Gingerbread House

Every year Scott's boss gives him an elaborate gingerbread house.  The first year, I saved it all month to look at, before letting the kids eat it after Christmas.  But by then it was rock hard, and no one wanted to eat it.  So since then, I let the kids eat it the same day we receive it.  They love getting to dig into it, tear it apart, and eat it all up.

 

Aaron Orchestra Concert

At the beginning of this school year, Aaron decided he wanted to take orchestra.  He chose the violin as the instrument he wanted to learn to play.  So, I took him down to the music store and we picked out a violin for him to rent, and he was been going to orchestra class every other day at school.  He finally got to show off his violin skills in his holiday music concert.  He did awesome!  We were way back in the auditorium, so the pictures of him are super blurry, but you can tell it's him.

Sleepovers

Kate adores her big sister Savannah.  One of her favorite things is to have a sleepover in Savannah's room on the nights Savannah doesn't have school the next morning.  Every day when Savannah walks in the door after school, Kate says, "Nanna!  You no have school tomorrow?"  I love that 12 years between them doesn't keep them from having a close relationship.

Owen

Every Thursday afternoon, Owen goes to gymnastics.  Sometimes Kate desperately needs a nap instead of getting carted along to watch Owen, so Scott is kind enough to take Owen to gymnastics for me.  After Owen's class, Scott brings him back over to his office (which is right across the street), and lets him hang out with him till the end of the day.  Owen thinks this is the coolest thing ever.  He loves getting to go to Dad's office.  On this particular day, Scott got stuck on an extra long phone call, and Owen patiently waited for him to finish.  Toward the end of the call, Scott looked over to see that Owen had fallen asleep!

I have to add in a sweet thing Owen said that I want to remember.  One day he said to me, "Mom, I know that kids die before parents."  It was so out of the blue, and I said, "Why do you think that?"  He replied, "Because if parents died first, then kids wouldn't have any parents, and Heavenly Father doesn't want kids to not have parents.  Kids need their parents, so kids have to die first."  It was so sweet.  I've always believed it would be the hardest thing in the world to have to bury a child, and here he was thinking the same thing about losing a parent.  He is such a sweet boy!

Salt Lake

We left Aberdeen Saturday morning just after noon, and drove to Salt Lake.  Our kids had never seen the lights at Temple Square, so I thought it would be fun to take them down there for a night.  We got to Salt Lake around 4, and got settled into our hotel.  We got two adjoining rooms, and they worked perfectly for us.  Our hotel was just across the street from Temple Square, and right next to a Trax train stop.  Kendi had told us about a fun activity at the Grand America Hotel, but it was a few blocks away.  So we took the train over to that hotel.  Trax has a "fare free zone" that essentially encompasses the inner few blocks around Temple Square.  Lucky for us, our hotel and the Grand America were within the fare free zone, so we rode the train for free.

I have to side track a minute to explain my picture tragedy.  My camera has a setting called "effects", and somehow had been switched to that setting.  It completely distorts colors, and there is no way to change the color settings once the picture has been taken.  All of my photos on our first train ride and all the photos throughout the Grand America Hotel were taken on this setting.  It wasn't until we were walking back to the train that I realized it was on the wrong setting.  So all of my pictures are completely messed up on the color.  The only solution is to either put up with it or turn them all black and white.  Honestly, there were some that weren't too bad - they mainly washed out other colors, while making the orange pop out (like Nate's coat), so I kept those as is (the picture above at the train stop, for example).  But others were horrible (like turning Kate's hair silver), and I had to turn them black and white.

(I took some photos with my phone, so at least those are in color.)

The train stopped just half a block from where we needed to be.  So, we walked the rest of the way to the Grand America Hotel.  They had elaborate window fronts decorated for Christmas, and a scavenger hunt for the kids that were associated with the window displays.  The kids loved it!

(See what I mean about washing all the colors out except orange?  So sad.)

We headed back to the train stop to ride it back to our hotel.

And this is when I realized my camera was on the wrong setting!  After this we have real colored pictures.

We rode the train back to our hotel, then went up to our hotel room to warm up before heading over to Temple Square.  It was so cold!

We walked across the street to Temple Square.  We were not prepared for how crowded it would be.  There were people everywhere!  It really stressed me out, because it was dark and crowded, and it was nearly impossible to keep track of all the kids.  I was constantly counting heads.  But the lights were beautiful.

Owen really wanted to go up and see the Christus statue.  We had to wait in a long line to go up, because there were so many people.  And then when we got up there, they suggested the kids sit up front to leave more seats for the adults.  Half way through the presentation, Owen and Nate got in a punching fight, and Scott had to go up and break it up. 

We walked around looking at the lights.  It really was so cold, and the kids were grumpy.  Activities with this bunch never go as smoothly as I think they will in my head. 

Owen really wanted a picture of him posing with this statue.

 
Scott and I stopped to take a picture of us with the temple, thinking Savannah had an eye on Kate.  As we finished taking the picture, Scott saw an old friend he had grown up with, and we talked to him for a minute.  As we finished talking and started rounding up the kids again, we realized Kate was no where to be seen.  I immediately panicked.  It was dark and so crowded, it was going to be impossible to find her.  We instructed all the kids to stay put, and told Savannah not to let anyone leave, while Scott went one direction and I went the other looking for her.  I found some sister missionaries immediately and told them I was missing a 2 year old.  They told me to wait a minute, and they returned shortly with a security guard with a radio.  He told me they had just found a 3 year old, and had her in the visitor's center, and told me to follow him to see if it was Kate.  I walked in the door and saw Kate sitting in a chair, surrounded by security.  I scooped her up, and thanked them for finding her.  As I walked away, I heard the security guard's radio say they had found another child at the other Visitor's Center.  It was a little comforting to know that I wasn't the only parent losing kids. 

After finding Kate, we finished walking around Temple Square, then walked over to City Creek Mall to try and find some hot chocolate.

We walked all the way through the mall to find the food court. We got a huge platter of chicken nuggets, french fries, and hot chocolate at Chik-fil-a.  The hot chocolate was too hot to drink, so I took the lids off them to try and let them cool down.  When that wasn't working fast enough, I asked Scott to go get some ice to put in them.  As he was up at the counter asking for a cup of ice, I thought I would take a picture of all the kids.  As soon as I snapped this picture, Kate scooted backward on the table and knocked over Aaron's hot chocolate right in his lap.  He instantly let out a long loud scream, because it was burning hot.  Kate instantly started crying because she knew she was in trouble.  And I instantly started yelling at Savannah for not stopping Kate from climbing on the table (which was completely unfair of me).  Scott returned with the ice and found most of us in tears and surveyed the chaos.  There was nothing we could do, but finish our food and then leave. 

Poor Aaron had soaking wet jeans and had quite a ways to walk in the freezing cold to get back to the hotel.  Owen was tired, and did not want to walk fast, so I suggested that Scott go on ahead with Aaron so he could get back to the hotel faster. Savannah had spotted a store in the mall that she had a gift card to from her birthday, and wanted to do some shopping there.  So Scott took Aaron, Josh, and Sara on ahead with him, and Owen, Sara, Savannah and I stopped to shop for a few minutes. 

Scott got back to the hotel and got Aaron in a bath and cleaned up.  When I got back to the hotel, Aaron was happy and warm in pajamas, watching TV from his bed.  He thanked me for bringing them here, and said that even with getting hot chocolate spilled on him, he wouldn't trade the day for anything.  He's such a sweet boy.

Sunday morning we checked out of the hotel, then had breakfast at the JB's Restaurant connected to the hotel.  The kids loved getting to order what ever they wanted for breakfast.  And breakfast went down without any incident and was really quite enjoyable. 

After breakfast, the kids wanted to ride the train one more time, just for fun.  So we stayed in the fare free zone and rode the train for a little bit. 

Then we made one more pass through Temple Square.  It was much more calm during the day than it was the night before. 

The car ride home was long and uneventful.  We had good roads the whole way.  Owen slept for a solid 2 hours of the drive even with the other kids screaming and making all sorts of noise.  All in all it was a fun trip.  There were some really horrible parts, but there were also some really fun and sweet parts.  It was a fast, action packed 24 hours, but I'm glad we did it.