the rest of 2017

Back in August, on the night before school started, I listened to President's Monson's talk about the Book of Mormon and the challenge he made to read and study from it everyday.  So I decided to start it from the beginning again (on the first day of school) and made a goal to finish it by the end of the year.  I needed to read 4 or 5 pages everyday in order to accomplish that.  I wasn't perfect and some days I was playing catch-up but I persisted and finished it on the 27th.  I have read the Book of Mormon several times, but never in this way, so quickly, and I enjoyed just reading the story as I would read a book.  I have gone back to studying it more in depth but I think I might do it this way more often.

We didn't do anything over the break.  To be honest, it was kind of long for everyone and I guess I should have found something fun for us to do.  Although, to my credit, they had just been completely spoiled from Christmas and had plenty of things to entertain them.  Justin was given BYU basketball tickets through work so that was the one fun thing that we did all week. They were VIP tickets so we were able to go early and eat dinner before the game.  We had seats that were up close and Stockton was especially excited to be seated just 10 rows or so behind Donovan Mitchell.  Ivy loved watching Cosmo the Cougar wherever he went and the highlight for her was when he went past our row and gave her a high five.  We've had to pull up Cosmo videos for her to watch at home because she loved him so much.

Brynn had to help Justin get all the ornaments off the top of the tree where he couldn't reach.  It's always so refreshing when the tree comes down.

New clothes for church from Grandma.  I am relieved to be done with 9:00 church for now and am enjoying the 11:00 start time.

New Year's Eve:  Since it was on Sunday, I took the kids to the store the day before and had them pick out their one item that they wanted me to cook for dinner.  We always end up with quite the spread of different food.  I made the kids shirley temple's.  When I was a girl, Ali and I would go with my mom and dad to Salt Lake and stay at the Embassy Suites for my dad's mayoral conferences, or whatever they were called.  They would go to meetings in the day and dinner's at night and Ali and I would be left to roam the hotel, swim in the pool, and watch TV.  They would order us room service and everything.  We always loved it!  The best, though, was when we would go to happy hour at the "bar" everyday at 5 and order shirley temple's.  Anyway, that was a bit of a long story to say that when I saw a recipe for shirley temple's just a few days before New Year's Eve, I knew I wanted to make them for the kids.  I made sure to text a picture to my parents and Ali.  The kids loved them!

The kids took turns picking games for us to play and movies for us to watch.  We played Scrabble Jr., Go Fish, Telestrations, and Life.  We watched Harry Potter 5, Sandlot, and part of The Wizard of Oz.  They were allowed to stay up as late as they could.  Brynn took a bit of a cat nap at 10 pm (during our game of Life) but all six of us were awake to see the ball drop and ring in 2018.  Happy New Year!