Boxing Day Nonsense

Boxing day is the day after Christmas. Ryker thinks it means "walk in the snow without shoes" day. 

Grandma was worried that Ryker had only been eating cotton candy, pop tarts, and cereal. She made him eat a carrot, but she had to be a little surprised that his system didn't reject it. 

DeA gave me a shooting date as a Christmas present. I cashed that baby in as soon as I could. 

We made a little campfire and cooked some tinfoil dinners.

They were hot and smoky, just like her.

More cotton candy. Surprise, surprise. 

 

Christmas!!

Covid has made Christmas quiet, isolated, and weird. It was nice to have SuperCheese and Heather come up and help make things interesting.

We played a small, but fun Reindeer Game.

Chayo and Irma made delicious pork tacos for Noche Buena.

DeA put on her comfiest pjs. 

Leo did his normal lazy thing.

The tree with the presents at 1am. Next year we are giving the kids Benadryl at 7pm so that DeA and I can get to bed earlier. 

5:30am was as late as this crew could wait.

She's never looked more sexy.

A cute homemade doll that Maddy made!

Ryker was very excited to get a cotton candy machine. We immediately had to try and get it going.

A bullet casing helicopter. Perfect.

 Mom got a fancy herb grower machine. 

More cotton candy!!

Later in the morning we got a pretty snow storm. 

The gyms have been closed almost all year, and it's getting harder to come up with things to do in the basement. I got DeA a pull-up bar and a bar for her bands. Her first words? "You aren't installing them, are you? I don't want them to fall". So I spent a chunk of the afternoon proving her wrong. 

The cotton candy machine seems to have found a new home next to the ice cream machine. Gpa just needs a corn dog maker and he's got himself a carnival. 

We were pretty tired from the early morning, and I didn't get a nap after putting up the pull-up bar, but we had a nice and relaxing evening watching football. 

Thanksgiving to Christmas Fun!!

Normally we don't get around to getting a tree until the middle of December. This year we got on it early and went out the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We got it put up and a few strings of lights up before it fell over and the cheap tree stand bent. The tree spent a few nights out on the deck until the new stand arrived. While it was out there, Jensley would go out and plug in the lights to make sure we had a festive porch.

The new tree stand arrived, and the tree looked great in its spot. 

It's very Christmasy here.

The kids are spending a lot of time on the computers, so we picked out some blue-light filter glasses to help them out. Ryker looks very sophisticated. 

Well, sometimes he looks sophisticated. Apparently not when he's using using chopsticks. 

It's getting cold, but it doesn't stop DeA from wanting to go on walks. It's cold and romantic. 

It was crazy hair day at school. The kids definitely went crazy.

We got a heavy snow and the kids built a giant snowman. It was pretty exciting

Christmas stockings!

Samantha from the office knit me a cool viking helmet for our office exchange!

Leo doesn't like going on long runs with DeA, but he always acts left out when she leaves without him. 

Thanksgiving Weekend!!

Life has been a little tough since the new lockdown. DeA and I escaped to Idaho for a few days, it was nice to get away but it wore her out.

Rock has been to the office a few times because of his school schedule. The other two kids didn't really like that, so Ryker skipped school one day to come with me. As always, it involved a business lunch.

Jensley came a few days later and had a business smoothie. 

Hadley came over with her parents for Thanksgiving. Hadley found some of Gma's secret stash of Oreos.

My kids claim that they knew nothing about it.

The best part of Thanksgiving is not the food, or even family. It's the Turkey Bowl. This was the first year that all three kids wanted to ball out. 

Jens played great and here she is taking it to the house!!

Ryker played a little QB and made os solid passes.

We didn't have the biggest turnout, mostly because of Covid, but it was still a fun day. 

DeA and Hadley hung out at home, away from the fun.

We had a small Thanksgiving dinner with only Mom and Dad, us, Nick's group, and Doug and Jama. We took wonderful naps and then relaxed and watched football and BYU basketball. 

I helped Dad cut some of our firewood Friday morning while the kids did some cutting of their own. 

Beast Mode!!

We got some decorations put up, way earlier than last year.

Saturday morning we drove out to find a Christmas tree. Leo didn't want to be left behind, he insisted on piling in with the kids. Ryker didn't mind the crowding. 

Hadley and Cambri noticed that DeA was hiding delicious leftover pie and tried to get some for themselves. You will notice that there is no tree in the tree corner...that's because we put it up in a stand that didn't work and it tipped and dumped water all over the floor. Now it's sitting on the front porch while we wait to get a new stand.