End of 2015!

At the end of November/beginning of December Jason, his dad and brother worked on Karen's basement.  The bedroom is finished and the bathroom is almost there. 

Jacob went over and helped paint.



















Brook and Jessica were down several weekends in December.   

 Jacob LOVES poppy seed chicken. Here is a night when that is what he wanted and I, as his loving mother, fixed it for him.   

 Draper Elementary 2nd graders made decorations for a local bank's Christmas tree.  In the evening we were invited over to "decorate" the tree and have snacks.  Jacob and his friend, Jaxon, are in the picture--on the left at the back. 

We had our annual friends Christmas Party, more commonly known as Elroy's Annual Christmas party.  

Dianne Hamond, Chris and Paul Sorenson, Clark White opening his gift

Elroy and Becki Vogler.  Shane Richardson

Brenda Rees, Lorainne Vanderly, Lloyd and Sheri Jones, Rob Vanderly  (I missed taking a picture of Margaret Pearson)

Tina Ackerman, Steve Smith, Lori Harward

Each year Jason's work (Chevron) does a children's Christmas party.  This year it was at the Clark Planetarium.

Jacob with Santa

Trying on funny hats!

Trying on crazy hats!















We celebrated Dad's/Grandpa's birthday.  He wanted pies for dessert so I made apple and blackberry.  Yum!  Jacob loves pies too!!

Joy was in town too!  Happy 84th birthday dad!! 

Brighton offered a first time skier's program the 2nd weekend of December.  He had tried a couple of years ago, but this time he got better.  We need to take him up again.  I don't care if he becomes a competition skier, but since we live in snow it would be nice if he could do something in it!   

Skier 2013

Skier 2016

He still needed a little help.

The Monday after skiing, it finally snowed!  Really snowed!  The past 2 winters I haven't even taken out my winter coat.  It has reappeared this year since we have gotten several good snows.  Luckily Jason repaired the snow blower and I have used it!

When the snow came I walked the neighborhood kids down to the local park and we sledded down the small hill.  So fun!

Kaitlyn, Jacob, Minnie,Poppy,  Gabe and Chase

Jacob and Minnie

Each year the Stake Primary board gets together and has dinner.  The first year we met at Zuppa's. the next 2 years we met at Connie Page's, and this year we met at Margaret Stone's.  We don't do gift exchange and we don't make dinner.  We order, someone picks it up and we just eat and enjoy each other's company.  I have been so blessed to work with such wonderful women!

Amy Jex (Music 2014-Present), Connie Page (Activity Day 2012-2015), Julie Carrillo (1st coun. 2012-2016), Kara Dale(Secretary 2015-Present), Emily Tebbs(Secretary 2013-2015, Act. Day 2015-Present), LeeAnn Evans(Nursery 2013-20150, Me(President 2012-Present), Margaret Stone(2nd Coun. 2012-Present).  Missing:  Shannon Hudson (Nursery 2012-2013), Christine Snyder (Music 2012-2014), Melissa Hammond (Secretary 2012-2013)

The third weekend of December Julie Spilker, from my ward, invited me to the Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert.  We went to dinner first at Little America and then went to the concert. It was a fun evening!

  I came home from the concert and went downstairs to get meat out of the freezer for dinner the next day.  So glad I did.  I was in my stocking feet and felt water on the floor.  The freezer had a problem in April of 2014 and it was happening again.

I got Jason out of bed and we unloaded the freezer into a cooler and 2 plastic tubs.  Then we packed snow around it and prayed it would work until we could get a new freezer.  Since it was Saturday night we knew it would be a few days.

We went online and ordered one from Sears. It came on Tuesday and we repacked it.  We only lost a couple of things.  One of the items that thawed was a bag of opened Rhodes rolls.  So I rolled the thawed blobs out and tried making cinnamon rolls.  I think it was too much dough as evidenced by this picture.

They grew up and over the pan!

Christmas Eve we went over to Heidi's for dinner. Here is a creative wrapping job!  Guess what it is Parker!

Dessert!














The kids acted out the nativity.  Jacob rode in on the "donkey" Malia.

Please note the gifts stacked under Heidi's tree.  They have 3x the people we have in our family so there are 3x the gifts. But after seeing their tree our tree looked paltry!  :)

Tools

Christmas morning!  I think this was the first year Jacob woke up by himself before we did.

Jacob thought of a gift for Jason all by himself.  He bought him bike patches for his bike tires.





Uno Attack from Grandma and Grandpa Safsten.  Something he really wanted!

Xbox 360 for Jacob!

When Jason went out of town, the week before Christmas I was able to make these wrench bags for him.  Something he said he really wanted.









To top it off, a cell phone....no not a new one, but Jason's old one and it does not call and does not have a data plan.  But he can talk to Siri (which he loves) and he can FaceTime Jason or me.















After gifts we connected the Xbox and went out to shovel the newly fallen snow.  We then headed to Grandma and Grandpa Wong's.

Hanging out at Grandpa's.

KaShae spent the Christmas here in Utah rather than going home so she was with us.

Jenny became engaged!  She is marrying Jacob--so now we'll have 2 Jacobs in the family.  She gets married June 25th and Stephen and Hannah get married March 12th.

Pictures with the t-shirts sent by our Hawaiian cousins.

Drawing a funny face on Mom's car.

New Year's Eve we told Jacob we would take him out for dinner.  We went to Texas Roadhouse and while crowded it was good.

Afterwards we went to Jason's dad's and visited until about 9 p.m.  It was a good way to ring out the old year.  We have apparently driven Randy to drink too!  First my dad in November at Thanksgiving and now this at New Years!  :)

On to 2016!!

November

November started out busy with a shower for my niece, Elizabeth.  Her sister-in-law, Emily, her mom, Joy, and I did it and it was Pinterest worthy.

Joy and Kristen came out and we had it in Elizabeth's clubhouse.

Joy, Elizabeth and Kristen

Me, Elizabeth and Emily.  Don't know why it is such bad lighting.  

Joyous with some of the food

 Jacob has also been participating in Lego club at school.  The theme is recycling....which I think is kind of hard to come up with for Legos, but they did.  His team decided to do a presentation on recycling cannons.  There is such a big market for that, I'm sure it will go far!  :)

Going across the rope bridge.

 Mountain America Credit union did an evening at the Aquarium.  We went with Jared, Stephanie and the girls and the Ahyous from our ward.  It was a fun evening.

Jacob and Elias 

We go down to my parent's quite often.  Here is Jacob  hanging out with Grandpa one day before we left.  

 Our friend, Jennifer, has an annual Christmas dinner with friends.  She bought a new home earlier this year and hosted.  The kids had their own room for dinner (Jacob, Richie and Carolyn's 6 kids, Brad and Kristi Anna's daughter).  Funny thing....Richie and Carolyn were married 4 months before we were and have 5 more kids than we do!

Carolyn (holding Nora), Jennifer, Deb, Gina

Jason, Brad, Kristi Anna (their little girl), Richie

Brook, Dad, Jacob, Elizabeth, Amy

Thanksgiving was spent down at Josh and Irina's with Jason's family.  After we went down to Mom and Dad's to visit.  Funny thing is I forgot to take pictures at Jason's.  

Jessica, Brook and Amy spent the week with Mom and Dad and seemed to have a great time!

But it obviously brought Dad to drink!!

Michael and his goatee

 

 My friend, LeAnn got married!  She has been divorced for nearly 21 years.  All of her kids are grown and she met Mike about a year and a half ago.  He seems nice and I hope she'll be very happy.

We had a day off school and Jacob and I went to Jason's work and took lunch in.













Then I left Jacob with Jason to "work" for the rest of the afternoon.

Home after a hard afternoon of work

The family (men) worked on Karen's basement to try and finish up the bedroom and bathroom.  Jacob is seen here helping prime the bedroom for painting.

On to December!