Into the New Year and Decade

Happy New Year! ( A couple months ago!) I love New Years, On New Years Eve, Max had to work in the morning but came home just after lunch. I put the boys to work chopping up the Christmas tree and putting it in the yard debris bin. I honestly can't remember what we did when Max got home but when it was dinner time, we all worked together to make fondue. The last couple of years have been fun because each person has a job to help prepare. Charlie cut the apples, Miles cut the bread, Edwin may have set the table, I don't remember, and Max assisted the boys in their jobs. I'be also been getting better at my cheese fondue skills and it was a tasty dinner enjoyed by all....and let's be real, there are only a few dinners at our house that are enjoyed by all....)

we reviewed our favorite parts of the year and I can't remember what everyone said, because this was a long time ago. I know my personal favorite was Costa Rica and our beach trips and Lasik, Sometimes we go through our blog and review some of the things we did. I'm pretty sure my boys love our Fishermans' bend camping trip with cousins.

We then played our new game for awhile

Check out his eyebrow skills. 

we let the kids watch a movie for awhile while Max and I cleaned up the kitchen together and prepared the chocolate covered Strawberries. Then a dance party happened...including a disco ball!

And I had a video of the dance party and for some reason it isn't working and I don't see a need to prolong this post anymore so, I'm not going to worry about it.
Some good hard dancing led to chocolate covered strawberries

We showed our kids the ball drop in New York City shortly after 9pm, a perk of living on the west coast! The main thing my boys got from the ball drop is that some people kiss for a long time...haha. so I guess we don't do much PDA in front of our kids.

We then put our kids to bed by 10pm and Max and I finally got our home new years date. We love our New Years home date where we review our last year, definitely not original but we love it and feel grateful for the learning and growing experiences we have each year. Last year when we reviewed our year, we felt like we were at a road block, Max was not happy with his job in construction, our house flipping didn't go as well as hoped and we felt like there was so much unknown in our future and Max was looking for a new start with his career. This year, Max has been in a new job that he loves with new long term career goals that he is excited about. His employers and coworkers respect him and his skills, he is so much happier. Our boys have been growing and turning into little independent people. We're learning more about parenting and still strive to be better. Overall, we feel like we are in a better place than we were a year ago and that is all you can hope for, constant progress! Anyway, here are some accomplishments from 2019

• Max's beard won an award...(This is seriously the first thing he mentioned for his 2019 accomplishments)
• Career path chosen,
• one-on-one dates with kids
• Rafting and camping trips
• No debt
• Sold last flipped house
• Garage organization
• Woodworking projects
• Costa Rica Trip!!!
• Rebecca trip to Utah
• Max job at OHSU
• Selling eggs
• Charlie reading novels
• Consistent date nights
• Lasik for Rebecca
• Max got braces

I know there was more but that's what got on our list.

For some of our 2020 goals we wrote...Since it's been months, I'll check of the ones we've already accomplished.

• Max's sleep study✅
• Trip to Nashville
• Thorough budget
• Buy newer car ✅ (and still NO debt!✅)
• Apply to PA school
• Have boys run Egg business
• Boys do gymnastics ✅
• Boys do swimming
• Potty Train Edwin✅
• Quarterly temple dates
• Monthly Date nights ✅ So far so good
• All of 25th rented out
• Have a cute and tidy master bedroom
• Organization boxes for Kids' school stuff✅
• Kids run Chicken/egg business, learn financial skills

He have more on our personal lists as well but that's all I feel like sharing on the blog. 

We stayed up pretty late eating our strawberries and chatting and making plans.

They next morning kids came into our room too early and I found a million pictures on my phone like this...

Max had the day off so we decided to start on our list of goals. Beginning with car shopping. The car I had been using was an older car that Max got for super cheap at an auction 2 years ago. It had been such a good car that we made it last 2 years as opposed to the one year we had hoped. While using this old cheap car, we had been saving up and now that our boys are getting bigger and it's a struggle to have them all sit in the one row, we decided to finally look at mini vans. we actually had been looking for awhile before New Years but since Max had the day off he went and shopped around, and but the end of the day we were driving home in our new van, paid in full!

So much space!

Anyway, I know I missed a lot of details but we are very goal oriented people and it is so encouraging to see progress and growth in each year even if we can't see it in the day-to-day. Hooray for 2020 and a brand new decade full of new opportunities and growth!

Christmas Day

Christmas morning! I always get so excited so I wake up earlier than everyone else! Once the sun is up and everyone is awake they all pile into our bed. Then I go downstairs and check out the scene, put breakfast in the oven, turn on music and light the you tube fire! In the meantime the boys are anxiously awaiting me to tell them to come down and Max is showing them videos about the birth of Christ. 

Our first year having matching stockings!! I've been so excited about them, and since we don't have a mantel, we were super excited that this shelf which we inherited from Marissa and Richard fit our stockings perfectly. 

Santa left out some family activities We've been wanting to get the game q-bits for a long time and all the boys (and parents) love it. And we're excited for more toy story!

I have a somewhat strict order of events on Christmas morning.
1. We check to see what Santa left, sometimes there is an unwrapped gift by the tree or sometimes it is the ...
2. Stockings. We then Check out the loot in the stockings. All while breakfast is cooking...
3. Then we sit at the table and eat (sometimes the kids get a juice in their stocking that they can eat with breakfast)
4. Then we can go back to the living room and the boys pass out the gifts under the tree and we start opening them very slowly, one at a time starting from youngest to oldest.
We make sure this process goes very slow and takes HOURS!

Anyway, checking out their new game, and they decided they wanted to play it right away, why not? We busted out the game and just went with the flow.

The Puffy pancakes were ready in the meantime...

We then dug into the stockings.

We started this new manger tradition this year. There is a kit you can buy but we decided to make our own, I tried making the manger but it didn't turn out great so max made this one, the chickens donated some of their hay and Max carved a baby Jesus out of soap and painted it with pearly white nail polish. Just another one of his newly found skills!

The idea is to set the manger up during the Christmas season and each time a someone does an act of service or kindness, they can add a piece of hay to the manger. Then on Christmas you set the baby Jesus in the manger and the idea is to have enough hay in the manger to make a comfortable bed.

The boys made this nativity set up during our breakfast after we set baby Jesus in the manger.

We then started the enjoyably slow process of opening the gifts one at a time.

Christmas gift giving is so weird. It's fun to give but can get so overwhelming. Like, my kids don't really need anything so I kinda didn't want to do gifts but then you find something that they will love or will be useful, then you add gifts from each sibling and grandparents and there are way too many gifts, yet you feel so grateful for the outpouring of love. anyway, Max did most of the shopping for the boys on black Friday and had a lot of fun with it.

Disco Ball, the boys destroyed his old one, haha, and pretty much every night since Christmas has been a dance party. (We gotta wear these kids out somehow during the winter)

For Max's main gift, from me, I felt strongly that he didn't need any"thing" and what I believe is inspiration, it hit me that the most meaningful thing I could do for him was send him to go visit his best friend in Nashville. After some conspiring with Richard and Marissa, We were able to pick a day  (week) for Max to visit. I was able to find super affordable plane tickets. and then figure out how to present the present...ha, English is weird)

Anyway, we decided to give him some clues because that would be more fun for him to open, So 

Clue one was a haiku

After he read the clue I played some Elvis music on the piano, he guessed it after the first song.

Clue two was an airplane with Max's picture in it (the picture was taken with Richard, I just cut Max's head out of it.

Clue 3, I found the only Nashville travel book from the library and wrapped it,


Clue 4 had the flight plans and another attractive picture of Max with Richard.

His trip will be in May and he was so so so surprised and excited. It was the best seeing him open each clue. 

Max totally surprised me as well, days before Christmas he had run some errands with Charlie and for the next while they were being super secretive in the garage. Miles went out to help them work as well. Max had asked what I wanted for Christmas but I really truly didn't need or want anything. I feel like I have been so spoiled this year with going to Costa Rica and getting Lasik surgery that I just didn't want anything else. I told him if he felt he needed to get a gift it could be fun to get jewelry picked out from each kid. So he took that and ran with is. On Christmas day I got presented with Jewelry from each boy and my personal favorite, this beaded beauty from my friend Jalynne who does traditional Cree beadwork and makes amazing things. But that's not all, he and Jalynne worked together to create a design and pick the colors that they knew I would love and it just meant so much to me. I've been ogling over her amazing work for a long time but still wasn't sure what I wanted to order from her but they made me the perfect custom set! 

Anyway, back to the garage project that Charlie and Max were working on...it ended up not being completely done until Christmas night. but then he presented me with this beautiful jewelry holder. He had looked at a couple different designs but then made something completely unique and he used many scraps oof things we already had. The bracelet bar is an old broom handle, the framing is some old molding from a house we worked on and the chicken wire is from...the chickens. haha! He knows I love being cheap and reusing things. haha. Charlie picked out the blue "mermaid" fabric background and the blue crystal knobs and contributed to the creation of it. Needless to say, I was so impressed. I knew my husband is skilled and will figure out new skills when he wants but I didn't know he could make something so nice looking and sturdy without a pattern! I just felt so loved. I need to take a picture in better lighting but this is what I got.
This was just extra meaningful since he made it unique and involved Charlie and it was a special project they did together and Charlie had some say in the details and it is a very useful gift. So many wins!

Anyway, I got a little ahead of myself. For lunch my boys ate cereal that they unwrapped and then played with some new toys for awhile. We then made our way to my moms house to have Christmas dinner and visit them for awhile. 

It was an incredibly joyous day, we didn't feel rushed in the least. We were able to do legos and art with the boys, Everything was low-key at my moms house and we just enjoyed our time together as a family.  Christmas is such a wonderful time to show your family extra love and time and we all loved it.

Christmas Eve

We are in the process of making new traditions for Christmas Eve. In the past we have always gone to my Green Grandma's but this year we needed to decide if we were going to stay home or go to my brother's house 2 hours away. Going to my brother's house would have been a lot of fun but we were really feeling like we wanted to make traditions in our own home and sleep in our own beds. 

We started with a slow morning, got some dinner in the crock pot then went to the movie theater to see Frozen 2. We all liked it and going to the movies is a pretty rare treat for the boys so they were so excited! And they love the first Frozen! Anyway we got some popcorn and made it into the theater just in time. Max couldn't eat the popcorn because of his braces...haha! Anyway, everyone loved it and they were all good in the theater! So that's a win and another fun thing about their ages right now. 

Afterwards they even got a quarter to use in the machines which they may have liked more than the movie. 

When we got home, my friend Debbie had left a cute gnome family on our doorstep, (one gnome for each member of our family and my gnome and I happened to have matching braids that day)

I think we spent the next little while cleaning up the house and eating dinner. Then we made gingerbread cookies. We usually do this earlier in the season but we saved it for a fun Christmas Eve activity.

Our tree was so dried out by this time that is looked like it's collapsing on itself. But it was good while it lasted and was taken down a couple days after Christmas. 

We cleaned up dinner and got to work with our gingerbread. Everyone had so much fun!

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Max took some extra remnants of dough and made the kids favorite animal without a cookie cutter. Peregrine falcon (Charlie), turtle (Miles), Dolphin (also Miles), and Dog (Edwin).  Add "freehand animal cookie making" to Max's list of skills. 

After the cookies were done the boys decided they wanted to write notes to Santa. 

Charlie's note says "Dear Santa, we got you some cookies."

Miles' note says "Dear Santa Claus, I want a remote control car. I have been good."

And then it was bedtime, Max read The Night Before Christmas and the boys surprisingly settled down pretty quickly.


So I was excited to be Santa. I think I like Christmas with kids more than I liked Christmas as a kid. Stay tuned for Christmas morning.