Happy New Year

Goodbye 2025, hello to 2026! 

We are back home after spending a wonderful time with many friends at neighbors at a cabin in Brighton. Above is a pics of all the teenage girls with baby Mary on Lily's lap. Another pic with Alive - Lily in her pjs now...

They had fun showing off their niece and nephew to their friends. These teens had a group goal to pull an all nighter. They were close - Abi went to bed at 5, Natalie and Sophi at 3. Lily stayed awake until it started to get light at 7am this morning! Then Lily woke up at 10 to eat, so that was a pretty good  wake up time considering. They stayed up and watched Interstellar I think. It is just a fun time with friends. It's a tradition that we all look forward to - the men cause of foosball probably, the ladies for the visiting, the teens all like to just hang out, and the little kids just run around everywhere having fun. Our kids were all especially excited this year because they missed last year when we were traveling home after celebrating Christmas in Florida. This is an annual celebration that we first were invited to in 2013 after they bought the cabin, New Years Day 2014. And then most of the years after that - Dec 2014, Dec 2015, Dec 2016 - Jan 2017, Dec 2017 - Jan 2018, Dec 2018, Dec 2020, Jan 2022, Jan 2023. There was the usual pizza and potluck dinner, lots of games of ping-pong and foosball and people talking smack ~

Who will be king? or who will be the joker? Katharine playing with board games. She liked putting the little tiny plastic people of the LIFE game in the cars.

A new thing they tried this year was a game of chance, where they put cups upside down on a table, and they either had a treat or a cotton ball. Everyone drew a number, then picked up a cup on their turn. If you got a cotton ball, you were going to get a cream pie in your face. 

There were 4 cotton balls. Daniel got one of them. He let Wes throw the pie in his face.

So that was new and fun. They had the kids stand on a sheet, but some cream still got on the tv that was behind the targets. Around 10pm Utah time, we watched New York drop the ball and celebrated the new year.

After the countdown, most of the kids ran around the cabin in the snow for the Polar Bear Challenge~

We had a big group this year! Probably the biggest crowd yet!

Even little Mary joined in the best she could - see her in that group pic? She was a little polar bear! The youngest competitor to ever participate!

Ethan was telling stories around the food, which was fun to listen to. 

Wesley taught us all how to play "Mau" - a game he learned on his mission. 

That was fun to try and figure that out. I didn't join in foosball or Telestrations, but I played other games with the kids. The teenage girls had a game called Flip 7 that was fun. I skipped out early last night but joined another game today and won that, woot

I didn't do much visiting last night, but I did today. Last night around midnight Katharine put herself to bed on the couch. 

The kids and a few adults all slept in sleeping bags on the floor or if you're lucky, on a couch. 

Boys were downstairs, girls upstairs. But downstairs was where the movie and games were happening last night, which meant if boys didn't want to go to bed around 4am, they came upstairs to sleep. Pete and Hyrum were in that category. 

Poor Peter when he woke up this morning was sad cause he didn't have his Spiderman sleeping bag.

Sophi took it from him when she went to bed at 5:30. Sophi! Stealing from a child?!?!

I took it back for him. I think Joseph and Eliza and Mary had a couch. It was fun to have spouses and a fiancé up this year, though I know the crowded sleeping arrangements were not idea, but it's part of the tradition? We had a room, and Corey and I were in the bed, Ethan was on the fold down wall bed, Bella was on the floor with Alvie on one side of the bed, closest to the closet and Mel was on the floor by the window. I'm not sure where Christian slept. Mel and Christian woke up early and Corey took them down to the valley so they could to go their apartments, they both had to move out today. We prob should have taken them home last night? Corey made a pile of crepes yesterday around 3 before we went up, and we took two plates piled high with crepes to serve for breakfast. 

Corey and I were just talking about how we don't actually enjoy sleeping up there... maybe next year we'll come back home to sleep and then drive back up in the morning. The kids love to sleep over, even though it's mostly cause they don't sleep. Hyrum felt a little alone this year without his gang of friends from back in the day. So sad to grow up. But he was glad to have Wesley there. Bishop Gygi, who is in the other ward with his family now after the ward split, he came up to pick up his daughter today and searched for Wes so he could give him a hug. He was a real blessing to us when Wes was preparing to go on his mission. What else... so today yeah, it was just hanging out and cleaning up a little bit. Playing more Mau ~

Ethan sharing stories of his and Bella's courtship.

We had fun playing with Alive and Mary!!!

We enjoyed watching them crawl around and do their baby thing. Here is a little video of Mary going after the ping pong ball.

They are so cute, we love them!

Another foosball tournament. Double foosball with two balls got crazy.

6:30 tonight - everything was packed up, floor was vacuumed, all cleaned up and just visiting a bit more before we headed out. 

It was a little snowy but the roads were good on the drive home. I drove Corey's car (thank you sweetie) and he drove the van. At home, the kids mostly voted to watch Kpop Demon Hunters. The girls wanted to watch it with Wes, Hyrum did not want to watch it. It was fine I think, but after watching it, Hyrum felt his low expectations were justified. Sharing his analysis of the movie.

Actually I think he said it was worse than he thought, can't remember the things he didn't like, but we told him he should watch it just to be a part of the cultural phenomenom. So now it's late, it's been a good start to the year, we have a wedding in 9 days ahhhhh. We did a little bit of prep for it before we went to the cabin yesterday. First we went climbing with Wes though - 

...and Lily and Daniel and Peter.

I was laughing to see Wes struggle on a 10b and how it was burning his forearms! haha. Then we went by the venue at Wheeler Farm to test the sound system and look at a few things. 

And then I went thrifting to try and find some clothes for the girls for the wedding, so we can properly join the color palate. I got distracted by these metalic looking loafers... 

Almost wanted to get them, don't know why. 

So I was supposed to be shopping for the wedding but really I was just wasting time. The kids headed up to the cabin at 5 in Corey's car, we were a little behind them in the van, which Corey felt brave enough to drive up the snow covered street to the cabin. We made it perfectly safe but I was nervous. Good thing it has new tires. I'm grateful it's been a mild winter, just cause I hate driving in the snow. Ok, there's my start of the year report! I'm gonna go set some goals this weekend, actually after the wedding, and I have hopes that it will be a good year.