New Year's Rockin' Eve!

At the start of this year, I took the few days leading up to New Year's Eve off, with a plan of doing something really awesome for New Year's this year. In the end, however, we didn't go for it. Instead, we spent the money we would have spent on our New Year's Eve celebration on a trip to the Ice Castles in Midway. So, when New Year's Eve rolled around, we didn't have any plans. We told the kids to invite over some friends, and we'd have a little bit of house party at our place.

Morgan was the only one who took us up on it. He invited several friends to the house. Marin decided she would go to the youth dance at the church, and Katy decided she would hide up in her room like she does every other day of the year.

She wasn't missing out. Morgan and his friends all sat in the living room all night long watching incredibly stupid YouTube videos and laughing uproariously as if they deserved such sentiment.

Simon thought it was cool though. He spent the whole evening trying to be a part of the boys' group. He pestered Morgan's friends to build Legos with him, play with his marble run with him, and just pay attention to him in general.

As midnight grew closer, we got out our supplies.

And being the cord cutters that we are, we had to search all over YouTube for a live countdown to midnight being broadcast somewhere. The only thing we could find was coming in through the CBC. We got to watch New Year's Rockin' Eve from Ottawa and Toronto. I think they just call it New Year's Rockin' Eh up there.

So, Carly Rae Jepson and some other less-known-in-America folks all wearing big ski jackets led is in the countdown to 2017.



And the party really kicked into gear!



We busted out the hard stuff, namely the Martinelli's Sparkling Cider, and all had a toast.

Then Simon insisted on his favorite part of the New Year's holiday. Two years ago, while ushering in 2015, we unwittingly did something that Simon would never forget, and request every year. Watch the last video of the post at that link. At about the four minute mark, Gaylee starts up a train, a conga line, while we're all dancing to "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang. Simon now can never get enough of those, and he asks for it even year.



Luckily, everyone was happy to oblige.

So, Simon got the New Year's Eve he wanted.

Droning On

Shantell got me a remote-controlled drone for Christmas this year.

The best part about it is that it has a camera, and can take pictures or video of what it sees. We took it outside to fly for the first time on Friday morning.

You can tell from the picture that it's a fun toy.

Morgan flew it a little bit.

And Simon came out to enjoy it with me as well. He's a little jealous, because he had this idea that a drone would be a good toy for him to have for Christmas, and when Santa thought better of it and gave it to Daddy, he felt betrayed.

One thing we noticed was that the pictures and video had a strange rippling effect in it. You can see it on all the straight edges in the background. Inside, it didn't seem to do the same thing. Maybe because there was no wind?

But it was much harder to control inside, because there was very little leeway for mistakes. Walls came up fast, so I crashed it a lot.

Eventually, I got a little better at it.

It was still really hard to control it enough to get what I wanted.

And then I was able to use the drone to buzz Shantell wherever she was sitting. I made this fun movie with the video that I shot on the drone. Check it out, I think you'll enjoy it.

Gingerbread House

Every year, we put a gingerbread house together and decorate it as a family at Christmastime. Does it still count as Christmastime on the 29th? It's still the holiday season, because New Year's Eve hasn't passed yet, so I count it.

Of course, in all the years we've been doing this, we've never had a gingerbread house quite like this.

Shantell usually gets a gingerbread house kit these days. It's much easier to do it that way. It comes with the gingerbread pieces already cut out, as well as several bags of (not particularly tasty) candy that you can use to decorate it with. Shantell usually supplements that candy supply with a few purchases of her own.

So, we used the frosting that came with the kit, and glued the house together.

Then the kids started adding their artistic candy displays to the exterior.

But soon, we ran into an issue.



We applied more and more frosting to shore up the sagging walls and roof, but it was to no avail. The thing just would hold together. Eventually, we had to give up and let it collapse on itself. So, behold, here is our gingerbread house for 2016:

The kids didn't really mind. It just meant that they got to scarf all the candy sooner than usual. They didn't have to give the gingerbread house a week on display, since nobody wanted to look at what had become of it.

Ice Castles

Years ago, I'd guess at least 2012, but possibly even earlier, we did a news story about something that was going on in Midway, Utah. It was this thing called Ice Castles. Someone, using hoses, sprinklers, and the cold of winter, was creating these fantastic icicle sculptures made of ice.

It was open to the public as an attraction, a fun winter activity for the whole family. When I saw that first news story, I became enchanted. I really wanted to go there. I looked up their website, found out when they were open, how much it would be, and we started planning our excursion. But it was relatively expensive for a family our size, and it was all the way out in Midway. We kept finding other things to do on weekends, and forgetting about the Ice Castles, and before we knew it, winter was over. The ice had melted, and they were closed for the season.

The next year, winter returned as it does, and I started planning again. But we pulled the same shenanigans, and before we knew it, Winter was over, and we hadn't gone. The next year, I was determined. I was going to go for sure, nothing was going to keep me away this time...except that they'd moved away. When I went to their website this year, I was informed that the people who ran the ice castles had decided that there just wasn't enough cold weather in Utah to maintain them for a long enough time for it to be worth it. They'd found a place in Colorado instead, approximately ten hours away.

Now I was completely out of luck, and also completely dejected. I'd missed my chance forever. They were gone.

So, imagine my excitement a few years later when I learned that the Ice Castles were returning to Midway. Apparently they'd done well enough in Colorado that they were expanding. They had a location somewhere in the New England area now...I want to say Maine, but checking their website makes me think it was New Hampshire. Apparently, with more franchises, they don't have to be open as long, so they returned to Midway and reopened their third/first location.

Now that they were back, we resumed our past relationship with them. Meaning each year, at the start of the winter, we swore that we wouldn't miss them this time. Then, as the winter wore on, and Christmas ate up all our funds, and time was hard to come by, and it kept slipping our mind, we never went.

It happened again and again, until this year. I don't know what changed, maybe just the right opportunity coming up right after a payday or something, but we still had enough money for it, and we were all going to be available to attend, and we actually remembered that it was open and we wanted to go.

So, Finally, the Thursday before New Year's, we all got in the car, and drove up Provo Canyon to Midway, to see the Ice Castles.

It was really amazing, all that I'd imagined all these years.

The ice sculptures (I guess sculptures is the best word for them, although no one used a hammer and chisel on them or anything) were at least fifteen feet tall.

There was a big ring of them going all the way around the place, so we were in a sort of ice fort.

And there were no prohibitions on touching.

You could touch the icicles all you wanted.

I quickly had to admonish Simon, to keep him from breaking them off, though.

I guess it's my Boy Scout "Leave No Trace" training that makes me get on my kids' cases for stuff like this, but I want everything we see to be there for others to experience as well. Of course there's worse things that you could do than touching or even breaking the ice:



There were a few sculptures here and there, though, like this ice throne:

And they had a big slide that you could go down if you waited in line for it.

In hindsight, waiting for the slide may not have been the best idea, or at least waiting for it when we did might have been dumb. We probably should have saved it for the last thing that we did before leaving. Instead, we stood in line for what felt like a half an hour for a three second slide down some ice sheets.



The ride was neat, if a little rough on the landing. I hit so hard that I dropped my phone into the snow at the bottom. It took it a little while to recover, as you can tell by the audio of Marin and Katy's ride down the slide.



The problem with waiting in line for the slide was that we stopped moving. It's not so bad being out in the cold as long as you are dressed for it, and you keep moving and exercising your body so it produces heat. Standing in line blew that for us completely. I'd admonished the kids repeatedly to wear the warmest possible clothes, but it wasn't long after the slide that Katy had had enough of the cold.



She said her feet were so cold they were painful and burning. We tried to hold off the end for a few minutes longer by swinging by the snack booth and getting some hot chocolate.

Not sure if that made it any better, or just made things worse.

With night fallen, we got he chance to see the place in the dark, which is pretty special.

All the ice sculptures have LED lights inside of them, so it gets even more pretty.

But our time was up. Katy wasn't the only one complaining anymore. It was time to get back to the car, and start up the heater. So, we headed out.

Christmas Day 2016

We barely got Christmas put out last night, because we were so sick, but we weren't the only ones. Everyone in the family was sick to one degree or another. On top of that, we've all been sick off and on the whole month through. The kids were still excited, though. Especially Simon, who really had no reason to be, since he'd already opened all of his presents ahead of time, and had been told he would be getting none of them.

But there was still Santa, right?

Shantell and I really weren't keen to get out of bed, but four-year-olds don't prefer to stay in bed all morning like sixteen-year-olds do. Someday.

So, we fired the starting gun, and the kids rushed down the stairs to see what loot Santa provided them.

Simon was excited with everything he got. He just enjoyed the getting process.



Katy's big present of the year came from Santa.

It's one of those Chromebook laptops. Cheap, but just right for what Katy uses a computer for.

In other words, it's like a phone with a really big screen.



Marin was excited to get a new set of punky boots.

She's really getting into expressing her own funky style with crazy leggings, tights, boots, and so on.



Morgan got a bunch of different things, but I believe he was most excited about receiving some kind of computer parts.

He's been working on building a computer for the last while. He put it together with his friends back when he got the first parts he needed. But he wasn't satisfied with it yet. So, he's been steadily replacing all the parts with better parts. So, Santa brought him something new, and soon he'll clear off the kitchen table and add it to his machine.

Morgan helped Simon assemble his marble run that he received from Santa while Shantell and the rest of us got breakfast ready.

This has become my favorite part of the Christmas holiday. I love breakfast food. More bacon! More hash browns! More of all of it!

Then, it was time to open the presents under the tree. We'd put them back under it the night before, figuring that Simon wouldn't get the chance to open any more of them prematurely. Simon was surprised to learn that he still had a few that he hadn't already spoiled. So, he opened his present from Katy:



Ever since seeing the Ant-Man movie back in June of last year, he's been wanting a toy of Ant-man on a flying ant. I happened upon one of them this holiday season, and scooped it up for him right away. Katy gave it to him, and you could see his excitement when he saw it.

"Katy is the best," he said. All she did was pick it out of the pile of possible gifts to give to Simon, but it's okay, I know that what he really meant was that Daddy was the best.

Of course, it turned out to be a disappointment for him after all. Somehow, Simon expected the ant to really fly. He expected it to have some sort of remote control and fly around like a real ant. He didn't like the fact that he had to hold it in his hand and make it pretend to fly. On top of that, he decided that the giant-sized ant toy was actually creepy, and he'd rather not play with it. Oh well, he meant Daddy was the best for a moment or two.

There was a really cute present that Grandma and Grandpa sent to the girls this year. They've started sending money instead of presents because teenagers are just too difficult to please. But this time, it wasn't just an envelope full of cash:



That's right, Grandma and Grandpa made it rain all up in herre! Sadly, Katy was the only one who got to enjoy that effect. Marin got the same present, but Simon got to her present first. This picture, from the blog post that I did last week about Simon's war on Christmas, has the evidence in it. Those dollar bills you see came from Marin's version of the same present.

Pretty sad. But Marin fared okay in the end.



Morgan did this with every present he bought this year. It was really cute, and kind of made me proud as a parent. Shantell came up with the plan that the kids had to buy their own presents for their brothers and sisters this year. She gave them an allowance of $10 for each person, and then set them loose to pick what they would spend it on all on their own.

Morgan, however, has a job now, so he has a source of cash flow that the other kids didn't have. So, each time there was a present that someone would really like, but cost too much for their meager budget, Morgan would swoop in and make up the difference to ensure that everyone got what they really wanted.

Now, it doesn't make me a proud parent to know that Morgan was spending extra money on things per se, although the fact that he earned it himself and was willing to spend it on others is really nice. But what I really liked to see was that he was paying attention to people, and noticing what it was that they really wanted. It showed just how much he really cared. That's what I loved to see.

Katy got stuff that she really wanted as well, like this video game she received:



That video is a microcosm of our whole December...and probably our coming January as well...we did our best to have holiday fun, but most of the time we were just coughing and puking and hating life.

I said before how Marin is really getting into expressing her quirky style, here's a great example:



Yeah, those are leggings covered with a picture of the stars in the night sky. Pretty over-the-top if you ask me, but it's what she likes.

Shantell got her requests answered too. She really wanted this electronic pressure cooker:



and this shop vac:



She's a little different than your standard woman. I always hear about how bad of an idea it would be to buy your wife a vacuum for Christmas on TV and stuff, but it really doesn't seem to apply to Shantell. She loved it. She also loves getting power tools for presents. Not too long ago, she fulfilled one of her wildest dreams by purchasing a nail gun for herself.

It was a good Christmas, despite everyone being sick as dogs. And even Simon wound up happy. I had him apologize to each person who had a present for him that he opened early, then asked them if they would forgive him and allow him to have the present after all. Forgiveness abounded, although Marin had to think about it a while, after all Simon had opened and destroyed her money umbrella. She gave in as well, in the end, and Simon got to keep his Flash action figure and his super hero masks and capes.