Sledding, Immunizations, Christmas, Outtakes, Lights, Sick Dog, Winter Swimming

December has flown by!  These last two weeks have been jam packed.  Two weeks ago randomly our power went out.  Luckily, I knew where some candles were and we lit them so we could have some light.  We did have a few flashlights, too.  It was a bit eerie, though.  There was howling wind outside, but the house was so dark, quiet and still.  Luckily, it only last a couple of hours before it came back on again.  I only had scented candles so at least the house smelled lovely--haha!

We have had a few snow storms these past two weeks.  Everything looks so pretty right after a big snowstorm, but it can be a pain in the butt to shovel the driveway and sidewalks.  This particular snowstorm there was a bunch of wind that came along with it and there were snowdrifts all around the front of our house.  We had snow stuck to the front door, windows, and front of the house.  It looked pretty, but it was cold!!

This particular storm caused the school district to implement a two hour late start schedule since there was so much snow.

Sophie is a pretty low energy dog.  If anyone is sitting on the couch she is curled up right next to them or laying next to them looking like this:

Two Sundays ago we were taking Matthew back to his group home.  On the way to drop Matthew off we had everyone in the van with us and we drove over to see the Layton City lights.  They were pretty as always:

Sarah had a dance performance before Christmas.  Here is her performance group before they went on stage (Sarah is on the back row right in the very middle):

With all the snow storms we had things have turned a bit icy.  Sarah fell on her way to school and skinned her knee.  Thankfully the front office at the Jr. High had some bandaids because her knee bled all over pants before she could get inside the school to clean it up.

I have been working a few shifts throughout the winter break at the public walk in clinic at our office.  The Tuesday before Christmas I had Aaron bring Noah and Daniel down to get their Covid shots.  It was Noah’s second Pfizer shot and Daniel’s Pfizer booster shot.  Noah did really well which was a nice change from his flu shot experience a few months ago--haha!

Daniel was quite anxious--he HATES shots/needles of any kind, but he did fine.  He tried out the shot blocker and he liked using that method so he didn’t fully feel the needle.  

It was fun to have the kids come and see me at work.  I am happy to say we are fully vaccinated family--wahoo!

The last Friday before school let out for the Christmas break there was a nationwide threat of school violence.  I gave the kids the option of going or not going to school.  Seeing as not much school work gets done that day, anyway, Daniel opted to stay home from school, however, Sarah and Noah chose to go to school.  Thankfully, nothing happened and the kids were excited to start Christmas Break after school let out.

Last week I took the kids sledding in a nearby park with a hill.  Aaron had to work so it was just Noah, Sarah, Daniel and me.  It has been a while since we have been.  We were the only ones at the park the whole time we were there.  It was awesome.  Between the plastic sleds and tubes, the sleds went the fastest.

I even got in on the action--and bonus I didn’t hurt myself.  That’s always a good thing--haha!

Daniel found a broken sled and tried it out.  It didn’t work very well.

The last few runs we fit all of us on the big tube and went down together.  It was a bit of a tight squeeze, but no one fell off on the way down.

I occasionally like to watch the show House Hunters.  This past week they had an episode in Downers Grove, IL.  That is the same city that Josh’s mission office is in.  I took a picture and sent it to Josh because I am a nerd.  However, it was fun to see a small part of Downers Grove on the show.

Last Monday we got to meet up with some friends at In and Out Burger.  Darci Clark and her family.  It was fun to see them in person and visit for a while.  They live in Colorado, but were up to visit family for Christmas.  Both of us forgot to take any pictures, but we did meet up even if we don’t have proof--haha!

Two Saturdays ago some of the technicians Aaron works with had a Christmas party we were invited to.  They all are foodies so it is fun to go to this party to visit and sample all the different foods.  Aaron made some smoked Jalapeño Popper macaroni and cheese and we also brought some jalapeño jelly with cream cheese and Ritz Crackers.  Since Aaron works in a locked down building on base I never get to meet any of the people he works with.  So it is always nice to put names with faces.  It was a fun party.

Matthew was busy before Christmas.  He decided on his own that he would make some treats for people.  He didn’t tell Aaron or me what he was doing until after he had delivered all of them.  Somehow he sweet talked one of his group home staff members to help him with the treats and to drive him around to deliver them.  I have no idea who or how many people he made treats for, but it sounded like quite a bit.  He is quite resourceful, too, because I didn’t give him any of the addresses of the people he made treats for.  He found all their addresses by himself.  I guess it is good he is in a group home and learning independence through experiences things like this because I don’t think I would have let him do this if he were living at our house.  I hope that made sense.  Anyway, good for him.  He also was really thoughtful and got each one of us a Christmas present.  He saved up his fun money to purchase these presents.  He got each of us a hot chocolate mug with some candy.  It was really sweet.  He was so excited to give it to all of us.

Noah made a photo family calendar at school for his present to us.  I love these types of gifts and am sad he will be my last elementary kid to give me a present made at school.  He found all the family pictures himself.  He is on Josh’s weekly email list so he pulled quite a few pictures from his weekly emails, too.  I LOVED it!!  Here’s the pictures he chose:

We had everyone over for Christmas Eve dinner at our house.  Everyone was kind enough to help bring different parts of the meal.  We had a yummy ham dinner and then visited for a few hours.  Daniel did have to work that evening, but he was able to eat dinner with us and visit for a bit before he had to go in to work.  Here’s everyone that came:

Dinner did have a few casualties, though.  I ended up getting burned when I picked up a pan and some hot liquid spilled down my arm.  Ouch!!  The blister just popped yesterday and it is quite tender.

Aaron sharpened all his knives and none of us are used to working with sharp knives--haha!  He sliced off the tip of his first knuckle.  Then when he went to clean off the knife to use again his sliced his finger.  Luckily, he didn’t need stitches, but he did ask me to hand clean the knives because didn’t want to cut anything else on his body that day--haha!

Josh posted on Facebook for Christmas Eve and I loved it!  Here’s what he posted translated from Spanish to English:

Josh wasn’t able to call on Christmas Eve.  He had to wait for Christmas Day to talk to us. After the family  Christmas Eve dinner we went to the Ogden Village to look at the lights and displays.  It was a lot of fun!

The kids couldn’t pass up a photo op.  Daniel was at work so he didn’t come along with us.

We got back home about the time Daniel got off of work.  Everyone got to open their matching jammies and put them on.  After about 10 photo retakes we finally got a decent picture of everyone.

Here’s just one of many outtakes.  Sophie jumped out of my arms and ran away.  Aaron was the one that had to set up the camera timer and ended up running into Matthew as he tried to hurry and sit down before the camera went off.  It was a bit of a circus--haha!

After reading about the Savior’s birth in the scriptures, we played a few games and then sent everyone to bed.  Matthew took Noah’s room and everyone else slept in Sarah’s room.  Matthew likes things quiet and dark so he got Noah’s room all to himself.  After the squabbles died down Santa came for a visit.  All the stockings got filled except Josh’s.  I actually had a hard time seeing his empty stocking.  I did cry a little bit as I was going to bed.  I miss Josh.

Anyway, Santa came:

The next morning G&G T came to watch the crazy Christmas morning chaos.  After we got them situated we let the kids come around the corner to see their loot:

PRESENTS!!!

Noah:

Sarah:

Daniel:

Matthew:

Loves with G&G T:

Then we got to talk with Josh for a bit.  I was so glad he was able to have plans for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  It was fun to talk with him.

Matthew got a new paper shredder and shop vacuum.  He LOVES shredding paper and vacuuming!!  That kept him entertained for HOURS.  He shredded every last scrap of paper I had.  Then he moved on to vacuuming my stairs.  I really can’t complain--haha!

When the morning excitement died down the kids really got to use their presents.  Noah loves fact books.  The best fact books are the bathroom reader books.  Noah dove into his new fact book that morning.

When I looked closer at what he was reading it was the section on farts.  Let’s just say I was definitely NOT surprised--haha!

Sarah got a bunch of new books. She set herself up on her favorite reading area (on the stairs) and stayed there for a few hours engrossed in her books.

When we bought the red car it came with an amp and subwoofer.  Since Josh didn’t need any extra distractions when he was driving we disconnected those.  For Christmas we bought the connections to reattach them.  Daniel was excited.  Daniel and Aaron spent part of the morning putting everything back together.

Noah also got some Nerf guns and targets.  We had fun doing some target practice. 

Aaron made a yummy prime rib for dinner.  After dinner I was cleaning up the kitchen.  Some of the meat juices had spilled on the counter so I was cleaning those up with some paper towels--6 paper towels to be exact.  After that got cleaned up I went on to do some other things.  About an hour later I came back into the kitchen to see that Sophie had gotten into the trash and had eaten all 6 paper towels I had used to clean up the meat juice mess. Now that is a big problem.  Paper towels cannot be broken down or dissolved by Sophie’s stomach because it is made of wood pulp.  If they continued on into her intestines that would have caused a major blockage which would have either needed surgery to fix or worse she could get super sick and it could be fatal.  At this point I was freaking out a bit.  I started calling the vets around the area and even the emergency vets were not open on Christmas Day.  In reading some more you usually have around 2-3 hours after ingestion to get it out before it passes into the intestines.  We were about 90 minutes into her eating them.  I then read that you can get a dog to barf to get harmful things out of their stomach by giving them hydrogen peroxide.  We did not have any hydrogen peroxide so I immediately sent Aaron to pick some up at the only store that was open by us--Walgreens.  He came back and I dosed Sophie with the peroxide and waited for her to barf.  We waited outside in the backyard because I didn’t want her barfing inside the house.  While we waited the sunset was beautiful.

Anyway, it didn’t take long only about 10-15 minutes and it was full of shredded paper towels.  Since she didn’t seem to get all of it up the first time I had to dose her again.  The second time I think she got majority out of her system, but I wasn’t all the way certain.  I then watched her the rest of the day to make sure her digestive system was still working and not blocked.  She didn’t not feel well and just wanted to sit in my lap the rest of the evening--poor dog.  Thankfully, she was eating and pooping normally the next day so things were moving through her digestive system fine which was a relief.  Good thing we love her otherwise.....I now know she is just like a toddler and you can’t leave things like that where she can get them--even if she can pull it out of the trash can--ugh!!

Christmas evening Daniel had signed up to work down at the Jazz basketball game in Salt Lake.  They were paying him triple pay to pick up the gig so he was more than happy to sign up for it.  Besides by the time 5 pm rolled around all the festivities were pretty much over.  After Daniel left for work, Noah walked over to me to show me a bloody mouth.  I thought he had lost all of his baby teeth, but he surprised me with one more he had just pulled out.  I had to make sure it was a baby tooth and not a permanent tooth--phew!  I am pretty sure this is the last baby tooth, but I said that last time so we will see--haha! One more visit from the Tooth Fairy is in order:

We ended the night watching a movie together.  It was a great Christmas, but we did miss Josh being around.  At least we got to talk to him so that was nice.

Even though we got to talk with Josh on Christmas he still had his P-day on the following Monday.  All of us got to talk to him again which was nice.  Here’s Daniel during his turn:

This week has been pretty chill.  I had to work all day Tuesday.  Since we have lived here I have wanted to try out Crystal Hot Springs which is a hot spring wading and swimming pool complex that is fed by a local hot spring.  We finally made that happen yesterday.  It was pretty crazy!  It is an outdoor complex that is open year round that has three huge hot spring pools, one cold swimming pool, three hot tubs and two water slides.  We had a lot of fun.  However, walking to the pools and coming back to the car in the snow and 28 degree weather wasn’t as fun.  Here we are hanging out in one of the pools while it was snowing on us:

Everything was so steamy since there was such a contrast between the cold air and hot water.  It was pretty cool.  Even the enclosed stairway to the waterslides was heated which was great!  There is supposed to be such a high mineral content in the water it is supposed to be healing.  Aaron’s shoulder and ankle still weren’t healed by the time we left so I told him he should get his money back--haha I was totally kidding by the way.

When we got home Daniel went to hang out with friends.  He was gone until midnight, but Aaron still had to work the next day.  That meant I had to stay up and wait for Daniel to get home.  Sarah and Noah ended up going to bed at 11 pm.  Good thing Sophie was around to keep my company while I watched House Hunters and waited for Daniel to get home.  Gotta love the warm blanket, comfy clothes and ‘I don’t care what I look like because I am at home’ attitude--haha!

In other happenings my sister Jennifer was able to get another liver transplant right before Christmas.  She had a liver transplant a year ago, but with complications and needed another one.  We were so glad to hear one became available for her a few days before Christmas.  She is doing well and things are going mostly smoothly post transplant. We are glad she is doing well.