Last Weekend was a Doozy

Well if good parenting was graded by the amount of time spent in the car for your kids, last weekend Ben and I would have gotten an A++. (Sadly, if good parenting was graded by if your kids lie to you, Ben and I would have gotten an F this weekend . . . but let's not talk about that right now. Or ever.)

Lucy had her Winter Formal at the high school. What made it extra-special and fun (and lots of time in the car), was that one of her best-friends, Lila, came down for it. Lucy and I drove out almost to Wellington, Utah on Friday night and met Lila and her dad Aaron. Then, of course, drove back home to Montrose. The girls had fun on Saturday getting ready together - and they were joined by Ruby (another of Lucy's besties) and Aubrey. After getting all dolled-up at our home, they were off to a house for group-pictures. From there it was to Denny's - where it was all ready for them at one big table thanks to Lucy's reservation. :) After Denny's, to the dance. From the dance to Kolter's house. From Kolter's house to our home - Lucy, Lila, and Ruby got to have a special sleepover . . . fun for them. On Sunday, after church, we took Ruby home and then drove to Green River, Utah and met up with Lila's mom, Heather. Then we came back home. Whooowheeee. The girls had a great weekend and loved the dance and everything involved with it. It was a lot of fun for them for sure.

Sorry, not sorry, but I have a ton of pictures . . . 

Here we go . . . 

Lila, Lucy, Ruby, and Aubrey all ready for picture-time. 

Patton, Lucy, Lila, and Kolter.

The girls (I will try my best at naming them): Aubrey, Sadie, Bray (Brae?), Brooklyn, Elizabeth, Emelye, Lucy, Lila, and Ruby.

The boys were so proud of the pose they came up with on their own . . . :)

Patton posing with her sweet mom, Amy, grabbing a picture. I love Amy!

I'm not even going to try to name the boys, ha. But a fun group of boys.

The step-sibling pose - I don't know why, but I love it ha.

I stole this from another mom's post. :)

Oh good ol' Denny's. :)

Then for Ben and Emmy's weekend . . . if you remember, Emmy had asked Aidan to the dance, but ended up deciding not to go as it was just too much for her with her gymnastics meet the next day. So Ben and Emmy left around 2pm on Saturday and headed up to Littleton. They went first to Joe and Britt's and had a good visit with them. Then on to Ben's parent's home for the night. Church on Sunday, then getting ready for Emmy, then on to the meet. It was Emmy's first meet with her new skills and so that was fun - but it also didn't go as she was hoping. But, overall, I think it was a good meet for her! She competed in olympic order, so vault, bars, beam, and then floor.

Her first vault she kind of fell on the landing and then her second vault she had lots of extra steps on her landing and even ended up running into her coach, haha. But it was a good vault, all things considered, and her score was good - so yay. Then she went to bars. She's been so excited to compete her giants . . . and unfortunately she missed it on her first try. But she got back up and did it again and it was one of the best giants I have seen her do (even though her coaches just told her to get back up and not do her giants, she decided to try them again, yay!). Next was beam. The big thing she's been working on in this event is her connection - so her back-handspring to back-walkover. She's been hitting them pretty solidly in practice, but unfortunately missed it at this meet. But, again, she went back up there and nailed it the second time around. She did really well on floor and so that was a good way to end the meet. She ended up getting 1st (!) on vault and 4th on floor. Not too bad!

Emmy and her cute teammate Nicole. These girls were the only Diamonds competing from their gym at this meet.

YAY.

She was pretty mad about her meet, but not overly so. Appropriately so, maybe?! I hope her next meet she can nail her bars and beam on the first-go! Here's a video of all her events (in the order of vault - 2 -, bars, beam, and floor). 

January - Spoiler Alert, It was Boring

Wow, was January ever a bust. I mean, it started out with a bang at Kendall - but definitely that was the highlight of the month sadly. Especially as it occurred on day one, haha. The weekends were painfully boring for me. So, I'll do a little update since I have like three pictures or something!

Ben - He is happy to be done with "active" reserves as he finally and unexpectedly got approved for the IRR (individual ready reserve - which I like to call the reserve-reserve unit). Without that and taking call at the hospital, he is back to having his weekends free and that's been nice for him. He bought a guitar and is practicing on it and seems to like it. He'll be doing the Spudman triathlon with me this July, but has yet to fully commit (or not) to the Half Ironman in St. George this spring.

Me - I've started working at Ben's work - the Black Canyon Surgical Center. It's a great place to work, but seeing as I haven't ever done PACU (post-anesthesia care unit) nor floor-nursing in a while, it's intimidating. But I like it and the people - I just need to feel more comfortable and confident. I still work at the cancer center, and then pick up an extra shift or two a week at the surgery center. I was out of running for a few months due to what I will call a lateral meniscus tear. I was just about to get an MRI on it when two things happen: 1. We found out we had lost our health insurance (when Ben got placed on the IRR, we lost it - however, the government failed to notify us of this until after that fact) and 2. It (my knee) dramatically improved. With our new insurance, no way was I going to do the MRI (way too much money seeing as our deductible is like $6000/person, cry cry). (I already miss our Tricare insurance so much . . . ) But I am so grateful my knee is much better - not perfect, but I am running two days a week in addition to my other exercises (swimming, biking, and CrossFit).

Miles - Pretty much the same. Loves Mexico and his mission and the people and the food and his companions, etc. :) He'll be coming home July 23rd!!

Jonas - Pretty much the same. He still likes to get out on his mountain bike. He did get to go to Tucson and was able to see his buddy Kolter there - fun! They enjoyed some Top Golf together! He's still managing the gun range for the border patrol and, as of yet, has not seen any changes with the new administration. Except for a raise, I think. But we'll see in the next coming months if things do change for him.

Emmy - She found something she likes about high school - her "teacher cadet" course. This semester the students in the class go to schools and work with a teacher. Emmy chose her P.E. teacher, Mr. Warren, from Northside elementary and is absolutely loving it. Yay! She's gotten some big skills in her gymnastics routines this year (front handspring full on the vault, giants on the bars, connected back handspring to back walkover on the bean, and a front-front and layout-half on the flour). She and Lucy get to go on a travel meet/trip with gymnastics to New Orleans in mid-February. Lucky them! She loves hanging out with Aidan and we love her hanging out with Aidan because she's much nicer. :)

Lucy - She is still liking high school a lot. She organized the winter formal dance night for her friends - including calling Denny's and getting a reservation for 20. :) She has fun with Patton and her friends. She went skiing last Monday (and got to miss school, lucky girl) with Patton and his dad. They had a great time. She is starting the "pre-track" season and is really liking it so far. The girls had a gymnastics mock-meet (i.e., a practice meet) last week and Lucy looked so solid!

Pretty boring, eh?

Jonas and Kolter at Top Golf. :)

The Winter Formal was a girl-ask-boy dance. So Emmy was excited to ask Aidan. But, another spoiler alert, in the end Emmy decided not to go because she had to drive to Denver that night for a gym meet the next day and it was just too much. Aidan was only going because he knew Emmy wanted to. Aidan doesn't usually do the dance-thing, but he was a good sport to say yes to Emmy anyhow. :) Oh well, at least Emmy got her poster-picture and that's half the fun of the dance ha!

Happy New Year, 2025!!

Well New Year's turned out to be a pretty fun day - fun-ish for me, but definitely fun for the kids and even Ben, I think! We ended up taking the girls' boyfriends to Kendall Mtn. in Silverton for a day of skiing or snowboarding or cross-country skiing for me. Aidan had never done a snow sport in his life and so we thought this would be fun to teach him to snowboard - his choice over skiing. Patton snowboards and so he and Lucy had fun going up and down together.

To make a long story short, Aidan was an incredibly fast-learner and had picked it up 1/2 way down on his first run. Boys! Poor Emmy was a bit bummed because this was maybe her third or fourth time on a board and Aidan had already surpassed her. Being married to Ben, I am well-aware of how Emmy felt, ha! But Emmy still had a great time and loved being there with Aidan. Ben was pretty much on his own, giving tips here and there to both Aidan and Emmy - mostly Emmy haha.

As for me, I would have actually liked to have skied (I mean, Kendall is such a pleasant place to ski), but Lucy now has my snow-boots and I cannot find another pair that will fit my fat stubby calves. Cry, cry, cry. Not because I can't ski, but because I have fat stubby calves. :( So I just cross-country skied on my own, but the trails there weren't really great. And I am pretty sure there were mountain lion tracks and being on my own made it a bit sketchy. But I did it because there wasn't much else for me to do. I mean, I did watch the kids and Ben come and go and that was fun because they were happy.

I made them to promise they wouldn't eat lunch without me, then I headed out with the car keys and so they wouldn't have been able to eat anyways, ha! (I didn't plan that, but it was pretty smooth nonetheless.) So we had lunch together and then everyone was back at it. I did try one run on the ski lift in my XC gear, but it did kind of suck and so I just headed back out on my own.

Anyways, I adore Kendall and Silverton and so it was just a fun day and fun to have friends join us!

Emmy and Aidan on the their butts. A common occurrence when learning to snowboard. :)

Check out this awesome video of Emmy and Aidan getting off the lifts . . .  Love it.

Lunch!

Sporting my awesome new sunglasses from the Hubands. :)

Whoops, all-star snowboarder and snowboard instructor Ben was left out of the photos. Whoops. But he was a crucial component in our awesome adventure!

So long 2024 . . .

Our yearly End-of-Year Interviews . . . 

 

Jonas sent me his answers:

19 years old

Suits [fav show]

Being busy and having something productive to do (I dropped out...) [fav thing about school]

Snowboarding [thing I'm best at]

I wouldn't want to change [what would you change your name to]

Teal [favorite color]

My jeep [favorite toy]

Not broke [probably welding]

Blanket [I take this to bed with me]

Unbroken [I haven't read in years]

American Sniper [fav movie]

Winter [fav season]

Orange chicken/greek fries [fav food]

Dogs (occasionally, not Bella) [fav animal]

Snowboarding [fav sport]

Aidan [best friend]

Thanksgiving [fav holiday]

Moab trip with friends [fav thing did this year]

Goodbye December and 2024!

Christmastime 2024

I miss Christmas already . . .it really is the most wonderful time of the year. Even though it's so different now, and was different without the two boys - it was still wonderful. The magic isn't quite there anymore as our kids are all teenagers and beyond, but the joy of gift-giving is still fun. Although, this year, it was even more different because we had decided our girls would just be getting cash from us (plus a 4-day ski pass for Lucy). They just want clothes and no way can I pick those out anymore for them. So I think they thought I still might get them things, but I really didn't. Good thing Santa have a few surprises for them. :) But it still was a lovely season . . . 

The girls had a fun Christmas Eve and I was sad to have not been invited haha. Kidding, but only kidding. I am glad they had a good day, but I was sad to not doing anything "fun" with my family. I was able to wrap Ben's gifts (he worked) and get the Christmas jello made, etc. The girls had planned a special day with Alaina (it's her first Christmas without her mom, sniff-sniff) and they went up to Telluride, took the gondola, took pictures, went to Ouray's hot springs on the way home, etc. We had our classic Christmas Eve dinner, which includes having the missionaries over and eating Swedish meatballs and Christmas jello. 

So . . . we forgot to get any pictures of the Elders with us on Christmas Eve. So I will share this picture we got in January (both Elders were getting transferred the next day, boohoo). Great guys! Elder Pond and Elder Olsten.

We had a good evening. Jonas spoiled the girls good with his sibling gifts: Uggs for Emmy and Vans for Lucy. Nice job Jonas!! 

Emmy got Lucy her requested Nikes and Lucy got Emmy some clothing from SHEIN. After opening their "PJs" (a cute sweatsuit or, as my sister says, daytime pajamas) we watched "The Greatest Christmas Pageant Ever" after the elders had left. It was a great evening.

Ben and I got up around 8:30 on Christmas morn and scurried downstairs to "set-up Christmas." We couldn't do it on Christmas Eve because the kids stayed up later than us and Aidan (who had a family party that "started" at midnight  and so couldn't make it over ealier on Christmas Eve, stopped in for a quick "hello" and probably a kiss . . . around 2am or so!?). Anyways, I had it all ready to set out and so it didn't take too long. 

I had signed us up to deliver Christmas day meals to shut-in individuals and our time was scheduled for 10am. So a little before 10, we got the girls up (Lucy had awakened earlier but went back to bed knowing Emmy wanted to sleep in until 10) and they quickly got ready to go deliver with us. We had about 7 meals and they were all at the same apartment (assisted living center?) and on the same floor and so it worked out really well!

After that we came home and ate the delicious cheese braid breakfast. (I only made one big one for us seeing as there were only the four of us - mistake. We could have devoured two throughout the day and on our drive the next, etc.) Then it was on to Santa's gifts. I had a gift or two from Ben to open and Ben had several from me. The girls had cards full of cash to open. :)

We just enjoyed the day, chilled, etc. Aidan joined us that evening for our Christmas dinner (fondue - yum) and Christmas movie (The Wild Robot, Ben's choice, but I probably encouraged him ha). It was a nice, nice day.

Good ol' Santa. Way to pull through with the gifts this year! (Oh, you can see our "pathetic" tree in the background. I mean, I get why the girls thought that. But it still was fun ha.)

We actually had a white Christmas for about an hour! Wahoo!

The day after Christmas we headed over to Utah. Part of giving the girls cash, was to go shopping in Salt Lake. But even better, my sister and her family were at my parents. So it worked out perfectly for a little getaway to Utah! The weather was good until about Provo canyon - and as we got closer and closer to Midway the wet rain turned to wet snow. And it pretty much snowed in Midway for the next two days . . .

We got there Thursday evening (after a somewhat-successful first-shopping stop at the thrift store in Provo) and had a delicious dinner together. We tried to go ice-skating (closed due to a broken zamboni) and then bowling (closed due to blowing leagues), but then just ended up playing games together that night - which was fun for sure.

Friday was our shopping day - the four of us went to City Creek in SLC. It's a great indoor/outdoor mall and had lots of great post-Christmas deals. Everyone got some great clothing and were happy. So that was fun. Erin and her two boys had a great day skiing (Erin) and snowboarding (Everett and Oliver) at Sundance. Yay.

That night, after dinner, we went ice-skating. Luckily it was opened - even though they hadn't plowed the few inches of snow that had fallen and kept falling. But we had a really fun time together!

We took it pretty chill on Saturday morning, but after lunch headed down to the Provo area (technically Vineyard but who's heard of that?!). My parents joined us for this activity - Top Golf. Jonas has gone a few times and has talked about how fun it is. Emmy even went once with him and loved it. And since I know Chuck and Ben like to golf but never go, I thought it would be fun. Plus, my parents were able to come and watch us - plus they tried a few hits of their own and did really well! We really had a good afternoon and loved the heated table, ceiling heat-lamps, and delicious pretzel bites. :)

The girls wanted some photos after we were done - Erin thought that was pretty funny and tried to convince her boys to do a photo shoot as well. They declined. :)

That evening we had a great time watching the BYU vs CU Alamo Bowl football game. Mainly great because BYU won. YAY.

On Sunday we went to an earlier ward so we could head home in the light. We had a nice time at church and then enjoyed one last meal together. 

All but Everett. Love this family of mine and was grateful for this fun little trip to Utah!

A Jonas Update

Jonas doesn't send me too many pictures and I am not on Snapchat so I don't "see" him a lot . . . but I scrounged up a few. But Jonas seems to be doing well, considering his circumstances! It's pretty boring where he is for a 19-year old young man, but he seems to be making the most of it and has a pretty upbeat attitude for the most part.

He started out with a less-than-idea roommate, but finally got a new one. One within about 5 years of his age (as opposed to 20 years older) - among the many, many other positive qualities this new roommate has that the old one was lacking . . . 

Jonas bought a really nice mountain bike. He's been interested in Commencal bikes every since he was a young teenager and he finally bought himself one. There are actually some designated biking trails where he is and so he's gotten out and has had a good time. A medic out there has a bike, too, and I think they have gone out a few times together.

Honestly, I don't know what I can and can't say on here . . . Jonas was given pretty strict orders. So, actually, I am only going to post one picture - the others include other people and so I should probably not include them.

Jonas was pretty involved in preparing and making the food for both Thanksgiving day and Christmas. He was thoroughly disappointed in the sweet potato casserole and so he asked for my recipe and made a much better version a few days later. Awesome. I'll post that picture, too, ha.

He gets out on the weekends sometimes and goes shopping, maybe attends a YSA ward, etc. 

He's growing a mustache in case you're wondering. :)

All in all, he's doing alright! We love and miss him, but hope he can learn and grow and mature and figure out the answers to life from his experiences. :)

Looks sooooo good! Nice job.

His Christmas gift . . . Not sure when I'll stop giving my boys Legos . . . 

So cool and so different!