This Christmas

 Happy New Year, friends!   It's been a whirlwind of a few weeks.  Heck, it's been a whirlwind of a few months and I am hopeful that I can start getting back to some sense of  normalcy soon...whatever that looks like.  Haha!   I will divide up blogging about our holiday break with a post about Christmas and another post about New Years, hopefully with a couple bonus ones thrown in too.    

I don't feel like I took as many pics as I normally do, but here are a few that show a glimpse of what our G family Christmas  looked like this year!    

One day during finals, my friend and fellow BYU ward leader, Christy and I bought a bunch of snacks from Trader Joes and set up at a table in the Wilkinson Center.  Then we sent a note out on our ward GroupMe and invited everyone to come get some fun brain food... 

We got about 40 members who came and filled up baggies with fun snacks (several of whom had never been into a Trader Joes before)...

It was a super fun way to connect with the members and wish them the best as they took their finals and headed home for the holidays...

I was delighted to receive these adorable pictures from Cami after Santa visited their preschool.  Oliver was very nervous and a high-five was the closest his comfort level would allow him to get, but Lucie was giddy about the visit!  

A day or two  after we had the Trader Joes final "party", Emma arrived home!  It was pure joy to have her home again, along with Adam, but sadly she spent the first few days she was here with low energy, no appetite, and some respiratory symptoms.  She'd had a fever previously and we're pretty sure she may have had the flu, which is going around right now.   After not being able to eat for several days, we took her to the doctor, where she was prescribed an anti-nausea medication.  Thankfully just a couple doses of that took the edge off and she slowly regained her appetite and energy over the next few days...but not before passing along the bug to Spencer as well, who has gone through pretty much the exact same set of miserable symptoms.  Thankfully, so far, Glen, Adam, and I have remained healthy (currently knocking on wood)! 

After Emma felt better, the fun really started with some craft projects (her own), way too much treat baking and eating, and  a ton  of board game playing... including 10 Days in Europe, Magic the Gathering (for the boys), Wingspan, a new game called "Coup", Nertz,  and....

Telestrations!   Here's one round in particular that made us laugh...   

I thought Glen's interpretation of "triplex" was hilarious.  

It was supposed to be three houses in a row (a TRIplex instead of a DUplex), but he read it as "triple-x", which is why he started drawing XXXL clothing! 

I was obviously very confused by Glen's drawing, but I guessed somewhat well considering what I had to work with.  Hahaha.  Adam drew the #7 picture.  

So..."Transplant" to "the blueberry girl from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"

It was fun to play a game that even my Mom even attempted to play with us, since she does not enjoy playing games normally.  

This was us on Christmas Sunday.  BYU is a bit of a ghost town during Christmas break, so our ward was combined with three other wards.  Even with four wards combined we only had about 50 people there and with only one hour of church and no other meetings, we decided to jump on over to our home ward for their Christmas program.  It was the first time in about 8 months that we'd attended our home ward and it was a beautiful day to be there.   The music was amazing and it was great to see our neighbors and friends.  

 On Christmas Eve night, we went to a place called Nacho Daddy, which {surprise!} was a nacho place.  It wasn't fancy food by any stretch, but they were open and had availability, so that's where we went.   

I thought mine were quite tasty....

Afterward, we went to Temple Square and walked around for a bit.   The weather has been (not anymore) unseasonably warm and it was kind of wild walking around in just light jackets/sweatshirts and no hats on Christmas Eve night!  

It was a nice way to spend the evening before heading home for our traditional Christmas Eve devotional.  

I took zero pics of our devotional and will post the Christmas pajama photos in a separate post, but here's a sweet picture of Denali from that night...

And one of Emma and Adam from another day...

Christmas Day was pretty low-key.  We ate a good breakfast, mostly prepared by Ems, opened presents, and just chilled together.  I sent a Christmas text individually to all of our members and sent this photo of the Bishopric out on our ward GroupMe on Christmas morning...  (it's us, the S's, Brandon, and the G's)

Here's our Christmas Day charcuterie board {something that has become a tradition the last several years}...

made by Adam and Emma...

We got to talk to Ellie on Christmas Day, which pretty much marked the one year mark of her mission (technically it was December 23rd when she started, but close enough)!  She seemed super happy!  

It was a good Christmas, though we definitely missed having Ellie and Cam and her fam here.  I love being a missionary Mom and have been really trying to embrace this missionary season our family has been in for several years, but I won't lie, I'm happy to have our final missionary "blackout year" behind us now.   Only five and a half more months until we can all be under the same roof again!  

I hope you all have had a wonderful Christmas too!   Thank you for following along here.   

💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗 

Legos + Potty Humor + Field Trips = Tired

If you dropped by our house recently, you would have found bowls of half-eaten Apple Jacks and Life Cereal, candy wrappers, Taki crumbs, and wrappers from various fast food restaurants we never usually go to.   

Additionally, there were piles of Legos and cars on every flat surface in the house....

No, I haven't taken up Legos and junk food in my middle age....but we did watch our nephews-- Manuel and Isaiah, while their Mom, brother, and sister took a spring break trip to Washington DC and NYC!  

Manuel and Isaiah are 8 and 9 years old, which meant we had A LOT more potty humor happening in our house than we've had in many years!  Cards Against Humanity (Family Edition) is pretty epic for kids this age.  It was good reading practice and had them rolling on the floor in laughter (mostly at the silly potty humor  that is plentiful in this game)! 

We also had a lot more random field trips to places we normally don't go, including mini golf, the country store to see the baby chicks and bunnies....

We went to the aquarium...

We made a visit to the butterfly biosphere in Thanksgiving Point.... 

And the dinosaur museum....

Denali got lots of extra love....

We made cookies for Nana...

And then brought them to her....

I was a wee bit tired at the end of the time we had them, but they are sweet boys and I was glad to give my sister the opportunity to take her other kids on their own adventure!  💗

Things that Made Me Smile This Holiday Season

The older we get, the more low-key our holidays become.   We are not on anyone's party invite list and it's frankly rather difficult to get excited by gift-giving when my kids are so specific with what they want.  It's been many years since I've had an ounce of confidence about buying an article of clothing or jewelry that my kids will actually wear and that's usually mostly what they want.  So they send me links and I try my best to also make sure they have something that's kind of a surprise to them.   I miss the days when I could get Lego sets, art supplies, or doll accessories, depending on the kid, and know that they would be totally happy.  

With Adam on his mission and Cami taking her turn with the in-laws, this holiday season we had 3 of our 5 kids here.  Combine the smaller crowd than usual with the fact that Glen only had a couple days off of work and Ellie left for Alabama on Christmas night (to help babysit Lucie), and it felt even more low-key than normal. 

Here are a few things that made me smile this holiday season...

Our Christmas tree is wild and crazy with a collection of ornaments from the last 30-years.   I keep thinking that I *could* get a second tree that we keep all fancy and matching, but, frankly, that's not me and I rather love our Tree of Memories.   We collect ornaments from our travels and special events from the year and it keeps getting more and more covered with ornaments every year. 

These missionary ornaments that we've gotten for each of our missionaries while they were serving, were making me extra smile this year.  This is our second Christmas without Adam at home and I found myself looking at that ornament a lot!   We did laugh when we put them side-by-side and saw the height differences between them.  Cami and Emma are both 5'5" in real life and Adam is 6'2", so the ornaments are definitely not to scale.  Haha!

 

I also really loved this ornament I found at the BYU-Idaho bookstore.  I love the artistic style of it and I love that BYU-Idaho is a new special place for our family now that Ellie attends there. 

 
Here's a collage of some more of our Christmas activities...a trip to Temple Square to see the lights, more treat making, our Christmas Eve devotional with my Mom and Heather, and some Christmas Eve pajama pics!  

 

We were completely charmed by the Christmas Eve Nativity pictures sent by Cami with their Christmas crew in Alabama.  Lucie was Garrett's parents' first grandchild too, but they now have four (almost five), while we are still anxiously awaiting number two! 

Christmas morning involved a delicious breakfast made by Emma! 

She could sell her  gluten free cinnamon rolls...they're amazing! 

Actual gift opening was  slow and pretty low-key...

We loved being able to talk with our missionary {and Cami, Garrett, and Lucie} for a while...

Some other Christmas break happenings, included a temple trip with Emma, Glen, and I....

Dropping Ellie off at the airport on Christmas night for a red-eye to Alabama so she could help babysit Lucie...

WE introduced my Mom and Heather to the game, Codenames, and totally laughed when both of our last names were *almost* in the first set of words! 

We saw a beautiful sunrise...

We saw our first American kestrel in the wild on one of our morning walks...

We ate a lot of good food, including this charcuterie board that Emma made us for NYE. 

I got a bee in my bonnet and took down the Christmas decorations before New Year's this year.  As much as I love our tree, I hadn't loved the way the rest of the decor came together this year, so I wanted it down while I actually had helpers in the house to make it happen.   I went straight for the Valentine's decor...

Also, I couldn't help but throw this great photo of Spence and Kiwi in here that my sister, Heather, took of them.  Much like when he was a teen, he still doesn't love sitting still for photos, so I'll take what I can get! 

Hope you all had an amazing holiday season filled with many happy memories!