Welcome 2021!  We sure had a great holiday season, and we hope you did as well.  One thing is for certain, Christmas is a lot more fun with kids, and Ashley and Eliza certainly earned their Christmas spirit awards this year. They non stop crafted and decorated all month long, and we must have had 12 advent calendars of various forms all throughout the house!

Here is Ashley and our fried Lila the Elf dressed up matchy matchy.

So many decorations in their room. This is only a small look. Kathryn had a large 3 ring binder that we completely filled up with all of the craft and art work these girls created by the end.

Some neighbor gifts of caramel sauce.  Kathryn was amazing and did 5 batches for my coworkers, and then we got really adventurous and took our large pot to the MAX with a quadruple batch all at once.  All of these came from one single batch of caramel sauce!

To keep the sanity, it’s a good idea to get these kids out of the house often.  We’ve gone around and explored some of the other parks and playgrounds in the area.

Then this girl has outgrown her bed and it was time to get a new one!

This one should last a while longer before she out grows it!

Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go!  Christmas is almost here!

Dress rehearsal
for the nativity play.

I tried my hand at making our traditional Christmas jello.  It wasn’t as pretty as some but it still tasted great and was all licked up!

Cousin fun!

Warming up for my duet with Kathryn.  Landon was quite pleased.

Christmas pajamas.

Christmas morning has finally come!  Time to open those presents they’ve been sneaking looks at all this time.

After Christmas, we headed back home for a day to clean up, restock, and repack.  Then we headed up to the cabin for a few days.  We played all kinds of games and just had a great time with the kids, and Gomp and Grandma Suzie.

Eliza’s loose tooth decided it was finally time to come out, so this girl had the honor of loosing a tooth at the cabin.  She’s the first one ever as far as we know to get a visit from the tooth fairy at the cabin.

Sunrise at the cabin.

After coming back home from the cabin, we hung out at our house for the rest of the break.  We went to see the Spanish Fork lights and they were so great we drove through the loop twice.

This train table was too big to haul up for Christmas, so the kids got another fun surprise when we opened up for them.  They were excellent help building the table and then assembling the track.

The girls enjoyed some time at a friends house for a play date on the 31st, and they came home with face paint.  Eliza dressed up as Elsa for our dance party.

Then it was time to crank up the tunes and have a dance party!  I’m embarrassed to say, but I was pretty sore the next couple days from all the lifting, spinning, dipping, jumping, and overall movement that went on at this party.

Then we broke out the 2021 glasses and got some pics!  Can I just say I really like hanging out with this little guy.  He’s pretty dang cool.

My family.  I love you all so much!

This girl can craft anything!  I’m constantly amazing by what she comes up with 🙂

On their way back home, we had a visit from Kevin and Bethany.  It was great to see them.

We took them to the rec center here for some swim fun, and we discovered that Ashley has just crossed a major right of passage and has crossed the 48″ tall mark!  So, she was finally able to go down the big waterslide.  And, wow, did she go and go and go.  Probably 20 times or more.

And here she is, just cruising down and bobbing along like a pro.  You go girl.

It was really fun to see how big Anne has gotten and all the kids loved playing with her.

So there you have it. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. Even though 2020 was a little different than other years, it was still a fantastic year and we were very blessed with happiness, health, prosperity, and lots and lots of fun memories.