After Christmas

After Christmas we mostly just spent time doing various activities. The grandparents played a lot of games with the kids.

And did some model car and rubber ball crafts.

Olivia and Carmen eventually finished their Harry Potter Lego sets.

Amber and Coral found some time to play Christmas duets.

Grandpa Roper install a new faucet for us.

And we all looked over the old newspaper clippings he brought that chronicled Amber's achievements in Porterville.

Eventually, it was time to say good-bye to our visitors, and hello to the Christmas mess.

Christmas

The kids, led by Olivia, were up very early this Christmas. So early that we had to get up and tell them to go back to bed.

They were all pretty excited about their Santa gifts.

Eventually, we all awoke and started into our stockings.

Next we moved on to the regular presents. I made sure Olivia got lots of books.

And Carmen got lots of fluffy things.

Amber parents brought a lot of things from their recent trip to eastern Europe, like Bulgarian rosewater and Hungarian paprika and soccer jerseys.

One of my favorite toys was the superhero drones, that automatically fly up when they sense something under them.

We spent the rest of the day playing with toys.

Christmas Eve

We made gingerbread houses during Christmas Eve day.

We made our own designs again this year. New designs included Damon's factory (front right), Carmen's reindeer (back right), Grandma's lighthouse (back left), and my Empire State Building (right).

Amber had grand plans for a pagoda, but it didn't bake correctly and she never found time to bake another round of roofs.

After a delicious dinner of clam chowder in bread bowls, we acted out the Christmas story.

Afterwards we sand some Christmas carols, then finally the kids opened one present each from one of their siblings. They were very excited.

Eventually the kids were nestled all snug in their beds, and Christmas magic happened.

Roper Grandparents

Amber's parents came to visit us for Christmas this year. They came about a week early, and Coral also flew in a few days later. The kids were very excited and got Grandpa playing a game as soon as he walked in the door.

The kids weren't out of school yet when they arrived, so they were able to attend some of the kids' Christmas parties at school.

That weekend I took everyone to see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (which was awesome), and afterwards the kids went with Grandma and Grandpa so Amber and I could go eat on our own. We ended up going to Dimassi's Mediterranean Buffet, while everyone else enjoyed Culver's.

As an early Christmas present, they took Olivia and Carmen to Painting with a Twist, where they painted some abstract owls.

And Carmen found some time to do what she does best, snuggle.

Wrist surgery

I have had a recurring cyst in my wrist since at least high school. It recently grew quite big again, so I decided to have it removed.

Having been through this last year with my knee and not having a great experience, I made sure things worked out better this time. I went straight to the orthopedic surgeon, who signed me up for surgery without much hassle, and I soon found myself once again in the surgical hospital.

I told the anesthesiologist about my bad experience last time and they tried a different technique this time. It seemed to work because I didn't ever get nausea, for which I am very thankful. I came home looking like this.

I took a peek under the bandages to see what they had done.

After a week or so, I got the bandages off. The cyst appears to be gone, but I'm not very impressed with the surgeon's sewing skills. It will be interesting to see how this scar turns out.

Carmen's choir concert

Carmen performed with the school choir at Barnes and Noble in the mall. I was able to get a good spot and get some video. Here's two of my favorites, Christmas Time is Here (with chipmunk voices and kazoos)

and Rock Around the Clock /  Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree medley (with dance moves).

Levy Park

We had beautiful weather on Saturday so we decided to try out Levy Park downtown that had come highly recommended. It didn't disappoint.

It has lots of (fake) rolling hills and tunnels and play equipment. The kids new what to do and were happy playing for hours. I went up a hill and immediately rolled my ankle when I reached the bottom (the surface was spongier than I expected). Thankfully it turned out to be a strain on the top of my foot rather than the ankle itself, so I was able to walk it off.

There are a couple of different sections. We stayed in the play area most of the time, but eventually made our way over to the community gardens to check those out. I played frisbee with Damon in the field area, where there was a connected dog park, and also some ping pong tables and a foosball table. Amber and I snagged a ping pong table right before we left and had a good battle.

We hadn't brought any food, so we left when the kids' stomachs told us it was time to go.

Thanksgiving

As has become traditional, we had Thanksgiving with the Bodily family again. We met at their house this year, and Dan and Hyde and their family were able to come too. It worked out well since they are now in the same ward.

I seem to always forget to take Thanksgiving pictures, but I did get this one of the delicious turkey Amber cooked.

There was lots of delicious food. Afterwards, we watched the Redskins lose to the Cowboys.

The other Browns ended up leaving for a prior commitment, and the rest of us stayed until we finished the puzzle that had gotten pulled out.

The day after Thanksgiving, I went out in the morning and was able to snag a few leftover Black Friday items, then we decorated for Christmas.

The kids mostly did the tree on their own. I even got a little help with the outside lights this year, which I normally do on my own.

(The help was mostly wrapping the trees, but Carmen also wanted to see what it was like at the top of the ladder and clean the pine needles out of the gutter.) And of course, Christmas decorations wouldn't be complete without the train.

East End Park

I took the week of Thanksgiving off, and we took advantage of one of the days to go hike around East End Park on Tuesday.

We've come here a couple of times, and found a few memorable places.

Olivia and Carmen always raced ahead together. Damon entertained himself by making X marks in the dirt for Miles to find as he and Amber brought up the rear.

Damon found a centipede to play with.

Olivia and Carmen thought the shadows of the leaves looked really cool in the water here.

The kids saw that the benches had numbers on them, so soon they made a game of finding the bench numbers as they increased in number. The girls would warm up while waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

When we'd walked enough we found a bench and stopped to have a picnic lunch.

After lunch we found our way back to the entrance and headed home.