Christmas 2023

December is one of the quickest months for us. Sean's birthday took us down to see the light show and eat at a small Mexican restaurant that we enjoy. Happy Birthday to the best husband ever!

I took the kids out to eat one evening and Wesley's girlfriend, Lynn, came with us. I asked if she had seen the giant lit up house in town yet and she hadn't (which was exciting to see someone new experience it). What fun! We got to decorate our gingerbread house kits. Sean and I shared one this year and it was a train (not that you can tell from the finished pictures). It was tasty.

Betsy and her family came down to enjoy Christmas festivities together. We enjoy seeing them and always have fun. The boys had several epic Nerf wars, lots of MarioKart8, some sugar cookie decorating, Oculus Quest playing and a hockey game. I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

 

 

Max's cookies are the best.

Snow!

 We have gotten so much moisture in the form of rain and snow this winter! It's been great. We've been in a very severe drought for a couple of years and this snow we've gotten has made it so the drought conditions are almost non existent. Maybe our trees will survive after all.

I went out with Max and we created Lolita the Snow Lady which was a lot of fun! Wesley and Sean came out to go on a snow driving lesson and we ended up having a fairly epic snowball fight which resulted in Wesley loosing his cell phone in the snow. It was a tense half an hour while he took a metal detector and walked around the yard looking for it. I mean, the kids whole life is his phone after all. He did find it and it went into a bowl of rice to thaw out and dry out. It was successful. Whew!

The snow goats say "Hi!" and want cookies!

This and That

We made a fun new purchase. We've been driving our little all electric Nissan Leaf for over two years now and just love it. It doesn't have a huge range so we tend to use it for local trips and to the school and back. Anything longer we would take the Volvo. It took premium fuel and was quite a bit of money to fuel up. We toyed with the idea of replacing it with a larger range electric car since we love the Leaf so much. We ended up trading the Volvo in on a Mustang Mach-e. What a fun car to drive! We are having a ball with it and don't miss fueling up cars at all.

 I took some pictures of the dogs and thought this would be a good place to put them. We do love our Cooper, Kevin and Bean.

Max is a huge Garfield fan. Like old school 80's Garfield. We are always on the hunt for vintage items and get pretty excited when we find something for Max's collection. The kid wanted to make a Garfield cake so I put out all the stuff to make the cake and frost it and he did the rest. It turned out great and was delish! Good job Max!

About eight years ago we went to a technology open house at the college and they had a virtual reality station set up for the public to try. It was a PC based VR unit and we just loved it. We came home and priced out the new PC and headset at around $1400. We didn't love it THAT much but it sure stuck with us. So when we found out about the Oculus Quest that was in the $250 range (and it came with a $50 gift card) we decided to buy one. We've had it for about a month now and it is so much fun! I find I get a little nauseous with some of the games but the Beat Saber game I don't have a problem with so I play a lot of that. I also really like Gorilla Tag even though it's just stuffed full of loud mouthed kids. It's fun running around and swinging through trees.

Look at my cute smiling kids! I'm so proud of them.

Beauty and the Beast

 What a treat! This year both kids were in the High School play. They preformed Beauty and the Beast and it was fantastic! Wesley was Lumiere the candlestick and Max was a hat seller and a knife. I couldn't be more proud of them. They put in countless hours of practice and it really showed. What a fun evening.