Happy New Year!

We had fun the last week or so of the year reminiscing about 2024- we had a good year! Highlights were Wisconsin Dells, Iceland, Youth Camps, Marching Band, basketball team, weightlifting, Crumbl, and Six Flags.

Eli went to a friend's house, Ali had her friend Kate over, and Logan watched Les Miserables with me and Jason. Jake wanted to be able to celebrate with us at midnight but didn't really want to stay up that late, so we woke him up at 11:50pm! We tried out our new indoor fire pit, and had s'mores and cider.

Here's to a great 2025!

Cousins

We got to meet up with these cool cousins before they all headed back out to their schools. We love and miss them!

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Jason and I got to take Ali downtown for one of her Christmas presents: we saw Harry Potter and the Cursed Child! It started to snow big, fluffy flakes on our drive down and we had a bit of time before the show, so we got to walk over and see the big tree in Millennium Park and The Bean. Everything looked so magical!

We had (obstructed view) front-row seats and it was so cool to be that close! We could see into the wings of the stage and sometimes saw people being pulled up in harnesses and getting ready to do their flying scenes! The dementors were so cool and creepy, they used a rotating stage and really amazingly choreographed set movements to show Hogwarts's staircases moving around, and the pollyjuice scenes (where one character changed into another) were so...magical! There were several times a spell involved fire, and we were close enough to feel the heat! It was funnier than we expected it to be and we really loved it.

Christmas Eve

Happy Christmas Eve! For the second year, all December we kept count of the ways we lit the world and had that many candles light our Christmas Eve dinner: this year I stopped counting at 100- guess we'll never know exactly how many we really had!

Jason made a yummy traditional Danish dinner of meatballs, potatoes, and red cabbage with a rice pudding for dessert.

We acted out the nativity, a favorite family tradition. This year we took several short videos instead of one long one so that people could be in more than one scene. We had a lot of sheep, for example!!

After watching George C Scott's A Christmas Carol (another tradition), Jake tried (and mostly failed, poor guy) to go to sleep, and the older kids were banished upstairs at 10pm so Santa could come. That was WAAAY too early for them to consider going to bed, so they got special permission to watch Jim Carrey's The Grinch in Ali's room.

Santa came and much fun was had on Christmas morning, but as usual, I didn't take any pictures- I was busy enjoying my family!

Christmas Fun

We had a lovely Christmas Season. The kids are starting to understand something Jason and I have been saying for years: that we often wish Christmas never actually came and that the weeks leading up to it are, in some ways, even better than the actual day!

Our ward Christmas party was fun, and I even got a picture of all my kids with Santa.

The Christmas Street is always a hit!

And we were glad that the giving machines were in our area again this year. I even got to volunteer there one evening and Jason helped with the setup, in addition to going as a family.

Max

The pup needed his own post.

Evie and Mistletoe

We enjoyed Evie and Mistletoe's shenanigans this year!

Jake and Eli may have even heard Mistletoe make some noise the first day he returned! Such fun!

750 Club

Logan hit a cool milestone in his gym journey: he's in the 750 Club! That means he can do 175 pounds of bench press, 245 pounds of squat, and 345 pounds of deadlift!

Winter Concerts

The end of the semester means lots of things, including band concerts! Jason and I went to Ali's:

And Jake joined us another night at Eli's:

(Jake is a good sport to come to LOTS of sibling events, and he usually has a book to help pass the time. He really enjoyed Holes.)

Gems

I still find amazing gems on my phone every once in awhile!

Check the Fit

Logan has been investing a lot of his paychecks into really nice hoodies and pants this winter. Can't say that I mind, especially since he takes really good care of them and usually even puts them away now after he washes them.

Friendsgiving

Ali and a few of her friends did a Friendsgiving again this year. Ali has been friends with these three since Elementary School! It's so fun that they still enjoy being together.

So Thankful

My good friend Jessica invited us over to their house for Thanksgiving and I was thrilled to accept the invitation! The food was great, and the company was better (even if some of my kids were less than thrilled about the idea of going to MY friend's house...or maybe more that it was the Bishop's house too, but everyone ended up having a good time). 

Jake decided that this was the perfect occasion to break out his cowboy hat and he looked so snazzy that Bishop chose to wear his too during the epic bingo game after dinner.

All the loot they got from the game may have been part of what changed their minds about how fun Bishop's house can be! When we got home Jake repeatedly sang, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..." as they played with all their silly new toys.

I am truly thankful for this crew!

Dirty Clothes Tower

Eli's dirty clothes were so stuffed in his basket that they didn't crumble from the basket's rectangular shape when he tried to dump them in the washing machine!

Stake Conference

One of the counselors in the Stake Presidency asked me if I thought Jake would be willing to say the opening prayer for the Sunday session of Stake Conference, and I knew (without a doubt) that he would be happy to. The morning of the meeting he asked if Jake would feel comfortable sitting up on the stand until he said the prayer, and again, I knew he would have no problem with that! He looked quite at ease up there next to those adults and did a great job with his prayer.

Mole Day

Ali once again made a Mole project for Mole day in Chemistry. She spent quite a lot of time on this "Pirates of the Molibbean" scene.

Road Trip

One of Logan's best friends wanted to drive to Indiana to visit a ... friend ... and he recruited Logan and their other best friend to go with him. The three of them spent the day driving the 6-7 hours round-trip, riding RVs around the friend's property, watching her performance, and eating out. It was a great boys' trip! It felt very college to me, which I'm not quite ready for!

Updated Bulletin Boards

I've wanted to update the bulletin boards in our ward building for a long time, and some of the girls and I finally made it happen (along with a chicken nugget taste test because, fun).

Eli made the Team!

Eli tried out for his school's basketball team last year and didn't make it, and I thought that would be the end of that. But this fall, he decided he wanted to try again. He worked hard every day in our driveway, at our neighborhood park (which he would jog to and from), and even ran drills at the church a few times with his dad. He did everything he could do, including asking extended family on both sides to pray for him. He got tons of encouragement, and people all across the country were as anxious as we were to find out if he made the team...and he did! We were so proud of his hard work, and so pleased that in this case, it turned out the way we'd hoped it would. 

Jason and I have both been to most of his games (we each went to one alone), and each of his siblings came to at least one. It was a short season (no complaints from me) and the team didn't have a great record, but it was a good experience for him and I think he enjoyed it overall.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Jake and I had the once-in-a-lifetime experience of seeing one of his favorite authors (Jeff Kinney) in person! Rather than a typical meet-and-greet, it was a silly show that was 100% perfect for his audience and it was fun to sit in the middle of 1,000 giggling kids and their parents.  

Ali

Cutest closeup.

Crumbl

Our friends own our local Crumbl Cookie Store, and one weekend they put out the call that they were slammed and would pay anyone who could come in NOW to help out. Jason decided to go (to help our friend) and I suggested that Logan go as well (as a potential way to get a job- since he'd been looking for one). They went and worked for a couple of hours, and when they were leaving Jason asked if they were hiring. "We're always hiring good workers," they said...and the rest is history. Logan works most Monday and Friday evenings, and Saturday during the day. It's actually kind of the perfect schedule for a High Schooler. He likes being busy and having a steady income, and we like the boxes of cookies he brings home (as do the people we minister to, Jason's coworkers, and our neighbors)!

Happy Halloween

We had a fun Halloween, and I even got a picture of all the kids together before they all went off in different directions! We had a ghost, a basketball player, a teenage boy, and Enid from Wednesday. Jake trick-or-treated with me and then with his dad, Logan went and watched The Sixth Sense with two friends who'd never seen it before, Ali went trick-or-treating with her friends and so did Eli. Happy Halloween!

Also, Ali painted this cute little pumpkin at Young Womens.