger, and my voice was totally hoarse. I'm so sorry to say that we lost the game, by only 3 points. Our Utes can hold their heads high. We weren't expected to win, and we stood our ground and fought powerfully! It's so fun to cheer for them.
So that wrapped up our holiday season. Peter and Sheri took off the next day, whereupon I began cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. I was a little tempted to put away Christmas because it had been a messy weekend, but I knew I'd be sorry. We left it all up for one more week, enjoying the sparkling tree lights in the early mornings and dim evenings. We truly were so blessed with friends and family, and loved celebrating together.
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