Family Blog 2: Flat Tire, Christmas, Ice Skating, Bowling, Cupcakes, Taste Testing, Band

Here’s our family happenings of the last two weeks plus--I’m just a tad behind. Anyway, the last two weeks have been busy. Matthew has enjoyed his activities with the Day Program through his group home company. The kids got out of school for the Winter Break 4 days before Christmas so there’s been a few days to fill. Matthew got to make some gingerbread houses at one of his activities. He was quite proud of his creation:

Daniel got a few trips in at the temple to do Baptisms for the Dead with some of our ancestors’ names. One trip he made it a group date.

Another trip was just a bunch of friends who got together. Sarah got in a trip as well with some friends.

I have been slow to get updated pictures of the kids taken, printed and updated in our hallway frames. I finally took some pictures of the kids myself and got them printed out and hung up two days before Christmas.

Sarah and Daniel got to do some service activities with the city youth council. They got to shop and wrap a bunch of presents for some disadvantaged individuals. Here’s after their wrapping party:

I love when Josh’s Mission President and Companion post Zone Conference pictures. Josh and his companions are the tallest on the back row:

Daniel had the misfortune of discovering he had a flat tire after coming out of his work. He changed it, but the spare was flat, too. BOO!!! He had to call me to come pick him up. I picked him up and we went with the flat tire to get it repaired. Unfortunately, it was beyond repair and had to be replaced. BOO again!! I kiddingly told Daniel that the tire would be one of his Christmas presents. He didn’t think that was very funny, though. After the new tire was mounted on the rim we took it back to Daniel’s car in his work parking lot and changed out the flat donut. I went to help Daniel, but he wouldn’t let me come near the car. He didn’t want to have his coworkers see his mom changing his tire while he watched because that would be embarrassing. He knew what to do and wanted to be the gentleman and not make me do it. He wouldn’t even let me loosen the lug nuts or anything. So I stood back and watched. I was glad he knew what to do.

The week before Christmas we had a missionary farewell and a missionary homecoming for our Sacrament Meeting. The Deacon’s Quorum was asked to sing the hymn ‘Called To Serve’ as a rest hymn. Noah got to accompany them on the piano--playing from the actual hymnbook. He did an amazing job!! Later that evening as we were taking Matthew back to his group home for the week we did drive around and look at Christmas lights as a family. We made it to the Layton City lights which were pretty awesome as usual. It is fun to see how differently they set it up each year. Our favorite is the light tunnel you drive through:

We love seeing the lit up jumping penguin, T-Rex, helicopter, train, etc. Here’s a small portion of the lit up park:

Sarah and Noah had their Christmas Band concert. It was fun seeing them both play. Sarah played in the Jazz Band and the 9th grade band. Noah played in the 7th grade beginning band. Here’s Sarah in Jazz band:

Noah plays percussion and got to play the snare drum during one of the songs. He’s in the very back center:

Here’s Sarah in the 9th grade band front row on the very far right:

My two cute performers:

We were glad G&G T were able to come see them both play:

A few days before the kids got out of school for the long Christmas Break, Aaron and I wanted to have a day date with just us two. Aaron took a day off of work and we spent the day together. It didn’t start out the greatest, though. It had stormed the night before and so the kids were all supposed to have a two hour late start due to all the snow accumulation. While they were getting ready for school I was doing some laundry. Unfortunately, when the washer went into a spin cycle a FULL Costco sized bottle of liquid laundry detergent fell off the washer and exploded all over when it hit the floor. DOH!! That was a HUGE mess to clean up. When all the kids left for school we headed out on our day date. There was a decent amount of snow:

Yes, Aaron is THAT GUY that wears shorts and flip flops year round. He would have had flip flops on, but we were going bowling and he needed actual shoes and socks for that.

We did some black light mini golf, some bowling, drove go carts and then went out to lunch.

We had a great time. It was pretty fun despite me losing at most activities--haha!

We had another date night a few days later. Every year Aaron and I order a Pizza Hut pizza (don’t tell Daniel--haha!), shut ourselves in our room, turn on the show Arrested Development and wrap all the Christmas presents. It takes a bit and our legs are numb by the time we are done, but it is great.

December 23 we got a voice notification from Josh via Messenger--which is never a good thing outside of a P-day. He had been pick-pocketed on the train the previous night. That meant he lost his wallet and driver’s license AGAIN. Last time the Driver’s License Division said they would only replace it once without Josh being there in person. It was pain to get it done and sent to him. True to their word, they are not working with us on getting a new one. It makes me wary having him drive around without a physical license on his person. The Chicago mission office told him just having a photocopy of his license would be fine. I am not so sure about that.....Aaron and I have called the DLD and gone down in person so what our options were. We have been referred to a few different people to talk to. However, they are all gone due to the Christmas/New Year break. Hopefully, we can get some answers as to what our options are next week. He won’t have a valid ID to fly home with in July so we need to figure something out. We could mail his passport if we HAD to, but I am hoping it doesn’t come to that. Anyway, I did go to the bank and cancel his debit card, had a new one made and mailed it to him. I feel bad this happened to him again.

Josh has been experiencing some pretty cold weather. His weather app said -7, but with the wind chill it was -33 and got as low as -38 degrees. Brrrr!

We had to have Josh’s Christmas package delivered to the Mission Home by December 2. It was pretty crazy to shop and have everything for his Christmas by the end of the November!! He did do a little video of him opening it which I loved!

One of his P-days he went into downtown and took some pictures of all the Christmas lights. In the little video clip he sent of it he said, “Well this is my last Christmas in Chicago!!"

A few days before Christmas Aaron and Daniel cleaned out our dryer vents. It had not been done for a while so they needed to be cleaned out. Daniel even took a picture of what the inside looked like. Eww!:

Christmas Eve we had a family party at our house. G&G T and Bryan, Michonne and family were able to join us for lunch. It was so weird because Aaron wanted to cook the ham and a side so I actually didn’t cook anything for that dinner. That is the first time that has happened. Anyway, it was fun to eat and visit for a few hours. After that we got dressed up in warm clothes and headed over the Ogden Christmas Village to look at the lights. They were very pretty. Our favorite was the HUGE willow tree covered with twinkle lights.

On the way home we also drove by a few of our favorite houses in Clinton City as well. When we got home we had some hot chocolate and opened up our Christmas jammies.

We had to take the obligatory matching jammies family Christmas picture:

After playing some games, watching the Santa Clause movie, and reading the Nativity story from the scriptures it was time to put the kids to bed. We thought they were old enough to sleep in their own rooms and not share, but this thought was immediately dismissed. They said that sharing a room Christmas Eve night was one of their favorite traditions and they still wanted to continue doing it. Okay!! Matthew slept in Noah’s room (he doesn’t like to share a room, but still wanted to be upstairs), and the rest of the kids slept in Sarah’s room.

Santa came!!

Time to open presents. Matthew’s turn:

Sarah:

Aaron:

Daniel:

Noah has wanted a phone for a really long time. Santa hid his phone until everything was opened. When Aaron looked under the tree one last time and found one last present just for Noah. Noah was pretty excited:

G&G T spent part of the morning with us and got loves:

We got a family gift a Nintendo Switch that we have been playing quite a bit lately. Here’s Aaron and Daniel playing together:

It makes me a bit sad to see the lone Josh stocking still hanging by itself. It was hard to see last year, too, but this will be the last time since Josh will be coming home in July!! Yay!!

More competition on the Switch:

We did got to church that day--our last 1:30 church time--wahoo! When we got home I made everyone take a family picture while they were in nice clothes so I could update my wall.

Christmas Day it was just our family. Aaron made some smoked Jalapeño Popper Macaroni and Cheese as well as some smoked tri tip. It was pretty tasty!

We also got to talk to Josh on Christmas. It was nice to have everyone around to chat!

Since Christmas was on a Sunday the ‘observed’ day for government employees fell on Monday so Aaron had that day off. We took the kids bowling and then let them use their Fiiz gift cards for a drink and treats afterward. I can honestly say none of us will become professional bowlers in real life--maybe on the Nintendo Switch, though--haha!

Sarah:

Noah:

Daniel:

Matthew:

Aaron:

Me:

That afternoon we had a family competition on Mario Kart amongst the HUGE mess of Christmas. It was fun, but afterward I made everyone clean it up. I couldn’t handle the mess anymore--haha!

The next day Aaron had to go back to work as did I. I got to drive down to Gunnison to do some blood draws and immunizations at the prison for the cadets. I got to drive the carpool for the 5 hour 320 mile round trip that day. It was a long day.

The next day I took the kids ice skating. I found a cheap Groupon so I figured why not. I can honestly say I don’t think any of us will be professional ice skaters, but we had fun.

Sarah:

Noah and Daniel:

The next day Daniel had a day group date planned. Him and his friend took the girls bowling and mini golfing then back to our house to decorate cupcakes. They had a pretty tight timeline since Daniel and his date had to both be at work by 5 pm and they got started at 2 pm. They got some pretty impressive bowling scores. After bowling they came home and showed us their scores. A 300 score is a perfect bowling game and they all had scores of 220+. They then told us halfway through their game the scoring machine started malfunctioning and scored every turn as a strike--haha!

They took longer to bowl and mini golf than they had anticipated so they didn’t have much time to decorate cupcakes. Anyway, when they were done bowling that meant we were left with two dozen unfrosted cupcakes. Sarah and Noah didn’t mind and got to frost a few. Aaron even frosted me this cupcake with a heart:

Frosting and decorating cupcakes:

The next day our other plans fell through so instead we thought we would try a taste test of 7 different brands of boxed macaroni and cheese. Here’s the different brands Sarah, Noah and Daniel helped pick out at the store to try:

We each cooked one or two pots of macaroni and cheese according to the box directions. We used all four burners on the stove and three Instant Pots so they could all be ready at the same time.

When they all were done I sent the kids to the front room so we could have a true blind taste test. I scooped out the different brands in 7 differently numbered cups for each person. They would taste one and write down their thoughts on it. This way the kids weren’t biased on a particular brand.

Here’s the brands we sampled and in the order we liked from best to worst:

Amazingly enough the universal favorite was the Walmart generic brand. The next in line was the Baby Shark brand then Kraft. It went like 1:Walmart Generic, 2:Baby Shark, 3: Kraft, 4: Cracker Barrel, 5: Velveeta, 6: Annie’s, 7: Walmart generic Thick and Creamy came in DEAD LAST. Here’s Sarah’s notes:

It was a fun activity. The kids are trying to figure out what type of food we should sample again.