November and December 2020 seem like a long time ago, but I do fully intend to catch up on this someday, as it is the closest thing I have to a journal. November had an early snowfall, which I don't love (snow is only okay for the month of December). But when Olive and I went for a trail run one morning, the snow did look beautiful with the leaves that were still hanging on. I have been doing mostly trail runs and not so much pounding the pavement since the broken ankle and no races and I have really been loving it. Maybe I will retire from racing and just slowly run around trails enjoying the view.
I can't remember exactly why we went to the zoo, but we thought it was hilarious that they had put facemasks on the lion statues that we were no longer allowed to touch so that we would be double sure not to catch Covid from them. Ha. The rest of the animals didn't have masks on, so it was still fun, and beautiful weather.
This was the first (and hopefully only) year where we had Thanksgiving just our own little family. Everyone was still trying to avoid large gatherings. Grandmas and grandpa and were being smart and trying to stay away from germy teen/pre-teens who went to school with hundreds of other germy teens/pre-teens every day. Me and Preston made all the essentials, turkey (maybe just a breast), sweet potatoes, potatoes and gravy, rolls, and of course the three-colored jello grandma always makes. It was good and cozy but I missed my mommy!
We did do a zoom with all the Haun family, and everyone tried to play "Among Us" which was a game that everyone loved to play around this time. You could play with people you know, and you are all little guys who wander around a spaceship, and one is chosen to try and kill all the others and everyone has to guess who the killer is. Everyone is "sus" and then you type messages to each other and pretend you are not the killer if you are. I suck at it. But the kids loved it.
I am not sure what this picture is about, but there were a lot of them so I thought I would put it in, just to remember what Arden's friends looked like (this is Emily, Arden, and Allie, and I'm not sure who the little head in the corner is, someone's little cousin or something.)
Dax had his first band concert! We could only have one person attend, and you couldn't see him at all during the concert, but luckily I had made him take a couple of pictures in front of the Christmas tree! He even smiled!
He's a handsome dude:
Cora's theater was still doing plays. They would wear masks during rehearsals (supposedly), but took them off during performances. Cora got to be Hermes in a production of Hercules, and she had her own rap she got to do. She did great!
It is fun because a lot of kids from the neighborhood are in the plays too, and Cora's buddy Abby is usually there too:
Most of our usual Christmas traditions (choir concerts, temple square lights, etc.) were closed because of COVID, but the Cross-E ranch down the hill put together a drive-through Christmas lights display. It wasn't much, but it had the Christmas story, and some tractors with lights, and most importantly, you could buy the apple cider donuts at the end!
Its pretty hard to take pictures of us in the car and the stuff out the window, so, I didn't do that.
My mom did get brave enough to invite us over for Christmas Eve dinner. I still kept my mask on just in case (except when I was eating the traditional Christmas Eve pizza and garlic bread and egg nog, of course):
All the kids got their traditional Christmas jammies also, they look so cuuuute!
And then, Christmas was here again! Somehow Santa didn't forget anyone, everything was wrapped, and everyone seemed happy enough, so, good job me!
The kids were most excited for their new iPHONES!! Squeeeee! (we all actually needed new phones and we got them for free, but don't tell anyone). They were excited to have the newest iPhones of any of their friends. (just FYI, it has been nearly 2 years and we still have those same phones, so don't think that we are those new-iPhones-every-time people. We are not).
Here is another picture of Dax since he wasn't in the last one. He got some pretty cool Star Wars legos, and put them together amazingly fast! This ship is from the Mandalorian, a Star Wars show from Disney Plus, the new Disney streaming service.
We did our usual tradition and headed to the cabin for the week between Christmas and New Years! It was nice and peaceful and quiet, and freezing. I do love the snow in December, and there was plenty up Fish Haven Canyon when Olive and I were trying to run/hike off some of the Christmas treats.
Beaver Mountain was open for limited skiers, but the lodge was closed completely. The kids didn't like the sound of skiing without any hot chocolate or yummy lunches (cold pb&j in the car didn't sound appealing), so it was a quiet week. We sledded, played games, watched movies and all the usual stuff. We did get out of the cabin and did the local escape room, and we escaped!
We did a little New Years Eve celebration. Preston and I went out to dinner with our old friends, John and Sandy who live in Alaska, but were at the lake because Sandy's parents also have a cabin. Grandma and Grandpa took the kids to the Bear Trapper, so everyone was well fed and happy.
We headed back to the cabin and waiting for midnight to come (I think we actually called 11:00 p.m. midnight, but we are getting closer!)
We pulled poppers and blew horns and toasted in 2021, which for sure had to be better than 2020!
The next morning I got up to take the dog around the "block," and the sun had a rainbow ring around it:
It was so pretty, I didn't remember seeing anything like that before, so I took it as a good omen that the year would be a beautiful one. On to 2021!
