New Year's Eve

We celebrated New Year's Eve at the Peaden house this year. We went to church in the morning and then to the Peaden house. 

First thing - we realized we missed doing our traditional picture in front of the Christmas tree earlier in the week and so we had to make sure to do that as well. 

Shantel made a balloon countdown of fun things for the kids to do to countdown to the near year. This included doing the birthday party for Amy and Kevin. 

I love this picture because you can see how excited Lucy is to pop this balloon, but then when it pops she looks so sad it is gone. 

We had dessert to celebrate birthdays, plus frappe. We spent the rest of the night playing games and had a really great time. 

New Years Day started with french toast, cousin pyramids, and games with the Peadens. It ended with back at out house in Lehi, ready to start the new year. 

December Wrap Up

Here are a few highlights from December. 

We were doing some cleaning and found this bag of masks under a pile of some other things. Our immediate comment was about how grateful we are not to have to wear masks any more. Also, I'm grateful that we had masks and were able to stay healthy during the pandemic and that are close family members were also able to stay healthy. 

Movie night date night! This year Shantel and I were able to sign up for monthly movie nights with Living Cinema (Living Scriptures). The first Monday of the month Lydia would babysit for us and we would get to go to the movies and see a family friendly movie. This is the first time that we've had a child old enough to babysit and we loved being able to go out and loved going to the movies together. We had some of the movies we loved, some we liked and just one or two that we did not really enjoy. It was so fun to do this year. Unfortunately it is being discontinued, so we'll have to find something else fun to do next year. 

Lydia loves to give thoughtful gifts and especially loves to give gifts that she has made. Sometimes that means Christmas can be a stressful time for her. In addition to buying her sibling gift, Lydia was determined to give a gift to each of her siblings, plus Shantel and I. Here are a couple of the pictures from projects she was working on. She built this incredible princess dress closet for Lucy. Inside it has a hanger for all of Lucy's dresses and the outside has fold down shelving for Lucy's princess crowns. For Caleb, she made a car track and then took cars we had and and made them into Caleb's favorite pokemon characters. It was so incredible. She is incredibly thoughtful and also so creative and able to accomplish projects that I don't even think are possible. 

(plus a picture of Lydia when we let her eat Pepperoni Pizza for breakfast, ha) 

Caleb and giant Macey's Ice cream cone. 

Lydia got new glasses. She was debating these two pairs and decided on the blue ones on the right. 

Lucy and Lydia got to go on a date with Shantel to Arby's (Doesn't it feel like she is on my corner? I'm the big Arby's fan right? I'm grateful for my three girls). 

A little hard to see, but there was a huge flock of birds (thousands) hanging around our house the last few days. Then today they came and all few into our yard and landed and it was so cool to see them all there together and see them fly and and take off together. The air was filled with hundreds and hundreds of them. 

Matching dresses from Christmas. 

Christmas Break

We had a really great Christmas break and spent time at the Peaden's, the Walker's and at home. 

After we did a little bit of Christmas morning clean up (and let the kids play with their new things for a while) we headed up to Morgan. We opened up presents and spent the rest of Christmas day spending time with the Walker's and playing games. Here are a few fun things:

Lydia planted pumpkins in the spring with the idea of using them to make pie in the fall. She and Shantel were finally able to take her pumpkins and make a pumpkin pie from the pumpkin she grew. 

Polly came with us and Brooklyn had some fun drawing her. 

There were some old mentos and Matt set off an explosion of coca-cola. 

Next up we headed to West Jordan and and did present opening there. The Renchers had not yet opened either so we were able to open presents with them. This was voted the most beautifully wrapped present and as always, there were many many beautiful presents. 

We all had a really great time opening presents and it was fun to spend time with everyone. 

We played games and did our family Christmas party (we were supposed to do it before Christmas, but we got sick and could not make it happen). 

My Dad got a new "big screen" TV and Bruce and I helped him get it set up. 

We got to have a day at home which was so nice. The kids got to play with their new toys and relax. 

Meanwhile, I've wanted to write a set of Peaden Family Financial statements for a while and I got to spend some time putting those together and it was really fun. 

I am grateful for our family and love spending time together with them. We actually don't have a ton of pictures from the break, but really enjoyed all the game playing, chatting and present opening.