December

We began December with my Dad's 82nd birthday.  My niece, who is attending BYU, has so much money on her meal ticket that we all went to the Legend Restaurant, on campus, for dinner to celebrate.

Jacob took a picture of Jason and me :)

                                                                                                                                                             








 For Christmas each year Jason's work hosts an employee Christmas dinner, this year it was at the Salt Palace, and a children's Christmas party.

The kids party was at the zoo to see Zoo Lights.  So we all bundled up and went to the zoo. It was fun to see the lights and some of the animals who are not usually out during the summer...like the big cats.  The tiger was actually out and around.  Fun to see!

The rest of December was busy with school, car pools, etc.  For Christmas Jason and I decided to stay at my parent's Christmas Eve  and open presents with them Christmas morning.

Mom and Dad

Heidi and family came to mom's for dinner Christmas Eve.

Malia getting the table ready

Playing with cousins

Pre-dinner snacks

Cleaning up after dinner Mom and Malia

Jacob opening his pajamas

We let Jacob open one present before he went to bed.  It was pajamas...not anything he was overly thrilled by and I'm sure he was hoping that the morning gifts would be better.

The tree after Santa had come

Grandma Safsten looking at the stockings with Jacob

Ooooo....Dad got a bottle opener!

What is it???

 The art set he said he had always wanted!

 A new CD player.  This was just a strange shot...not to mention that Jacob had gotten hold of our camera and pushed a button that made the pictures a bit fuzzy.

The picture magnet Jacob made me at school

A book!  How did Dad know??

 The Y Flicker.  For weeks Jacob really didn't talk about anything he wanted....then about 2 weeks before Christmas he started telling people that he had asked Santa for a Y Flicker.  He had?  We sure hadn't heard about it!  Good thing Santa did!!

 Breakfast Christmas morning

 After being at my parents, we headed down to Jason's Dad's house and opened presents there.

Jacob with his 3D glasses on writing his scientific notes

Jason's brother, and family, moved up to Idaho Falls about 2 weeks before Christmas and so couldn't be there on Christmas day.  They came up the following weekend...here Jacob is in his room waiting for the cousins to come and sleep over with us.

Twins

 For New Year's Eve a family, the Spilkers, in our ward invited us and another family over for dinner and games.  The theme was from Despicable Me...and we all became Minions.  It was so cute.  They had games and everything was colored for the theme.  They went to so much work.  It was darling!!

Getting dessert ready

The pinata

 They had a pinata and when it was close to midnight Julie got out the noise makers and we made noise!!  I love David's face in this picture!

               







Toasting to the New Year!  Happy 2014!

November

For Thanksgiving it was with Jason's family..my sister, Heidi, was out of town so I invited Mom and Dad to join us.  My nieces, Jessica at BYU-I and Stephanie at BYU came too.  Jason's sister, Jenny, had a couple of friends from BYU who joined also.  Lots of people, but it was fun.  We went to Randy and MarySue's house and had turkey, spring rolls, stuffing, jello etc.

Kids table

Jacob and Daniel 

Let's eat!  Stephen, Kat, Jessica, Stephanie S., Jason, Stephanie W. Jared, MarySue, Randy, Dad, Mom, KaShea, Jenny, Irina, Josh

Kids hanging out after dinner

The day after Thanksgiving we put our tree up.  It was a short season between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year so had to get it done!

So Behind, but Going to Catch Up! Halloween

In October my friends Debbie and Terri met us at Gardner Village to see the witch display.  We haven't done that in a couple of years and the boys had fun!

For Halloween this year Jacob was going to be Spider Man, but then found an old race car driver costume in his closet and decided he wanted to wear it.  I'm great with re-using costumes!  It was one he wore when he was 2 and it was big on him.

This year we had no rolled up sleeves or pants to make it fit--this was definitely the last year he could wear it!  The first picture is at the school parade and the other is with his cousins before they went trick-or-treating.  I need to find the pictures from when he was 2!

After trick-or-treating he went over to a neighbor's house and they did a candy exchange.

Playing in the leaves

Vacation!!

    
Over fall break we took at trip to Las Vegas.  Neither Jason or I are normally very interested in going down there, but some friends had gone this summer and recommended a good place to stay--Tahiti Village.  We invited Jason's dad, Randy, and step mom, MarySue, to join us.

We took off Tuesday afternoon and arrived in Vegas about 6:30 (their time).  We checked into our rooms--we had 2 rooms adjoined.  One of them had a master bedroom/bathroom, living room and kitchen and the second room was a lockout with a kitchenette, living room with a hide-a-bed, bathroom and bedroom.  Randy and MarySue took the Master and we had the lockout.  Jacob used the living room as his bedroom.  We left the bed out and he used the kitchenette sink to wash, brush teeth etc.

It worked out really well since he couldn't reach the bathroom sink very well.  That night we headed to Chili's for dinner.

Lounging in the "fort" Jacob made in the living room

Wednesday morning we were up at out at the pool by 9:30 a.m.  Problem was the weather was only 72 degrees.  Not cold for an October day in Salt Lake, but cold for a swimming day in Las Vegas.  But Jacob was dying to get to the pool so we went.  Jason took him in the pool while the rest of us sat in lounge chairs. The life guards were all covered in towels.

Notice the lifeguard in the background wrapped up

 When Jacob got cold we wrapped him up in towels and sat in the warm sun.  Not being wet it was actually warm sitting there.  The water changed things.

Next we headed over to the lazy river, which was a little bit warmer.

I even got in.  Both the pool and the lazy river were great!  Plenty of towels, chairs (granted it was not high season where we had to fight for a chair--that I'm sure helped), warm sun...relaxing!

That afternoon we took the hotel shuttle into Vegas.  We had looked up some free things to do with kids and tried them out.  We first went into Caesar's Palace and walked (and walked) down to "Fall of Atlantis" only to find it was under renovation.  

Notice the sign says it opens back up in October.  I guess someone forgot to tell them it IS October! There was an aquarium we saw before we walked back and over to see the fountains at Belagio.

The fountains were beautiful!  Caesar's Palace was beautiful too.  The area we walked down was made to look like a small shopping area in Italy.  The ceiling was high, concave and painted to look like the sky.  One thing I have to say for Vegas is the architecture is amazing and fun to look at!  There is always something to see.

Thursday morning Jason and I went to the Las Vegas temple.  The Celestial room there is amazing!  It reminded me of the San Diego temple celestial room, but not quite as big.  It was nice to be able to go and Randy and MarySue took care of Jacob.

While we were gone, they took a walk to McDonald's for a Sprite and then went to the activity center and made a mug with Jacob.  That was another great thing about where we stayed. They had an activity center with a pool table, air hockey table, games and craft activities for the kids.  It was open 10 a.m. - 9 p.m. so you could go in at any time and play.  In addition, they had 3-4 activities a day for the kids.  Jacob made a mug and later that afternoon he decorated cookies.

Those were the activities we had time to do.  They usually had something going at 1 p.m., 3 p.m., 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.  When we got home we went out to the pool and lazy river again for a while.  It was warmer that day (around 75 degrees).

After the cookies we took the shuttle again into Vegas and walked down to Circus Circus to see and acrobat artist hang from "silks" and twist and wind around in them.  Then we stayed to see the juggler.  Both acts lasted about 10 mins.  We then walked back down to Treasure Island and outside of that building they had a pirate show with two large ships, pirates, Sirens (we were far enough away from that ship that Jacob couldn't really see them)...they fought by "shooting" cannons at each other until finally one ship was sunk and the pirates jumped into the lagoon to swim to safety.  It was quite the show and well done.  We got back to the hotel about 9:30 and were tired from all the walking!!

Friday we drove out to Red Rock Canyon and did a short hike.

Sitting on a turtle at Red Rock Visitors Center

 It was a very pretty area.  Because we had gotten up late, we arrived there late and didn't get back until 2:30.  We went to the activity center for ice cream sundaes and then went to the pool.  It had finally warmed up to about 79 degrees.  I wish we had gotten out to the pool sooner to take advantage of our last day of warmth and sunshine, but it was still nice.  We swam and Jacob and Jason played in the sand area.


















We tried to go out to dinner that night and tried several places, but there were waits etc.  It was 8 p.m. and Jacob was so tired...so we went to Chili's.  Same place we had eaten at the night we arrived.  :)

Saturday we got up and left.  We had a great time and I was sad to leave. I could have done 1 more day, but was glad for the time we had.

Home Insulation

Last month we began to look at things that we might have to replace, etc. in the house since it is getting older.  We had the water heater and furnace replaced and Jason, and his brother, put insulation under the floor of our family room.

Jacob wanted to help so they saved one small section for him to do.  They were such a mess.  The laundry room, just outside of the furnace room where the entry to under the family room is, was a mess.  I vacuumed and washed doors and walls from the messy insulation grime that gets all over.

The following weekend is when we had the water heater and furnace replaced and I went down and vacuumed, washed down walls etc., again!  That is more than I've cleaned it in the past 3 months!  Glad it is done!!