Moments in Logan

Between all of our moments of celebration, we had smaller, quieter activities.  My favorite was when we were able to go to the Utah Theater and watch a showing of "It's a Wonderful Life." I've never watched it in a theater with popcorn before and it made the whole experience even sweeter.  It was long for my kids, I've never had them sit down to watch it with me, but let's consider it a cultural experience.  The theater even made it snow during the final scenes!  Daxton fell asleep towards the end, but that's better than being grumpy and awake.

Sam was generous enough to share one of his Christmas gifts with us.  The kids put together their own balsam board animals.  It was a learning experience, but kept all of the kids entertained for a couple of hours!  Miracle!

My mom got a fun craft kit for the kids to work on.  They were each able to make a silly monster face.  It was fun to see their personalities in each of their creations. 

The snow finally came!  McKenzie and Faye were so excited that they went outside and danced in the wet, falling snow.  

Teaching Moki how to play tag with these crazy hooligans.

Grandma helping Daxton put together his new puzzle from Grandma Stratford.  It's a great puzzle that is just challenging enough to keep him engaged, but not so hard he can't do it.  I'm grateful to add a puzzle like that to our collection.

I think these kids played hard while we were gone.  Cambrie and Moki slept most of the long drive home.  Can't complain about that too much.

Sledding masters

Geesh, who would have thought that we'd have three different sledding trips this visit?!  All of the forecasts told us to expect a white Christmas and so much snow.  As Christmas drew closer, the forecasts didn't quite hold true, and we were beginning to think that we wouldn't have any new snow at all.  The days after Christmas we had enough snow to go sledding.  Unfortunately with the snow came some bitter wind.  We decided to brave the temperatures anyway and went sledding at the park near my parents' house.  We decided to take Moki with us.  Well, his little puppy coat does not do a great job of insulating him and he was freezing the whole time.  We had him sipped up in our coats to try to keep him warm.  He'd get wiggle and hop out to go play, only to start shivering instantly and we'd wrap him back up.  We did that a couple of times.  

 

Meanwhile the rest of us went up and down that hill.  The snow was perfect for some quick sledding, but not too quick.  On one run, McKenzie hit a jump perfectly and flew through the air, only to land on an ice chunk and tear a gash in the bottom of the tube.  Oops!  

Kelton enjoyed cruising down on his stomach.  Daxton decided to try to snowboard down the hill and made it about halfway before he had to bail.  

So many fun runs!

As we were wrapping up we decided to make things more interesting and piled extra people on our sleds and made trains to slide down.   

Eventually the wind drove us back inside to warm up, but it was a very successful outing.

One of our best sledding excursions of the entire trip was when Jake invited us up to the dry farm to sled on their old radio flyers.  He and his family has the tradition of taking their radio flyers up to the dry farm and sledding down the main road.  Then they load up the sleds in the back of the truck, drive up to the top, and cruise down again.  It's amazing!  The run is super long and so you get a nice long ride.  

We also don't have to make the trek up the hill on our own legs.  

Even though it was a cold day, it meant that the snow wasn't melting and slow, which was great.  We squeezed in this adventure right before we hit the road for home and were able to get in about ten runs or so.  I can see how the Thurstons could make a full day out of it.  It was an absolute blast!

 

We cleaned the sink at Angie's

As hard as it is to believe, I have never cleaned the sink at Angie's!  I lived at USU for four years.  I love ice-cream.  It should have happened at least once before now, but alas it has not.  So when Camille suggested it as one of our family activities I thought it was a splendid idea!  We ordered two sinks for our crew.  My kids were in awe.  They were each given a personal bowl to scoop their ice-cream into, and when I told them they could refill their bowls as many times as they wanted, Kelton's jaw literally dropped.  I have never seen such excitement on their face as when our sinks were delivered.  

Naturally we got to work right away.  

Before we knew it, the kids were on their second bowl, and then their third.  By that point the ice-cream left in the sink resembled melted goo more than ice-cream, and the kids were slowing down.  But we were determined to succeed!  Daxton and McKenzie valiantly went back for their fourth bowl.  By the time we finished there was only soup left behind.  Kelton's face looked a little queasy, and even my head was starting to spin.  But we did it!  

We now have the bumper sticker to prove how awesome we are!

Christmas

The Johnson grandkids are at the perfect age to reenact the Nativity now.  We pulled out my mom's nativity costume box, outfitted our wisemen, shepherds, sheep, angels and holy family, and then began the show.  Jeremy read excerpts from Luke 2, while the kids moved on and off the stage for their roles.  They did such a great job and I think they all really enjoyed it.  

After one final bow from the cast everyone went home to celebrate the rest of Christmas Eve with their families, while we continued our traditions at my mom and dad's.  We opened our Christmas jammies, changed, and then started one more tradition.  We each chose one name of Christ that meant a lot to us this year and shared our testimony of Him.  As my kids grow I think that this tradition will just continue to get sweeter and sweeter.  It didn't take too much convincing to get the kids to head to bed after they set out Santa's milk and cookies.  The next morning it was Christmas!

We sent this little teaser to Ryan at work.  It would be waiting for him when he got off his shift!

I had no idea what time our kids would wake up this year.  They've been known to wake up before 5:00 some years, and I wasn't really looking forward to that this year.  Thankfully they made it to about 6:30 before waking us up.  We started with the kids' stocking and gifts left by Santa next to their stockings. The boys were super efficient this year and started going through their gifts like rapid fire.  Every time I looked over they had unwrapped a new gift and had a new excited grin on their face.  They were loving it.  

Cambrie was much more subdued.  She knew almost every gift she was getting this year.  She didn't expect the loaf of bread though!  Neither did my mom.  My dad and I were able to pull off at least one surprise this year!  

McKenzie's whole Christmas could be labeled cozy; cozy donut blanket, cozy hedgehog slippers from Cambrie, cozy hedgehog sweater from Santa, cozy socks from me.  She'll be toasty for months to come. 

Even Bob got a Christmas gift this year, a set of inflatable toys for tub!  Lucky guy.

Some of the highlight gifts this year was the Nintendo Switch for the boys.  Their Wii is on the fritz and this way they can each play the games they want to play.  

This is important, choosing gamer tags for the Switch!

Cambrie gets to go see Hamilton in theater, and McKenzie got her tickets for Simone Biles' Gold Over America Tour.  

Once again the sibling gifts were huge hits.  Daxton couldn't wait to give Kelton a football.  

Kelton couldn't wait to give a laser tag set to Dax.  Cambrie found the amazing slippers for Kenz.  And McKenzie found a set of paint pens for Cambrie.  

A pair of Doc Martens.  Holy cow, we have a teenager who wants shoes for Christmas!

We thought that Grandpa would want a bit of Colorado to stay with him even after we left, so we gave him a true Colorado sweatshirt.

Jeremy and I each got things we wanted off of our Christmas lists, plus some bonus gifts.  Jeremy got some new Oakley running glasses, a hatchet, and a set of finisher flags for the remainder of his Ironman races.  

McKenzie even personally designed a new Hydroflask water bottle for him.

Mine was a kitchen Christmas: mixing bowls, pie tins, pie weights, Cumin from McKenzie, and an extra set of ramekins.  It was a great Christmas!  

Just hanging out in his nest.

After the chaos of the morning calmed down and the kids had a chance to play with their gifts, there was a knock on the door.  Cambrie went to answer it and didn't, couldn't believe her eyes.  Sitting on my parent's front porch was a Christmas box with little puppy noises coming from inside.  Cambrie had time to shoot an unbelieving glare at Jeremy who was filming before tentatively opening the box.  Once she did, her hand shot to her mouth in disbelief.  

Sitting inside of that box was a little puppy with a big red bow around his neck.

  As she picked him up to cuddle him, McKenzie found a note and read, "Hi, my name is Moki and I am your Christmas Miracle.  I can't wait to be part of your family!  I love walks, snuggles, and lots of attention.  Please take good care of me.  Xoxo, Moki"  At this point Cambrie started crying and I heard a soft little, "Thank you," betweens her tears. 

She brought Moki inside to show the boys.  Kelton didn't believe Moki belonged to us, that he was a neighbor's puppy.  And Daxton was temporarily preoccupied with the cookie Cambrie had set down in order to pick up Moki.  Was we were all inside and it started to sink in a bit the boys grew more excited.  Each kids was given an additional Moki gift to open, that revealed chew toys, collars, treats, and other things Moki was going to need.  He is the cutest, sweetest little dog.  He spent most of that first and second day cuddling with whomever would pick him up.  

Camille and Jake had helped to facilitate the surprise and had let Moki spend the night at their house Christmas Eve.  I was so grateful that Camille wanted to help with the surprise.  I have a feeling that this Christmas gift will be one that will be very hard to forget.  Welcome to the family Moki!