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.