Photos from around home

 We've been having a good time capturing the beauty around us.  I hate the weather here, and I'm ready to move.  There are some things here that are gorgeous though.  The mountains, the trees, the river and the mist....  Here are my favorites, taken by multiple people in our family.   You can definitely see the things we enjoy most.  

We had a huge windstorm.  I was fascinated by the amount of movement in these trees. 

We've been seeing more deer around us than ever before.  It's been a lot of fun. 

Of course the coyotes.  We often hear them but don't see them that frequently. 

We had more flooding.  The river got right up to the top of the levy again.  

One of the people down the road did some changes to his yard that had huge ramifications.  We had similar flood levels since we moved here and the roads near our home never covered like this.  It was fun to drive through though.  We even let Kayda drive through it in her jeep.

We see a LOT of eagles and hawks.  There is a mated Eagle pair and their baby.  Though it's a big baby, it doesn't have the white feathers yet.  We've seen the three of them hanging out in trees together a lot.  We have a smaller type of hawk that likes to perch in a tree by our cul-de-sac.  We couldn't remember what we named him exactly so we just call him G.

Random photos from the last few months of 2021

Well, here are some random goodies.  The kids' favorite things to take pictures of are their pets.  We had plenty of good time that I can't justify as separate blog posts so here's a bunch. 

Ozzi decided he should be a driver's ed student with Kayda.  He got up on the chair like this by himself.  He has NEVER sat on one before.  It looked pretty funny. 

Buddy is the most chill pet ever.  He was falling asleep on Carson's back while we were playing board games.  Carson even started crawling around and Buddy just sat there. 

Dillon hates hugs and snuggles.  Every now and then I still manage to trap him though. He pretends to hate it but secretly I think he likes the attention. He's just a teenager. 

One evening we came home to this.  The boys cleared off the table and played ping pong on it using plates and a bouncy ball. They also tried Carson's mini volleyball.

I stuck Buddy in Dillon's hood while we played board games.  He didn't like how he had to hold his head so he wanted Buddy out.  Buddy was content though. 

Carson was given access to a math game called prodigy for school.  He logged on unprompted and played for a couple of hours at home. 

Kayda made this timeline for a class project.  

We had a door decorating contest at school.  Kayda and a few of my students worked with me to decorate.  We had a really good time...and even did the walls near the door.  It was obviously a Grinch theme.  There were several of them, but that's what the kids wanted to do. 

For the month of December we decided to watch a Christmas movie a day until Christmas.  Daddy and Kayda are the only ones that managed it.  One was playing every day but sometimes the boys would stay the night at a friend's house and some days I just had to sleep.  My body has been crashing hard and when I hit the wall that's it for me.    We watched some of the "classics" ..."A Christmas Story", "It's a Wonderful Life", Disney remake of "A Christmas Carol" and "Nightmare Before Christmas" .  We hated them.  Absolutely awful.  We watched a lot of our favorites though "Klaus", "Arthur Christmas", "Christmas Chronicles", the "Santa Claus" series and of course the "Prep and Landing" series.  We also spent a couple days watching cheesy Christmas movies, playing board games and doing other activities.  

 

All things Christmas

Well, we put up Christmas decorations much closer to Thanksgiving than last year.  Back to our normal routine.  Though outdoor lights went up on a day with decent weather.  It seems like we just keep getting busier.  The price of having athletic kids that love their sports.  So it makes it harder to get things done that we really like to.  That being said, we had a good pre-Christmas season. 

Carson was helping put the village up and this picture just cracked me up.  Every year he and Kayda bicker over the way the village is set up.  It all worked out in the end.  Someday I'll remember to get a picture of it.  

The kids actually did a lot of the decorating on their own this year.  They brought in the tree and started decorating on their own without any prompting.  We ended up putting up our cheap Walmart tree in the bonus room.  Then Carson helped me cut off all the "pre-lit" lights from our other Christmas tree.  It was our first artificial tree and is still in good shape.  So we had three Christmas trees up.  The main one fills up with all the kids ornaments.  The "first" tree is full of mom and dad's ornaments, and the Walmart tree just has lights.  It was pretty fun.  We actually didn't add any major decorations this year which was a surprise.  

Carson desperately wanted to make gingerbread houses so he and Daddy headed to Winco to load up on candy.  Then we made graham cracker houses...who wants to wait for the gingerbread?

Every year (except the year we moved into this house) I make decorations for the kids and nieces and nephews.  I like to try to do different things so this year we tried to do spin painting.  Carson did the first few, then Kayda helped me finish the rest.  It was really fun to do.  They didn't turn out quite the way I wanted since they were too small to really get the effect I wanted.  I'm terrible about mailing them though...they'll get there someday lol. 

This is more like what I wanted to have happen on them.  

We made Aunt Anna's sugar cookies again, just like every year.  Hers are definitely prettier.  Kayda and Carson had a great time, though frosting all of them is a bit daunting. 

We played a LOT of board games.  The day we did sugar cookies was dedicated to board games anytime we weren't with the cookies. 

Dillon has been very interested in pies.  When we went to the pumpkin patch for Halloween he got a couple of sugar pumpkins and we made pumpkin pie.   Then he wanted to try a different one, Daddy suggested banana cream pie.  Pretty easy to make, we just bought a pie crust at the store but the rest was scratch.  It turned out pretty well, and he didn't even try it!  He still wants to try other pies.

Kayda was so excited for her Santa gift...a trip to Las Vegas to visit her best friend Ari.  She face-timed Ari to tell her and Ari actually started crying.  

Dillon is BIG into airsoft guns right now.  He and his best friends like to do battles with them (with the appropriate head gear).  

Carson gets a kick out of his electric scooter.  It snowed the day after Christmas so it was a while before he got to ride it for very long. 

When we were in Mexico I saw these cool metal peacocks.  They have a rock to balance them and they rock in the wind.  I didn't get one because we couldn't figure out how we would get it home.  Kayda spent quite a bit of time to find one for me!

Daddy was really excited about finding this frame for Carson.  It is an ongoing "battle" with Carson.  If you tell him that you love him it's immediately "I love you more" and it continues.  

Kayda had to figure out how to get her huge gift from Grandma and Papa G out from behind the tree.  She ended up dragging the tree out from the wall to get it.  

Kayda was on it with some gifts this year.  Another unique one was photo socks for Carson with Ozzi's face on them.  

In the evening Grandma and Papa H came over and we played some games and had dinner.  It is always fun to spend time really interacting with people we love.  

It was a great Christmas break and none of us were ready to go back to school again when it was over.