Gallup Trip

 The day after Christmas, Friday morning, we hurried and packed up the car, stopped at Senor Taco to load up on bean burritos and chips and salsa and head to Gallup! This Frosty made me laugh in Payson.

We have done this the past few years and I always feel bad intruding right after the craziest of holidays but it's the only time that works for all our schedules. Collin was still recovering from his angiograms and brain hemorrhage. He had been subdued.. not quite himself, saying his leg really hurt. I was worried about him. But the moment all the kids were together, life was good again! And Collin seemed to warm up and be as close to happy as we had seen him in a while. 

They played a lot of Secret Hitler. Lots of shouting and exclaiming and deafening noise as if they were at a professional sports game! I brought a puzzle that was fun for us all to work on. There were trips out to the hot tub and all the older kids went out to the abandoned school again. They think it's so fun and spooky. Megan was in the kitchen non-stop making veggie platters, homemade queso, gourmet breakfast of coffee cake, eggs and fruit. She also made homemade choco tacos.. trying to imitate the ones from the Westin resort. So a very complicated homemade ice cream recipe to make salted caramel ice cream. Homemade waffle cones. And then assembling them all. I know I'm forgetting other things she made too. I was her sou chef washing dishes and cleaning up. It really felt like we never left the kitchen. I was exhausted. I can't imagine how she felt. We went on a walk through the golf course and chatted and then us adults went out for Mexican food that night. One highlight was Bron putting together all these fun games for us to play! Like being blindfolded and having your partner talk you through a minefield of plastic cups. Or trying to place a Christmas tree decoration as far across a line as you can without stepping past the line. So other people could hold onto you or try to help you reach as far as you could. Poor Lilly slipped and smacked her head!! We saw who could blow out the most candles in a row and Weston won! He got all of them out after a face off with Bron who was next best at it. They tried to transfer flour from playing cards sticking out of their mouths but that was a disaster haha. They couldn't get past two people. Then Bron was trying to be sly and have the kids pair up to hold a cookie between their mouths and race across the room and back. If Collin wasn't dating Paige, it definitely would have been funny, but I didn't feel right about it. So they switched and did an orange. More space, lol. We all laughed a ton and had so much fun. Then ended the night with playing Left, Right, Center. 

Oh yeah, poor Bron had just done a skin treatment for skin cancer and his face was so red and burned! He was in a lot of pain. I felt so bad for him. The face masks brought some relief albeit his new look was a bit startling!

Sunday morning we went to church with them and Bron even came! That's a first since he was put in as stake president 5 years ago. The talks were amazing! And I loved the Relief Society lesson. I thought this decoration on the chalkboard was really cool. Megan made a yummy ham sandwich feast to send us off on. It was so so good. 

Everyone huddled around Travis watching an old video of Virgil (Megan's dad) in Disneyworld with us on a rollercoaster, "screaming" in his old man way that was SO funny. 

One more game of Left, Right, Center and this kid took it all! Then we feasted on the choco tacos! Heavenly. 

We lingered as long as we could, but Christopher was in town visiting from Utah and making pasta for everybody, so I knew we needed to get on the road. 

We love these people SO MUCH!! How blessed we are to call them friends. Honestly, I don't know how we got so lucky.

Christmas Eve and Day

 CHRISTMAS EVE

This was the first year the grandkids did not act out a nativity. It had gotten too crazy, irreverent and chaotic. So Carrie brought a little portable projector screen and we watched a short Christmas video the church put out. Sometimes traditions need to change. Paula doesn't sew pajama pants anymore either but she does gift them a pair from a store. Olive played her violin and Tanner played the piano. I didn't play the piano though. Grandpa's silk tuxedo shirt was noted. Tanner gets so bored without a cousin his age so he proceeded to take pictures of everyone and write "love" on them. 

What a blessing that it all got done! We got to bed a little later than normal, around midnight, but grateful it wasn't later. It had been a busy, busy day. I spent it literally still shopping for gifts at Wal-mart and delivering last second treats and Christmas cards and a dozen other things. Every second counted. Travis almost left me around 2pm to go help his mom fry chimichangas and I was speechless. The house was slaughtered. I still had so much to do. He looked at me and realized it was not the year to leave early. Having your son in the ICU for 9 days in the middle of December changes everything. I was so grateful we were all home together for Christmas. What a blessing.

CHRISTMAS DAY

Tanner's face when he realizes the skim board is for him, was pretty great!

Weston got two new pairs of shoes, a drone helicopter, a skateboard from Freedom (so a legit one) and a Discovery Flight which means he gets to fly a real plane! 

I feel like this story needs to be told!

He has recently taken up the hobby of skateboarding and his friend, Sienna, was getting dropped off at our house and when her dad pulled up with her, Weston was outside riding his cheap, Wal-mart skateboard. Sienna's dad said, "lets see a trick!". So Weston attempted a kick flip and came down hard on the board, snapping it in half. Ha! Totally Napoleon Dynamite moment. We all laughed and laughed when he told us the story. Poor guy! What are the chances? And in front of a girl and her dad. Oh man. So getting a decent board for Christmas was a big deal. Then, a couple days later, a package showed up on our doorstep. It was a skateboard. Nothing really nice, but still, a new skateboard. No name or return address. Weston found out it was from Sienna's dad! Sooo kind!!

Olive's loot!

Her first pair of Doc Marten shoes! Lots of clothes from Zara, including the coveted barrel jeans. A Baggu leopard purse, new leopard phone cover, matching PJ set, nail tools, an electric toothbrush, bows and headbands and a Nedo (a squishy, gel cube that all the kids love right now).

The only downside to the morning was Collin was not himself. He was grumpy and we didn't know why. Later he apologized and said he was just tired. But it put a damper on things because he's always been our happiest kid on Christmas and so much fun to watch open presents. He was hard to buy for this year. He got new shoes, a robe (I noticed how much he loved the one at the Goodman's Wyoming house), a new rearview mirror for his truck and... the thing he wanted most.. a Costco membership! He loves their pizza in the cafe and wants to be able to go for lunch. He also got a chunk of money and I last minute bought him a remote control truck just for fun because I figure boys never grow out of that kind of thing, but he just seemed confused and uninterested in it. Oh well. 

Tanner got a new Nike sweatshirt, "ethikas".. (not really, but thank goodness he was happy with whatever brand of printed, silk underwear.. much cheaper), a slot car race track, 3D printed dragon, electric toothbrush, Beyblade set, new Playstation controller. His most wanted gift was a Crunchlabs subscription. Every month a box will get delivered with a scientific type activity where he can build something to play with.

Collin... always so thoughtful to give gifts... got Travis a gold chain so he could match Bron, haha! Love it. 

Collin got me a sugar scrub and cross necklace and a popular hand sanitizer spray. He also wrote us both really sweet cards. I got myself two new pots from Our Place when they were on Black Friday sale. Yay! No more flecks of teflon in our food. And a Dime perfume. Travis bought me a new screen protection for my phone and replaced it for me. Those are cheap but it was the thought and taking something off my to-do list that was SO nice!

Weston wrote me a sweet note too. 

For their ornaments this year, I got Collin a driver's license one, Weston got a fishing one, Olive got a violin, and Tanner got a video game one. 

I also bought a back massager gun, red light therapy wrap and neck massager thing for the family to open. Unfortunately most of it was broken by the next month. Dumb, cheap Wal-mart products.

They normally get a book in their stockings but I was coming up short. Instead the younger two shared a Story time bible, and the older boys got a bible version good for teenagers called The Message. I also gave myself a new version called the ESV. The church just came out encouraging members to study from alternative translations of the bible and I'm super excited! The KJV is written at a 12th grade reading level and 1/2 of all adults read at a 7th grade level. I think this will be a game changer.

And finally, Weston, Olive and Tanner opened their Forrest Frank t-shirts at the same time because I bought our family tickets to go see him in concert in July!!! The Figureoas and Goodmans are going too! Collin will be in Brazil for HXP so sadly he'll miss it.   

We had our yummy biscuits and gravy and fresh squeezed OJ from the Orange Patch for brunch. The bummer for Weston was that it was raining all morning so he couldn't go ride his skateboard.

We went over to my parent's house around 2pm. We brought Winnie because Camille wanted all the dogs to give gifts to each other since they don't have a kid to participate in the cousin gift exchange. So Winnie, Daisy and Paisley romped around in the backyard. Except Winnie was scared of them so I let her inside. 

Grandma did a game with the grandkids winning prizes under Christmas mugs.

Their gift to the grandkids this year is a field trip to the Musical Instrument Museum. Olive hated that museum when she went for school so she wasn't super thrilled and I don't think there's anyway I can bribe the older boys into going, but I'm sure it will be a fun day for Tanner! 

We gave them tickets to go see Forrest Frank with us in July!

The cousin gift exchange was cute. We haven't done one in years. 

Lots of smiles until Tanner gave Stetson a push on a skateboard, trying to help him, and Stetson went face first onto the concrete. Ugh! He split his chin open and needed stitches. So I drove home to get Trav's office keys and then Travis stitched him up at the office. The timing of it was a bummer because I had just given my mom the "Anthropology Rock". It's a funny viral prank right now. You basically just gift a big rock to your mom and everyone freaks out about it and how expensive it is and it's to get a reaction out of the husband. My dad was definitely confused but went along with it until the kids came screeching in, yelling about Stetson. Oh well. Poor little guy. He was tough. Katie was pretty traumatized by it.  

My parents were leaving for Israel at 4am so we all cleared out of their house by 5pm. We wouldn't have normally gone to the Evans but we ended up there and Carrie had made an enormous saran wrap ball with trinkets inside that the grandkids all rolled apart playing a game. It was funny to watch. I don't know how she had the time or patience to make that!