Merry Christmas

Didn't know I had a blog?  Well, I kind of forgot also.  I was looking for a convenient way to share more pictures for Christmas with you loved ones and remembered this.  

So, you are welcome to read about my life from ten years ago, get some picture clues to finish your crossword, or see some more pictures from 2022.  

The rest of our family pictures:

 

Crossword Clues.  I don't have a picture for every clue, just most of them.

I have better pictures of me in costume, but this one just cracks me up every time.

Pretty much every day, I see people taking pictures next to this sign.  Ironically, we have never taken a picture with it, but here are some of us in our "town": Me with Jehry Miller, the singer of "Harmonizing in Harmony" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2mKBA8NyKo) at our first annual "block party."  And Carter, being Carter.

Merry Christmas!  As we slide into the New Year, we hope all the best for you!

The Thankful Month

On we go to November. 

November started out with a trip down to El Capitan State Beach/Campground (near Santa Barbara) for Dylan's work campout.  We stayed two nights and had a really great time.  WSC is really pretty awesome because they are engineers, but they are fun, interesting, laid-back, and even cool people.  Not your stereotypical engineers.  So, that novelty has not worn off for me yet.  They also however do a lot of drinking, so I realized that going camping with a party all night AND children up really early makes for a pretty lousy night's sleep, but it was still fun, and everyone settled down more quickly the second night.  It was a really warm day, and it was the warmest I have ever slept while camping since the time I went camping in the swamp in Mississippi with my friends in high school.  Oh, and I guess there was that time we slept at Zions with Dylan, me, Cami, and Katie all on one air mattress.  I wasn't cold then.  Oh, wait, and Dauphin Island.  Okay.  I take that back.  It is the warmest camping night I have had in California.  There, that is better.

We spent the day at the beach and did some ocean kayaking with the boys.  In fact, Ethan went out into the waves in a kayak by himself (with Dylan not too far away) and courageously got over the waves and out into the calmer water.  I was hesitant when Ethan asked if he could do it himself, but Dylan convinced me, and I am so glad I listened and let him go for it.

WSC brought along a photographer (who is also the boss' brother-in-law) who took some shots of everyone together and then took some of individual families. We hadn't planned on taking a family picture, so weren't really dressed very well for it, but it is the best family photo we have had in a long time, at least not in costumes.  Here are the pictures.  I would totally recommend him to anyone who needs some photos taken in SLO county.

 As I had said in my previous post, November was also an artsy month for me.  I had to make twenty handmade items to be sold at Tanner's preschool fundraiser, so I decided to make these notebooks.  And then afterwards, I liked them so much, Carter made one for my mom for Christmas and I made one for my friend Chelsey.  I bought the fabric at a thrift store and covered those black and white composition books.  The designs are my own (I looked at pictures of dragonflies and such for reference).  Anytime I do anything that had no origins from the internet, I feel pretty proud of myself.

I think it was in November that I was called as second counselor in the primary presidency, and then Dylan was called as first counselor in Elder's Quorum in December.  I really like this calling already.  It doesn't carry the same burden of responsibility I felt as primary president, but I get to help make a difference.  I miss teaching Carter's class though.  I really like teaching and never really felt like I got a hang of teaching that class before I got released.  As the second counselor, I am over the cub scouts, and that's good, since I had lots of things I wanted to fix there, and now I get my chance to make a difference!

Dylan also started building a shed for the Pattersons in November.  The Pattersons are the ones whose baby was in the ICU for months and Joe and Dylan are best friends.  Dylan asked what he could do to help, and Joe had several projects he was doing at the house when this all happened, so he asked Dylan if he would build a shed for him.  It's a pretty serious shed.  Here's how it looked sometime in December.

Dylan is mostly done with it now.  He took off two weeks at Christmas, and spent most of it building the shed and helping Joe out with getting his rental home ready to rent.  We really care about and feel for the Pattersons, and know that they would help us out with anything that they could if we were in their situation.  The boys and I have gone down with Dylan when we could, and the boys and I helped with digging and forming the footing and framing up the walls.  I am no good with a hammer.  I bent and pulled out way more nails than I got in.

Building it has come at a good time because construction on Dylan's big dam project stopped in November for the winter, so he has had more time.  We see him in the evenings which has been so great. 

On through November!  The next big event was Thanksgiving!  Yay!  My family all came except for Kate and Logan and Soren who we missed having.  It was great to see everyone.  As usual, Cami brought some fun new games that we enjoyed and then got for Christmas.   We also did some hikes, watched the sunset at the beach, and went on a bike ride along the coastal trail.  Ammon had grad school apps that he worked on for a lot of the time, but still went on all of the adventures with us.  And then the food!  Always amazing when my dad is around.  This was certainly the very best turkey I have ever had.  I am not just saying that for effect or to be nice.  My dad salted the turkey and then grilled it on the barbeque and it was so yummy.  Perfectly smoked and moist.  I wish I had been watching more closely so that I could replicate it.  Actually, I always feel that way about my dad's cooking.  Even when I am cooking in the same kitchen next to him, I taste it and can't figure out how to make it like he did. 

I don't have a lot of pictures from their trip.  I really am pretty horrible about taking pictures.  On my birthday, we took everybody on the Garrapata State Park hike which is about a half hour south of us along the coast.  You hike up away from the ocean through a canyon with cactus and sage and cross a creek a few times, and then you hit redwoods.  And it is so powerfully calm and the trees are amazing.  You hike up through this redwood forest and feel like you are in Rivendale.  Pictures cannot capture the magic.  You must come visit and I will take you.  Although I will stop before the giant climb up the steep exposed mountain that we did at the end of the hike.  After that, and playing in the river while Dylan took my parents and Ammon to see his jobsite, my parents watched the kiddos and Dylan and I went out to dinner and ate some yummy sushi, and that was November!

September, hmmm, September.

I can't really remember much from September.  I got called to teach Carter's primary class.  We found good Thai food.  We went to a lot of garage sales on Saturday mornings before Dylan went to work.  Dylan LOVES garage sales.  Me, not so much.  I like going, I just don't like that we come home with more stuff.  But the garage sales here are really quite awesome.  Mostly in Carmel, where there are lots of affluent people.  Come and join us sometime.  Dylan looks them up on Craigslist, and then puts them in to a website that he found that maps out the best route, and we always stop for breakfast burritos along the way.  We have come home with entirely too much stuff, but have got some killer deals.  The boys also love it.  Sometimes we give them each a dollar each.  Usually what happens though is they will pick things up, ask the person how much it costs, and then the person will just give it to them for free.  Our big purchases include a nice leather chair and this: (this was last Saturday, not September, but we were on the subject). 

We'll see if this is a good idea or not; no kids have been run over yet.  And then some pogo sticks, a hammock, lots of books, kid wetsuits and shoes that didn't fit, a scooter, I can't remember what else.

Dylan worked a lot.  Here are some pictures of him at the dam they are removing.  It really is a beautiful job site.  It is pretty far away from us (about a half hour), but it is always sunny in Carmel Valley, and is a secluded oak forest with a river in a canyon.  Can't ask for much more.  Tanner always asks me if Dylan is taking down the dam today.  The other day, he said he wanted Dylan to bring his ax and chop it all to pieces.  It's pretty cute.  And, by the way, Tanner calls me "Amy" now and calls Dylan "Dylan."  Exclusively.  I don't know what changed.  He started calling me Amy after trying to first get my attention by calling, "Mom" "Mom" and if I was talking or something and didn't answer immediately, he was up it to "Amy."  But now it is all the time.  It is fine with me, but I sometimes smile in public when he calls me Amy and am sure that other people probably think I am not his mom.

I mostly just missed Morro Bay, and visited a few times.  Ethan and I have missed our friends a lot.  Carter and Tanner and Dylan have adjusted more quickly.  And we had a quick visit from Todd and his boys and Carter lost his first tooth, wrestling with Ethan, and his second tooth, jumping over the waves at Carmel Beach.

 

Also, Ethan made enough Lego snapshot videos (free app that you can make little lego movies by taking pictures one after another like Claymation) that he filled up my whole phone.  And inspired by OK Go's "This to shall Pass", he made several domino creations like this one, which he worked on for a long time and set if off accidently beforehand so many times that he was close to tears.  But, he finally got it.  Oh, and you can see him sporting his new glasses:

 

And then October! Dylan always says things like this during October, "Good news everyone:  Arts and Crafts time has been extended by three hours today."  I am consistently pre-occupied by costumes during the month of October and then this year I also had to make twenty handmade items for a preschool fundraiser, and then there were the homemade Christmas presents, so it was all of October and November this year.

I know all of you have seen our costumes, but is once really enough?  Not for me, I kept them as my desktop background until like a week ago.  The boys still wear some portion of some costume almost daily.  In fact, Ethan wore the Gimli faux fur-lined boots every day to school for about a month until the seam ripped and I threw them away.  And he still often wears the Frodo jacket to school.  It makes me smile.

 

 

The kids had fall break in October so we went up to San Jose one day and went to Happy Hollow with Ali and her kids.  This was our first time at Happy Hollow.  It is a mini amusement park, petting zoo, and zoo, and was a lot of fun.  The rides are small, similar to a carnival but they had a roller coaster that even Tanner could go on.  It was so fun.  Because it was a weekday and most people don't have a fall break, the kids would just get off it and run around to the entrance and get right back on.  We probably rode it fifteen times and only stopped because it was closing.

 

Here is a little video of Tanner after probably the sixth time riding it.  You should have heard been with him the first few times!  He really exhibited the perfect combination of joy and terror that you feel on a roller coaster.  You are going to have to turn your head sideways to watch this.  I was, after all, riding a roller coaster while holding my phone, so cut me some slack on the cinematography.  And if you are feeling queasy, you really just need to watch that first scream. 

 

 

We also went to Morro Bay during fall break for some kid birthday parties, and I had a girl's night with my girls who I miss so much.  So, we went climbing at Crux because before I found out I was moving I bought a 30 punch pass that expired at the end of the year, so used my punches for them too.  Well, and we went because I love climbing and want them to love it too.  Here's a few pictures.  And that's about it!