Wrapping Up 2022

Shawn and Tiffany Nelson invited us to their cabin in Brianhead. We went sledding and the sat in the hot tub. Mark and Mikayla kept breaking off icicles and playing with them in the hot tub. 🥶

There was a ton of snow for sledding!

Jack and Juliet left early. I was praying they would make it home safely.

We've had a lot of rain this week. One drizzly day, the fog rolled in and stayed all day. This is 4 p.m. I've never seen it hang around all day!

It's the end of the year and we went to a party at Darryl Zitting's house but I didn't take any pictures.

This has been a great year! I feel blessed that very few people care about COVID anymore. Yay! We've had a few accidents but overall, healthy. We are busy, good and busy. 2023 is set to be a great year! We are looking forward to it!

Maxine and 400 Days on a Mission!

Maxine has been out on a mission for 400 days! She comes home in about 4 months! She had been slacking off and got a talking to from the mission president's wife, Sister Platt. She recommitted herself to her mission and has been working hard for the last several weeks! She says she's been feeling really good lately. 😀

She transferred the Tuesday after Christmas to Yorba Linda and her new companion is Sister Wengler. I swear she's been raiding her clothes because I don't recognize any of these dresses. Her last area was a biking area and it's possible I just haven't seen her in some new clothes because she was in slacks all the time. 

She says Sister Wengler has been great. Maxine asked her to try some Greek gyros that a member had given them and she did and loves it now. So they found a Greek restaurant to try. 

Can't wait to see her in 4 months!

Christmas 2022 🎄🎅

 Christmas Eve was spent tubing up at Wood Ranch.  We had a great time and nobody got hurt. Wade is still broken from the Baja 1000. He was strictly forbidden to tube this year. I promise he looked happier in real life.  🎄🎅

 It was perfect, beautiful weather. 

We acted out the nativity!

 I told Mikayla she was not getting a bearded dragon for Christmas. We got one for free from the Beattys a couple of days before Christmas. She could not be more excited. She might love it to death.

Merril's parents are out of town for Christmas so we just spent the day at our house. I didn't really take a picture on Christmas. We spent the morning opening presents with Maxine on a video call at 6 a.m. She said it was a way better Christmas than last year. 

 The day after Christmas, I went for a nice walk/run up Beetlejuice trail behind our house. The Christmas season has been wonderful but the last few days have been really busy and I haven't had a chance to get out for some exercise. I guess tubing is exercise but it felt really great to get out on a dedicated trail.  

Then, we went to my mom's house because that's when everybody could get together. I  ordered a yard sign for my mom's birthday.  We played games and ate brunch and opened presents.

My mom made the most incredible Christmas quilts for the girls this year. I can't believe how long it must have taken her! 

Juliet got a pottery wheel from Nicole and was able to throw a pot on it. 

Lovely, wonderful, peaceful, happy feelings. I can't wait for 2023!

You Me Aruba 🌞

 To celebrate 23 years of knowing each other, we decided to fly to Aruba. Going to Aruba right before Christmas sounds like a brilliant idea until I had to figure out how to get everything done before we left. I had one little freak out around the beginning of December but then regrouped got everything done. It was amazing. 🌴 🌞

We took the red eye from Vegas to JFK and on to Aruba. One of the first things we saw on the island are these crazy green iguana-looking lizards.

We drove up to the northern side of the island for breakfast the next day.

We found the California lighthouse on the north end.

We climbed a steep, historic, spiral staircase to get to the top.

We went snorkeling that afternoon on a catamaran. We looked around a ship wreck from WW2. It was more interesting than the fish!

We found a little Christmas festival in a town called Savaneta.  We ate some authentic Aruban food from street vendors.

Our first night there, we had dinner at a restaurant and dessert came with a golden berry on top. It's also called a cape gooseberry. They were so yummy that we found a grocery store and bought more of them. Kind of like a blueberry texture but more tart, almost citrusy. 

We found nearest LDS branch and went to church on Sunday.  

Then we rented a motorcycle and headed toward the windward side of the island. It's very windy over there! The plants struggle. We found some caves and an old gold mining building. The waves were crashing really big on that side from the wind. 

Also some turbines on that side. Of course, beautiful sunsets.

Aruba is a Dutch colony and so there's a huge Dutch windmill and we went to go look at it.

The next day, Merril had signed up for a scuba excursion. After I dropped him off, I tried to decide what to do and found a butterfly habitat.  

There were lots of really pretty shells on the beach but you're not allowed to take the shells or the sand home so we just took pictures and then the long flight home through Chicago and into Las Vegas.

We got home at 3:30 a.m. I helped in Mark's class the next day at 10:30 a.m. Now just a few more days until Christmas! I'm really excited!

About Aruba: Aruba is humid but not tropical. The island's native side is covered with tall tube cactus and thorny desert looking bush/trees. The hotel side has lots of palm trees planted and lovely flowering bushes.

 There's an interesting assortment of cultures in Aruba. It has a lot of Dutch influence because it's a Dutch colony but it's so close to Venezuela that there's a lot of Spanish speakers. The native dialect there is Papiamento. Papiamento is a creole language that's a blend of Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch. But everybody learns Dutch in grade school and then I guess everybody learns English because there's so much tourism in Aruba. The mission president's wife said all the kids learn English from YouTube. LOL. 

There's a lot of fish to eat but everything was deep-fried. Fish and all meals seem to come with a side of fries, or deep fried polenta, or deep fried plantains. Where are the veggies on this island? The water is treated at a desalination plant and so all of the water that comes out of the tap tastes like reverse osmosis. It was delicious and very pure. 

Aruba was a great little place to visit and now Merril and I have ticked South America off our continent list! Merril's ahead of me. He only has Antarctica to get! I still need Africa and Antarctica!

First Snow

 It actually snowed a little bit in December! Mikayla and Mark begged to stay home from school but there was not a lot of snow. I told them they could play in the snow for an hour and then I would drive them to school.

There was just enough to make a teeny, tiny Snowman. Lovely first taste of snow.