In Defense of a 10 p.m. Midnight

After a day or two to let the big Christmas snowfall get plowed out of the way, we headed up to the cabin to spend a few days.  My mom and dad came up too.  I did a horrible job of taking pictures.

The first morning we were there, it was pretty cloudy, and we were just hanging out in our jammies eating breakfast when I looked out the window and saw a moose! 

She walked around the cabin and then headed south.  It was fun to see a moose in our yard, it had been a few months since we had seen one.  Here she goes, heading away from our noisy selves:

We spent the first couple of days sledding and watching movies and playing games and doing puzzles.  I had checked the weather reports and decided Thursday would be our ski day, since it looked the sunniest.   Grandpa had a cold and Grandma's hips are still bothering her, so they decided to stay home and watch Olive for us.

When we woke up Thursday morning, there were low gray clouds over the lake, and the sun was nowhere to be seen.  We headed out anyway, hoping that the clouds were being generated by the lake freezing.  Sure enough, as we drove up Logan Canyon road towards the summit, we popped out of the clouds and fog and into a beautiful sunny day!  The weather was perfect...no wind, blue blue skies and of course LOTS of snow on the ground!  Hooray!

The only problem was....we weren't the only ones who noticed the weather report.  There were actual lift lines at Beaver Mountain!  We usually had to wait about 10 minutes each time we wanted to get on the lift.  No fun, but oh well!  

 The kids were all doing great.  Hardly no one fell at all!  Arden was brave enough to venture out of the green runs and into some blue!  Dax wanted to follow her down one.  Cora and I decided to go down a different (easier) way and Preston followed us.  Unfortunately, Dax got stuck with one ski off and no flat place to put it back on.  Arden helped him scoot down to the side of the trail and got him set back up on his skis and down the hill like a pro.  Preston had gone to help them too late, so he had to go down the blue hill also, but he survived!  Here are the boys on the lift.

 We skied all day until they kicked us off the mountain.  The lake was looking much clearer and prettier as the sun set behind us on the drive back to the cabin.

My mom was nice enough to have dinner cooking for us!  Skiing makes me hungry!

The next day was COLD and foggy.  Unfortunately for me, I had to go out on a 5-mile run, since I had already missed a training run the day before since we were skiing from dawn until dusk.  I strapped on some non-slip thingies to my shoes, put on two pairs of gloves and multiple layers of clothes and headed out.  I ran on the north beach road, which is blessedly flat and not very crowded in winter.  It was really foggy, and running in the fog is kind of boring, because everything looks the same.  Olive got "flocked" while we were running...well the front part of her did...her face and chest were frosted while her back was still black.  I tried to take a picture of her, but my phone has been acting up lately and immediately shut down when I hit the picture button.  Oh well,

We played the rest of the day away and went out to dinner in Garden City just for a change of scenery.  Sometimes "cabin fever" is a real thing.

I had to do a long run (13 miles) the next day, and was hoping for some sun.  It was foggy in the morning, but by around 10 o'clock it was gone.  Wish granted!!

It was only about 18 degrees and the road was snowy/icy, so I didn't want to take Olive out in case her feet got cold.  So I headed out myself.  All of the bushes and trees and grasses by the road were covered with ice crystals when I started running, and it was so pretty!  Hardly anyone was driving around.  I had to use the restrooms around mile 5, and hallelujah, when I got to the North Beach the bathrooms were open!  The beach looked so pretty all covered in snow, but also little lonely with the dozens of picnic tables down by the water all empty.  I ran from St. Charles all the way across to the Hot Springs (where no one was in the pool, can you believe it??) and back, which was exactly 13 miles of nice sunny running.  

That day was New Year's Eve!  Preston took the kids sledding all morning while I was running (Yay, Preston!), and I took them out again after lunch while Preston had some time off.  They worked hard, and were pretty worn out by dinner time.

Cora was excited to wear her new unicorn jammies she got for Christmas:

The kids knew it was "Happy New Years Eve" and were excited to stay up until midnight.  We were considering letting them make it all the way to 2017, but decided to just play it by ear.  After dinner, the kids were still doing pretty good, but I could tell they were tired from getting up early (as they always seem to do when they don't have to get out of bed) and sledding all day in the freezing cold. After a movie and some snacks, it was about 9 o'clock.  Cora began to act loopy, and Dax started to get even louder than usual.  Arden seemed okay, but the two little ones were started to get pretty crazy around 9:30.  Around 9:45 they got into big whiny fight about something very minuscule, and Preston and I looked at each other.

We knew.

It was going to be one of those New Years Eves where we count down to "midnight" at 10:00 p.m. 

Shocking, isn't it, that we would even consider something like this?  Robbing our precious children of the chance to welcome the New Year.  Are we really that heartless?

You know it!

Actually, our kids have hardly ever seen a New Years midnight.  The last two years before this we had been skiing all day on New Years Eve and the kids (or was it their parents?) were too tired to make it to midnight. We could have tried, and the kids were pretty willing...but really, what's the point?  When they were little, they didn't know the difference between 10:00 p.m. and midnight, 10:00 seemed pretty late to them!  

I don't know about your kids, but the later it gets and the tireder the kids get, the higher the emotions run.  This is especially true with Dax and Cora.  After 10:00 p.m., they can no longer sit still and watch a movie, or sit and play a game (heaven HELP the person who would dare to beat Cora at any game after 10:00 p.m...beating her at a game in broad daylight is a risky proposition).  After 9:30 or so, Dax and Cora are either running around in circles howling like wolves or they are whining.  There is no in between...it kind of brings out the bipolar side of them.  There are only very high highs and very low lows.  And the later it gets the faster they can switch from high to low.  

As Preston and I looked at each other, we both knew that if we were going to try for midnight, we would have to find a way to dance and sing for two hours more hours and try to keep them entertained enough that they wouldn't tear the house apart in glee (or kill each other) as emotions run higher and higher the tireder everyone gets.  As the night went on and the kids got crazier and whinier, we knew we would never make it to midnight with everybody still happy and the cabin still standing.

So, switch the TV on to the New York station!  Break out the hats and party horns!  Find your silly string.  Let's count down and watch that ball drop!!

At midnight (Eastern Time), we did the count down, screamed HAPPY NEW YEAR!!, ran outside and blew our horns and shot silly string at Preston, then headed back inside for our traditional sparkling cider toast:

And the kids were asleep by 11.

And everyone was happy.

Christmas 2016

Arden helped a lot with the present wrapping this year, and would often ask if I had any presents she could help wrap.  Thanks to her, I wasn't up on Christmas Eve frantically wrapping into the wee hours of the morning...I just had a few presents to finish up while watching "It's a Wonderful Life."  It was nice to be done around 10:30.

Usually, after I arrange all of the presents and everything, I take a picture of the tree in the dark....however, this year I didn't.  I didn't forget, but we had three (THREE!) strands of lights go halfway out in the week leading up to Christmas.  Preston didn't have any time go to through and figure out the problem or re-string the lights, so needless to say, the tree looked a little "patchy" in the lights department.  So, instead I took some closeups of the sections that still worked.  Kind of different, kind of fun.  

 When I was young, I always wished we had one of those "professional" looking trees, with all-matching ornaments like you see at some houses.  I couldn't understand why my mom wanted such a rag-tag looking tree with all the homemade ornaments on it.

Now I do, and she was right.  I love those hand print ornaments and pictures of the kids and popsicle stick snowmen!

 Preston had a little cold, and started some serious snoring around 2 a.m...at which point I went to sleep on the couch next to the Christmas tree.  We had warned the kids not to come down before 7 a.m. (yeah, right)...so when Dax and one of the girls (I didn't open my eyes to see who) first tried to come and check out their stockings at 4:30 a.m., I surprised them by being in the room and sending them back to bed.  I was worried they would try to come down every 10 minutes for the rest of the night, so I was happy that the next time they tried it it was about 6:15.  I let them look through their stockings, but they didn't get to open any presents until we woke Preston up at 7.

Arden REALLY wanted to get Daxton this giant stuffed dog for Christmas, even though he is now a manly 8-year old.  He didn't mind.

 Arden was happy with the super soft pink blanket Santa brought for her.

Cora also got a stuffed animal, since you know, we just don't have enough of those around!

We took turns opening presents, and Preston got a new pair of sunglasses.  (Olive is enjoying Cora's new blanket)

 Oh, and here is a shot of the kids in their Christmas pajamas:

All during the night and morning while we were snug in our beds or cozy in our house enjoying Christmas morning...outside it was snowing like crazy!  We had 9 a.m. church to get to, so we put our boots on along with our church clothes and walked over.  It was just sacrament meeting, and almost all singing, so I loved it.  The primary did a few songs.  I never get tired of watching the kids sing the primary songs, they did so great!  I realized that I only get one more Christmas after this one of Arden in primary...after that she'll be in Young Womens!  Crazy.

Here is our deck, with about 6 or so new inches before church.  By the time we got home, it was more like 8!

 After church (and shoveling the driveway...yuck), we started the Christmas rounds.  The roads were HORRIBLE, but we made it to my Grandma's house in one piece.  My cousin Audrey was already there and had shoveled her driveway.  She was snuggly warm inside, but we brought her a new blanket anyway, with the names of all of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren on it. I hope she likes using it.

After that, we went to my mom and dad's house.  Amanda's family and Val and Josh both decided it was too dangerous to drive, so it was a little weird that it was only my family and BJ there to open gifts.  But it was still fun to be there and the kids all enjoyed finally getting to open the presents that they had been eyeing under Grandma's tree for the last couple of weeks.  I stink and didn't take any pictures for some reason.

After that, we slipped and slided our way to Preston's mom's house.  She always has yummy soup and other snacks for us on Christmas, which seems just right to me after all of the junk and candy I have generally been eating up to that point in the day.  Lots of Preston's brothers and sisters and their families were there, and it was nice to see everyone and the kids liked seeing what their cousins got for Christmas.  Again...no pictures.

Before we knew it, the day was nearly over and it was time to get home and go to bed.  On the way home we drove by the Layton lights, since we hadn't done it yet.  The trees looked so pretty with all of the new snow, and the kids especially liked how the lights moved to the songs on the radio station they had you tune into.

And just like that, it was over!  Only 365 more days until next Christmas....