Christmas, Human GPS, Dental Issues, Working, Quick Trip, New Years, Elder Uchtdorf, Last Minute Surprises

Wow we have had quite a busy December!  Here's a few of the highlights:

The high school student body officers were able to grant wishes to various students for Christmas.  The wishes they granted ranged from every student receiving a Twinkie to other things.  Matthew was able to get his wish granted for being the 'Human GPS'.  The SBO's were able to get him a custom 'Human GPS' sweatshirt which was sponsored by SavOn Sports.  Matthew had no idea he was getting his wish granted until they called him up on the stage during a school wide assembly to present his sweatshirt to him.  To say he was excited was an understatement!!  Here's his awesome sweatshirt:

I knew beforehand what was happening when I got this email from his teacher:

I asked Josh to record Matthew receiving it at school.  Here's an excited Matthew being called up on stage to get his sweatshirt and to give some directions--haha!:

 Again I am so grateful for such awesome people that love Matthew and help him out so much!!

Josh got to work a lot of the Christmas Break--lucky guy--haha!  Here he is the very first day of work.  It was just a training day, but his first day before Urban Air opened to the public.  Urban Air is a Trampoline and Adventure Park.  They have ninja warrior courses, trampolines, climbing walls, etc. so Josh got trained on how to work in all the areas.

 He mostly is a trampoline court/warrior course monitor, but does occasionally float to the cafe.  That meant he had to get his Food Handler's Permit.  It is so awesome that he could do it online during the break!  Since our house is very crazy and loud he decided to do his Food Handler's course in the front room to try and lesson the distractions.  We only have a small love seat in the front room to sit on so he scrunched all 6'4 1/2 inches of his body onto the small love seat to finish his course.  Luckily it didn't take too long to finish.

Aaron and I got an awesome opportunity to attend the BYU Potato Bowl game up in Boise, Idaho.  We left early morning on a Friday and drove up in time to do some Tailgating and then go to the game.  Let me say it was COLD!  Here we are walking over to join the tailgating:

 Since it was the Potato Bowl they handed out free French fries to everyone and they even had fry sauce to go with it which was a cool bonus.

After tailgating we found our seats behind the goal post.  I have seen football games played on the 'Smurf Turf', but it was cool to actually see it in person.

 Let me again say that it was COLD!!  It was even colder when the frigid wind started blowing.  I had layered up under my coat, but it was still so COLD.  By the middle of the game I was as bundled up as I could be, but I was still shivering.

It was a fun game to watch and even better that BYU won!  After the game they had an awards assembly on the field and invited all the fans to come on to the field to watch.  We didn't have easy access to the field.  To get on to the field we had to jump down from a 10 foot wall to get there.  I am happy to say we did not injure ourselves in the jump which is always a good thing--haha!  Here they are assembly the awards for the team:

 Aaron was excited to get so close to the players and to walk on the 'Smurf Turf':

 Again did I mention it was so COLD?!!!

 After watching the awards assembly we headed over to grab some dinner at Ram's which is a local restaurant.  My teeth were still chattering, but I was slowly warming up.

 We were able to use Aaron's travel rewards to get a free night at a hotel which was awesome.  Aaron watched the replay of the game and was able to spot us in the crowd:

We had a really fun time and it was nice to get a break.  We were able to sleep in the next morning and then drove home to join reality again, but the overnight trip was refreshing.

While we were gone G&G T had Matthew over for a sleepover.  Matthew was pretty excited to show them his new 'Human GPS' sweatshirt:

 Noah is always up for a photo op even if it is to show of a random Christmas tree ornament:

 Christmas seemed to come so fast this year!  Even though it was longer between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year it still seemed to get here quicker.  I am trying to simplify things so instead of sewing matching pajamas this year I purchased them.  They were all crazy sizes that didn't match up to the package sizes.  We had to switch a few tops and fix a few waist bands to get them to fit everyone, but we did get a family picture of us in our matching pajamas:

 The kids all slept up stairs between Sarah and Noah's rooms.  It was a tad squishy, but they made it work.  Sarah slept on her toy box, Josh and Daniel shared the bed, Noah slept on a cot and Matthew got Noah's bed.  Here they are waiting to go and see if Santa had come:

Mark, set, GO!!!

We each take turns opening one present at a time so we can all see what everyone got. 

Noah and Matthew:

 Sarah and Josh:

 Matthew and Aaron:

 Daniel with G&G T:

 I love the kids' gifts they make in school.  I am sad that most of the kids are too old to do things like that at school anymore.  However, Noah did make us a Christmas gift at school this year and I LOVE it!  He made a calendar.  He made all the artwork for each month and it is really cute.  He was pretty proud of it when we got to open it Christmas morning!  Here's what each month looks like:

Noah also knows that Grandpa T collects coins.  Noah happened to find an old penny that said "One Cent" on the back of it.  He was so excited when he found it.  He put it in a special place and then wrapped it up himself to give to Grandpa T for Christmas so he could add it to his coin collection.  I thought that was pretty sweet.  Grandpa was pretty excited to open his present from Noah Christmas morning!

Noah has been afraid of the dark for a while now.  He would always sleep with his light on which was kind of crazy.  G&G T gave him a star globe that shines light on the ceiling and you can also set it to go off after up to an hour.  Noah was pretty excited to try it out and I am happy to report he is no longer sleeping with his light on--wahoo!  Here's what the star globe looks like:

 Poor Aaron spent most of Christmas morning setting up the kids' toys.  I made this meme because the poor guy really was tech support all morning long:

 Don't worry Aaron got to enjoy his gadgets, too.  He got a new thermometer for the smoker.  He tested it out while he made a yummy tri tip for dinner.

The next evening we decided to go down to Temple Square to see the lights.  As we were wandering around Matthew happened to see Elder Uchtdorf.  We were a good 50+ feet away, but Matthew didn't care.  He started running Through the crowd towards him yelling, "ELDER UCHTDORF! ELDER UCHTDORF! ELDER UCHTDORF!" If you know Matthew, you know that if he is determined to do something there is no way to stop him.  We tried to grab Matthew to prevent him from running up to him, but he was too fast.  Matthew ran up, stood in front of Elder Uchtdorf, and jumped up and down while flapping his hands.  Elder Uchtdorf was in the middle of doing something with a small group of people, but Matthew didn't care.  Amazingly Elder Uchtdorf turned around , recognized Matthew's special needs and immediately gave Matthew a huge hug.  It was awesome that Elder Uchtdorf stopped what he was doing to give Matthew a hug.  He then shook all the kids' hands and let us take a quick picture.  Unfortunately, it was so quick the pictures turned out blurry, but it was still an amazing experience.  He could have ignored Matthew or just shrugged him off, but he took the time to give him a big hug and shake the kids' hands.  We were very grateful.

 Although blurry and just a small part of Noah's head made the picture in the right hand corner, the kids are all standing with Elder Uchtdorf:

 The picture with Noah is the most blurry, but it was the best I could do with all the kids' faces in it:

We walked around looking at all the pretty lights, but the experience with Elder Uchtdorf made our night!!

 Here's the bench Aaron and I took one of our wedding shots at so we stopped by to see it again.  The bench only holds 2-3 people so after our wedding it fit us great.  Now, however, our family is a tad bigger than two people so we had to squish to get around the bench:

 It was snowing while we were there, too:

 We stopped by the 10th floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to see the lights from above as well:

We even stopped by the Macy's department store candy window displays, too.  Here's Daniel and Sarah looking at one window:

 Our favorite was the candy window with the candy replica of the Salt Lake Temple:

It was a great night seeing Temple Square and I am glad we were able to go!

On Sunday The primary presidency gave each primary child a hand sewn pillow case that was embroidered, "I am a Child of God".  Here's Noah's pillowcase which he wanted to use as soon as we got home from church:

 New Years Eve we spent with the Einzinger Family.  We started off the night by watching the U of U football bowl game.  The U ended up losing, but despite the loss it was a good game to watch for the most part.   Josh and Hailey were old enough to go to the Syracuse Stake dance together. The rest of the kids played together the rest of the night.  When it was midnight they all grabbed my pots and pans and went outside to ring in the new year.  Here they all are:

 It was pretty cold so they didn't get much further than the end of the porch before they came back inside--haha!  We had a fun night of watching football, eating yummy food and playing lots of games.  Hopefully, 2019 will be a good year for us.

New Years day the kids were antsy to use their Fiiz gift cards they had received for Christmas.  Here we all are enjoying some Fiiz:

 We were hoping 2019 is going to be a great year, however, it isn't starting out so great....All the kids had a regular dental check up with cleaning on December 28.  I am happy to report that there were no cavities--wahoo!!--however, there were some other big issues instead.  It was discovered that Matthew's wisdom teeth are starting to erupt which means they need to be taken out ASAP.  I knew Matthew's wisdom teeth were needing to come out, but I thought I still had some time to worry about that.  I was wrong when the dentist told me they were starting to come through his gums--DOH!! It made it even worse when he told me Josh's wisdom teeth were getting ready to erupt as well.  What the what?!  I guess we will be having a twofer wisdom teeth party very soon thanks to Matthew and Josh.  It also was discovered that Sarah's teeth were damaged more than we thought when she fell in May and broke them.  One tooth is starting to abscess and the other tooth looks like it has a fracture in the root.  Double DOH!!  The dentist referred us to an endodontist since it was going to need a more specialized approach.  We were able to get an appointment with the endodontist yesterday.  He looked at her X-rays and her mouth and decided one tooth will definitely need and root canal and the other tooth might need one as well.  He won't know for sure until he gets in to do the root canal.  Since Sarah is still growing they can't do an implant because her bone/face structure is still changing.  That means she won't be getting a crown they will just do the root canal and build up the tooth possibly teeth with composite.  It will be a bit of a headache, but what can you do?!  Sarah wasn't too happy about needing her teeth worked on and was quite upset when I told her she needed to see the endodontist.  The endodontist was really nice which is good since we will be seeing him quite frequently during the next year if not longer.  DOH!!  Here's Sarah waiting to be seen by the endodontist.

She will eventually need implants, but those can't even be considered until she is at least 18+ years old.  The endodontist is hoping the root canal(s) will hold until she is able to get implants.

Also we had another whammy laid on us as well.  Back when Aaron and I did the indoor sky diving ,which was fun,  it messed up Aaron's shoulder.  Aaron had rotator cuff/shoulder surgery 16 + years ago, but going on iFly screwed up his shoulder.  I feel bad because in all the release forms you sign, it stated if you have shoulder issues to reconsider participating.  Aaron wasn't too keen on participating after reading that, but I talked him into it saying how it has been over 16+years and that he would be fine.  Well he wasn't fine...Whoops!  I feel horrible!  His shoulder has been bothering him since that night back in the beginning of October and is getting worse.  He finally went and had an MRI of his shoulder December 31 and it showed damage.  He will be following up with the orthopedist in a few weeks to determine whether he will need surgery or physical therapy or both. **Sigh** BOO!!

Thankfully, our Flex Spending Account reset January 1st.  Unfortunately, when Sarah, Matthew and Josh get done with their dental work and Aaron with his shoulder 75% of that Flex Spending Account will be gone for the year and we aren't even two weeks into January.  That doesn't bode well.....Anyway, I am keeping my fingers crossed we won't have any other big surprises this year!!  What a way to start off the new year :(.

Yesterday Josh sprung his end of term project on us last minute.  He had known about this project for over a month, but did he even start working on it during the Christmas Break? Of course not.  He started the project and low and behold he was missing supplies which meant it brought Aaron and me in to the mix to help him finish it before it was due this morning.  DOH!!  Aaron was kind enough to do most of the work with Josh on it.  I am hoping he gets a good grade on it since Aaron and I were invested in this term project as well.  Ahhhhh!  What to do with this kid?!  Good thing we still love him!