Christmas already feels like ages ago.  Looking back through the pictures of the holiday break was a real treat.  Here are some of the highlights.

Secret Santa event with the Hawkers.  Here is Eliza ready to make a special delivery.

Holiday dinner with the Hawkers.  I gave my phone to Robert to take the picture.  He said he’d never taken a picture with a phone before so I had to show him how to do it.  Funny that I got cut off 🙂   All good though.  It was a nice party and fun to be with the family.

Kevin, Bethany, and Anne stayed the night with us during their voyage from Mesa up to Filer and came with us to the Christmas Sacrament meeting.  We applaud them for making the journey.

Up with the fam in Filer, Ashley discovered an oldy-goldy art spinner toy.  We got it fixed up, bought new paint, and took it for a whirl.  It was lots of fun and made some fun pictures.

White Christmases are the best.  There was just enough snow on Christmas Eve to pull the kids around and let them get a little more comfortable on the skis before our planned ski trip after Christmas.

While outside, we all had a lot of fun playing on Dad’s zip line creation in the backyard.  The girls loved it and both rode many many times.

Christmas Eve dinner with the traditional and highly regarded rainbow jello.

Special present from Ashley to Eliza.  The card is precious.

Back when we were dating, I made Kathryn a two player Chinese Checkers game for Christmas.  Back then, I also started a full six player version as well but never finished it.  I’ve been holding onto it the last 9 years and decided that I’d finish it up this year.  It was a little tricky working on it undetected, and I had one close call which raised some suspicions, but in the end, Kathryn claimed it was a surprise and she didn’t know what I was up to.  We’ll take it as a huge success to pull out a surprise in this day and age were we basically just wrap up each others presents that we bought for ourselves.

Mom’s oh-so-delicious apple pie.  I decorated it with the Christmas tree 🙂

Hi Landon!

Landon Gerald Moore with his Grandpa Gerald and Grandma Nancy.

We had some fun jamming out.

Complete with Hawaiian dancers.

The day after Christmas, we headed up to Bogus Basin and met up with Josie and her kids for the girls first ski day.

Everyone did great and had a lot of fun!  Huge success!

Really pretty snowscape.

After carrying Landon around, it was refreshing to hold little Baby Anne. You forget how small newborns are.  They grow up so fast.

It’s a Landon ‘elfie!

All ready to welcome in 2020.  We got “snow warning-ed” out of our planned New Years Eve party at the cabin, so we hung out in style at our house.  We were sure ready though.

We made good use of the New Year’s day snow and built a huge snow lady.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  Here’s to a great 2020.

How could we not start out a post with a picture like that!  Landon, you crack us up!

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree!

This is the best birthday present ever!

We had a great day together for my birthday.  German pancakes, loafing around, lunch at Tucanos, then a little Christmas shopping where we found a Light The World vending machine station.  I’ve always wanted to use one.  Each of us picked out something near and dear to donate.  The girls each picked out an art supply kit, Kathryn got a holiday meal, and I got a couple hours of babysitting 🙂

Kathryn had her TSO christmas concert at the new UVU Noorda center.  It was great!

Birthday dinner up at the Hawkers house.

Ward party christmas dinner.  Everybody was in line for the food while the dads entertained the babies.

Christmas concert.  It was amazing!

And, one of my latest 3D prints.  Baby Yoda from the Mandalorian.

Kevin and Bethany blessed their little baby Anne over Thanksgiving break.  We decided to make a trip out of it and piled into the car to head down to see them.  Take mental note of the before and after shots of the kids in the car.  This turned out to be a lot more of an adventure than we anticipated.

Kathryn was a champ and drove much of the way down.  Due to the storms on the route through Flagstaff, we decided to take the route through Vegas.  As we were driving along, we saw signs for Hoover Dam.  I’ve always wanted to see it, but it’s always too far out of the way.  Well, not today, we were driving right past it.  So we decided to take a quick stop and check it out.  That dam…it was sure impressive.  Quite the engineering and construction feat.

That would be quite the waterslide black hole.

We were thrilled to make it to Mesa after a long day in the car.  Melanie’s brother lent us their house which was super nice.  Thank you so much.

The next day, we packing in some fun activities like a visit to Pioneer Park.

And the Arizona Museum of Natural History.

Then back to Melanie’s parents house for lunch and some nappage.

With our batteries recharged, we went over to Eagle’s Park for some more fun.

And then dinner at the Organ Stop Pizza restaurant.  That is a pretty amazing instrument!

The next day was the special day for baby Anne.  She was lovely.  And Kevin did a great job on the blessing.

Afterwards, we enjoyed a waffle brunch at Bethany’s parents place.  It was superb.  And the bacon steaks were incredible.

Well, the rough part of this whole adventure was that when we decided to come on the trip, we were healthy, but we had been exposed to a nasty bug.  That nasty bug proceed to make its rounds around our family, and then shortly after many of the people we visited 🙁  Due to the general crappiness and barfiness of our situation, we decided to head out a bit early and try and get home a little sooner.  The drive from Mesa to Paige Arizona has to go down in the books as one of the worst ever!  A extra hour of traffic due to a big wreck on the freeway, and Ashley barfing the whole way there in the car (thank goodness that she’s able to use a bag!) and then Landon losing in on Kathryn when we were at the parking lot.  We were one disheveled group heading into the hotel.  The next morning, I totally lost it too.  Let’s just say that we’re all glad that experience is behind us.

The good thing about that big storm that we skirted around on the drive down was it made an incredible winterscape for us to drive through on the way home.  The red rock, junipers, sky, and snow were something else!

We even saw this flock of wild turkeys.  These are survivors.

The rest of the drive home was so long.  Sick, tired, achy… We made the kids watch a “movie” instead of their preferred “shows.”  Ashley had here blanket on her head so she could hide when it got too scary.  The movie was Wreck-It Ralph.  The funny thing was after yelling and begging us to turn it off almost the whole movie, when Penelope turned out to be the princess, they insisted on watching the ending of the movie 3 times.  Hilarious.

Poor little Landon was a zombie.  He was too tired and weak from being sick to do much and pretty much just laid there in a stupor and tried to sleep.  Heartbreaking.

2 Nephi 2:11 “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.”  Sometimes it takes getting sick to remember how blessed we are to be healthy.  And despite all the misery, it was great to see Kevin and Bethany, Stan and Melanie, and Mom and Dad, and be there for baby Anne.  Sorry again for anyone that we got sick.