January 2020

New Years Day was spent...can you guess?...yep, working on the house.  Justin did the remodel stuff and I tried to get somewhat organized.  Over Christmas break, I try to take one bedroom per day-we clean out the closet, fill up a garbage bag and a DI bag, go through drawers and weed out the too-small clothes, and then put the new Christmas stuff somewhere.  The kids are pretty good and everyone is able to fill a garbage bag and a DI bag, leaving me to scratch my head at where everything came from and how it all fit in their room!  We did take a break for some snow time.  I went out and helped the younger three build a snowman.  Nothing like our family of snowmen last year but our Star Wars snowmen were cool too.  We also snow-shoed in the pasture before heading in.

  Justin and I never got much of a date for our anniversary in December.  We were going to try to go to Bombay House but it was snowing pretty bad the night we had planned to go and I didn't want to drive down and then back through the canyon in a snowstorm.  We ended up getting some tacos from a food truck and then going home-it was very lame.  So we tried again on a night that there was no snow.  We had no luck at Bombay House-it was at least an hour wait-so we drove around until we found a Korean restaurant and ate there.  And it was delicious.  We still want to get down to Bombay House but this ended up being a fun night.

Evie was baptized the first Saturday of January and she is one Goodrich cousin that lives close enough for us to be there to see it.  It was a great day!  I'm glad Brynn has her to play with.

two cousins from the Balls side, Tiana, Evie, Brynn, Grandma April

Since we were already down in Utah County, we decided to save a trip and run a few errands.  One was to an eyeglass place to get me some glasses.  I haven't had a pair in years and was tired of not having any.  I found a couple of cute pairs and the girls found some that they liked as well!  I am surprised that none of our kids are in need of glasses considering how bad my eyes are and how young I was when I needed glasses (summer after 3rd grade).

Ivy was thrilled to see a new bin of clothes brought out of the basement for her.  They were hand-me-downs but new to her and she wanted to have a fashion show right away.  Between Molly and Brynn's old clothes, she got a lot of new clothes.  I love seeing some of the favorites come back out again.  I took a picture of a few of Ivy's favorites.

Brynn's Easter dress from 2018

Brynn's Easter dress from 2017

I found pictures of Molly wearing this outfit the spring and summer she was 5.  Notice Ivy's preference for dresses and skirts?

Stockton got his Legos done!  He worked on it a little every day.  It was 1600+ pieces and the box said for ages 16 and up.  He had a little help but did great and has it displayed on his dresser in his room, along with his Harry Potter legos from the Christmas before.

  I took Stockton on his date. (We obviously got a little behind on the schedule.)  We went on a showshoe hike in Dutch Canyons in Midway.  We did this hike as a family last summer so it was neat to see it in a completely different season.  Stockton did great snowshoeing for the first time.  We both had a great time.  He talked and talked and talked and I just sat back and listened.  He was a fountain of random knowledge and I loved it!  It was so good to get some one-on-one time with him and to listen to him go on and on like that.  I think he definitely needs more dates where he can be allowed time to talk. Plus it was a beautiful day with blue skies!

realizing how tiring snowshoeing can be-stopping for a rest

We escaped to the cabin over the Martin Luther King holiday.  Man, we are so lucky to have that as an option for short weekends.  It was a perfect weekend-just our family and Grandma and Grandpa, so nice and relaxing.  We spent most of Saturday playing outside sledding, snowmobiling, and cross-country skiing.  Ivy loved sledding and kept going over and over.  In the middle of hill we were on, there was a little mound of snow-like someone had been trying to make a snowman and only made the bottom third.  It had turned into a ball of ice but we had avoided it-until Ivy ran smack into it and cut up her cheek a little.  She was done after that-but loved the snowmobile rides.  Stockton and Brynn tried their snowshoes for a bit.  Stockton got back on the cross country skis and Molly tried them out for the first time as well.  They both loved the skiing.

Molly's team played in a futsal league put on by the boys high school soccer team.  It was held at the middle school where Molly goes to school.  Her team formed three of the teams and a Storm team (the other soccer club in the valley) formed the final two teams.  I think Molly enjoyed it and it was fun to do something other than just practicing through the winter.

Stockton has really been interested in making costumes and props, specifically Star Wars stuff.  He had been super creative to find things around the house that he can use.  He usually tries to involve his little sisters.  He has made a lot of different things, this storm trooper helmet being one of them.

My kids also love Korean food.  Stockton found a recipe for bibimbap in the Friend magazine a few months ago and we have made it a few times.  It is always received very well, to Justin's delight.  It's one of my favorite meals as well because not only does it taste amazing, but it is so fast to whip up!

Brynn puts some of her toppings in the bowl and some on the side.

Ali wanted to come and see the house so her and Jeff brought their family up one Saturday.  We met them at the Park City Ice Arena for some sledding and then brought them back to our house for pizza.  We had never been to this sledding hill but had heard that it was good.  It was good and I'm glad to know of a place to go sledding up here. We pulled out a couple of the tubes we bought in the summer for floating the canal and those were really fun.  All the kids had a blast.

Ali and Jeff

Ivy and Lucy

they built a snow fort, of sorts, and had a snowball fight

Grant and Stockton

Justin was given free tickets to the Ice Castles again this year.  He gave out as many as he could to his employees (since he took enough for all of us last year) but still ended up with 6 tickets-so we all got to go! We went on a Tuesday night in the hopes of avoiding the huge crowd of last year and that was smart.  It wasn't crowded at all.  The kids got to slide down any of the slides without waiting in line.  Justin bought everyone a churro since we hadn't had to pay $20/person to get in.  It it such a neat place and I'm glad we got to go again this year.

we were not very coordinated at a "jump" picture

this is a cool tree on the Homestead property that Justin wanted a picture of

This was a lite-brite design that Brynn made and insisted I take a picture.

Molly had Roxy Tobler over one Friday night.  It has been a while since we've had Roxy over.  They hung out in Molly's room for a little while and then I talked them into playing Monopoly with me.  Molly had never played and didn't quite understand the strategy to buy as much as you can.  We finished a little early because they wanted to watch the old Alice in Wonderland on Disney Plus.