The kids went back to school after Christmas break on January 9th but had a snow day the next day. They went back to school the next two days, but after another major snow storm, church was canceled that weekend. It was a 3 day weekend thanks to Martin Luther King, so they went back to school on Tuesday only to have another snowstorm cancel school for 2 more days. Temperatures rose quickly after that and the snow has mostly melted. But we got almost 18 inches of snow which is a lot for Boise! And the kids thoroughly enjoyed their snow days.

On the day of the big snowstorm we acquired a new member of the family when a friend offered us a free, runt of the litter baby bunny. Snowball (yes, Wilbur was voted down) is as small as the lego bunny Libby got for Christmas! He’s super cuddly and we are going to try having an indoor bunny and see if it works out. He’ll be allowed in only a few rooms of the house and if he starts to stink things up, outside he goes. Amber, our old bunny is still with us, but probably wont’ be for long. She’s pretty old. So far Snowball has been a breeze to potty train. Keep your fingers crossed. 

Levi’s choir has been preparing for a big performance at a music teacher’s conference in Spokane but all the snow days were cutting down on their practices. So the kids organized a snow day practice at someone’s home, which I think is pretty dedicated. When he came home from that rehearsal he found this on our doorstep:

This is how he answered her:

This boy is really enjoying high school life. Someone took this picture of him at a basketball game for their Be Real:

Liberty had her Winter ballet recital this weekend. It’s really fun to watch her on stage and see how far she’s come. She is thoroughly enjoying pointe. I thought I recorded her dance, but ended up only getting the bow. :-(

For my birthday dinner Rock (and Libby) made homemade gnocchi with pesto-my favorite Italian food and a delicious and beautiful peanut butter chocolate cheesecake.

Cade is settling into mission life, though it’s pretty chaotic when you are the district Monkey; the companion of the district leader. He’s learning a lot at a fast pace and is doing really well. 

He described his experience so far (and all of life, I think) perfectly in a letter: “The work has been slow, a lot, amazing, boring, tiring, beautiful, miraculous, etc. Its going to be a long, short two years.” ALL of life is that way, isn’t it?

Reagan had some adventures getting home this year for Christmas. He bought an overnight bus ticket which would have been perfect-get on and sleep the whole way and arrive in the morning. However, he missed his bus coming up, had to stay the night in the airport and then rode the day bus home the next day. We are grateful we got to have him home for a week!

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve we made Rock’s yummy pizza stone pizza. Reagan hadn’t experienced it yet and it is our new favorite meal to make! The kids raced to see who could get theirs done the fastest. I think Libby won.

This year the new book we opened at Christmas time was actually the Christmas Eve book. I’m sad Cade had to miss it because he would have loved it. There was only one book that my kids would have been ok reading instead of our traditional Twas the Night Before Christmas, and this was it. 

Christmas Morning

Reagan made sure everyone got legos to put together that day.

I can’t believe I somehow missed photographing the building process picture this year, but here are the finished products…

My favorite gift that I gave this year was this cross stitch for Allie and Cam. Allie made one for Rock and I our first Christmas and I’ve waited a long time to make one for Allie. 

We had dinner that evening with my extended family and that was Christmas Day.

Reagan had more bad luck when he tried to go home after Christmas. When he showed up at the bus stop at 11:00 PM, to head home for a friend’s wedding the next day, he found out his night bus had been canceled. He then had to figure out a way to get back to Utah before 11 the next morning. He ended up buying a plane ticket and got to Utah just in time. This meant that I got to get up at 4:30 in the morning for the 2nd time in 2 weeks to take one of my boys to the airport to catch a plane. 

For New Years Eve this year we had our standard finger food night. The highlight was cheese fondue and apples, surprisingly enough. After dinner we put together a mystery puzzle. You have to solve the puzzle and then the puzzle morphs into something else crazy and cool. We spent 5 hours on it in total but didn’t actually finish until the next morning. 

And that-was 2023!

Levi turned 16 and tried to get his license and his first date on the same day. Neither worked out, but he was able to do both very soon after his birthday. 

For his birthday he got a bike rack to put on the car so he can do what he’s always dreamed of doing-drive himself to the foothills and bike.

Liberty sang in a duet for her Christmas concert this year. She and her good friend did a great job!!!

Libby also had a piano recital, but the video I took was terrible so I will just have to tell you that she did an awesome job playing Charlie Brown’s Christmas theme song and she got the loudest and most vociferous applause. A neighbor told me she stole the show. 

Liberty’s closest friends are two sisters; one just younger than Libby and one just older. They come from a large family with lots of younger siblings. Libby has become like a member of their family and the littles in the family adore her. I’m so grateful for this sweet family that has given Libby sisters and little siblings. They had us over to decorate gingerbread houses this year and here are the results.

On Christmas Eve, Levi and his good friend dressed almost identically for church. It was not planned, but I wanted to show that these two cross country stars clean up nice. Levi can’t resist the GQ look these days.

We started off December with an early Christmas for Cade since he would be leaving on the 13th. Christmas is not all that exciting when you are leaving on a mission-all you get is mission stuff, but we tried to make it as exciting as we could. Here he is wearing or holding every gift he got: a Moroni tie, a Moroni tie pin, a mountain tie clip, snazzy heated gloves, a mission bag, Moroni socks and stripling warrior socks, a framed picture of his family, a mission cookbook with all his favorite recipes and tickets to see Gentri in concert a few days later. (It was an Awesome concert!)

A few days later the MTC sent him a Christmas present in the mail…

On the 10th, Cade was set apart as a missionary. 

That night he needed to run his suit coat over to a seamstress for a quick fix. He took his companion, Elder Hymas, with him….

On the 11th he began his one day of at home MTC. 

On the 13th, we got up nice and early and dropped this handsome, talented, faithful, stalwart young man off at the Boise airport for his flight to the real MTC in Provo.

He found five other missionaries getting on the same flight and they all bonded before take off. A few hours later, he landed in Salt Lake where Allie picked him up and took him to breakfast with Reagan before dropping him off at the MTC.

We talked to him on his P-day a few days later and he was LOVING the MTC. He loves his district, his companion, the spirit, all of it. I was so relieved! On Christmas Eve he sent us a picture of what he got for his Christmas Eve gift this year…

Santa sent him his stocking and his Christmas cereal as well. Elder Cook came an spoke to the missionaries that day and Cade sent us a picture of who he got to sing with at one of the many concerts/devotionals he got to go to on Christmas.

We get to Zoom with Cade every week and that is really nice, I gotta say. His aunt took pity on him and made him some of her Christmas truffles, sent them home to Utah with Allie in a cooler, and then Allie found a company that delivers daily to the MTC, so he got a little late Christmas joy from home. He has had an amazing experience at the MTC and will fly out to Colorado on Friday, Jan. 5th. That’s when the rubber really meets the road. Can’t wait to see what awaits him in the mission field!

Rock’s parents came up for Thanksgiving this year and they picked Reagan up on their way so we had everyone home for the holiday.

The first night they were here we went to Bruchis, like we do every time Rock’s parents come visit. But we got there and they were all out of meat. A meat sandwich shop was out of meat?! Frustrated, we went to a pizza place instead. We tried again another night they were here and that time they were out of bread!!! Pretty sure they’ll be out of business soon.

We had some things go really great this year with food and not so great. I brined the turkey this year and it was the best we’ve ever had, besides Cam’s smoked turkey last year. Libby made Cam’s yams-a new family favorite. Rock made lots of a pies; a beautiful apple blackberry pie, an amazing looking merengue topped butterscotch pie and a pumpkin cheesecake pie. 

When it was time to break out the pies, Rock went out to the office to get the apple blackberry which had been in his office for a few days. But when he brought it in, it was covered in little tiny sugar ants!!! Didn’t even know we had an ant problem out there! They did their best to brush them all off, and some were actually crazy enough to eat a piece, but I sure as heck wouldn’t touch it. Yuck!!! Derek brought his kids over for pie and every kid, including mine wanted a piece of that amazing looking merengue butterscotch pie. Unfortunately, it was not a fan favorite. Little miss Rosie didn’t let him down easy when she told him what she thought of his pie. Rock says he will definitely try a merengue again, just not the butterscotch part. lol The pumpkin cheesecake was a hit, though!

The Sunday after Thanksgiving was Cade’s mission farewell. It was a really awesome day. He gave an interesting and insightful talk and I had many people tell me his talk seemed like a homecoming talk rather than a farewell. He has grown a lot this year and he will be a powerful missionary.

Here are a few of the pictures a friend took for Cade’s mission plaque. 

Reagan turned the big 21 in October. He was home the weekend before so we celebrated with him.

Libby and Levi got to be in a combined choir concert with the high school and the middle school. It was pretty awesome.

For Halloween this year, the kids wanted to go trick or treating instead of going to the pumpkin patch. But we did still carve pumpkins.

Libby was bored one day and decided to make a pumpkin witch. The pictures turned out as funny as the actual pumpkin.

Cade spent the month shopping for suits and ties and coats and boots for his mission and working at the temple every Saturday. 

We had the most beautiful fall here in Boise. The weather was beautiful and warm and fall colors took their time coming and then stayed for along time. Most brilliant and beautiful colors we’ve ever had here.  Here’s me enjoying the warmth at the end of September.

We celebrated Rock’s birthday on the 19th. This year he wanted peanut butter balls instead of pie, so that’s what he got.

Levi was busy with cross country. He had a roller coaster of a season this year. Some great races, some not so great. His team made it to state, but they had a lot of injuries this season and didn’t do as well overall as they’d hoped. But he’s more determined than ever to improve and has been planning and working with his off season coach-Rock- on running strategies.

Reagan came up for a quick weekend so we could take family pictures in the amazing Fall colors. I’m so happy with how they turned out! Thanks to my friend Barb for taking them!

The most exciting thing that happened in September was not actually Disneyland, but Cade receiving his mission call. I am so happy he’s decided to serve! Feel free to watch the whole intro-it’s good. Or you can skip to 1:27 to hear where he’s going.

For those who don’t want to watch the video-He is going to the Colorado, Fort Collins Mission, which actually covers as much of Wyoming as Colorado and a small portion of Nebraska too! He reports Dec. 13th at the MTC. We are so glad he doesn’t have to wait a long time to go! AND he gets to do 3 weeks of in-person MTC because of the holiday. Many tender mercies for him. 

Our last day in Florida was at Universal Studios. I was looking forward to this park the most because of Harry Potter World. Rock, Levi and Cade took off right away to go ride some big crazy rollercoaster while Libby, Reagan and I headed to Harry Potter World-through Dr. Suess land. It really was like walking through one of his books.

When we got to Harry Potter world the first thing we did was get a Butterbeer. Don’t tell the others because when they joined up with us an hour later to buy Butterbeers, they thought we hadn’t had one yet. It was good, but not as good as everyone claims. We slipped into Olivanders and watched him help a wand choose a wizard-VERY cool. Just in case you wondered, to buy a souvenir wand at Olivanders costs $75.00 or more! We did not buy a wand. Hogwarts didn’t disappoint though.

Every little while the dragon on top of Gringotts actually spouts fire!

Levi, Cade and Rock rode all the big crazy rollercoasters throughout the day and I rode the Hogwarts ride 4 different times with whoever I could get to ride it with me. It was a great day. But by the end of it we were all ready to be done. 5 parks in 5 days is actually crazy. I wouldn’t do it again. But I don’t really regret it either. We saw every park and did as much as we possibly could while in Florida. Well, Levi was bummed we didn’t see an alligator, but other than that… We ended our last day at Maggiano’s-my favorite Italian restaurant that is only in very big cities. Our flight home the next day went well and I’m so grateful for the awesome memories we made at Disneyworld to take home with us. 

On day 4 we went to Animal Kingdom. This was a favorite park for many of us. Rock took the boys early to open the park so they could ride Flight of Passage, the Avatar ride that has a huge wait. Then we met up for a safari ride. Very cool! We saw the biggest alligator I’ve ever seen. I should note here that Levi went running every morning we were on our trip and claimed to look for alligators. I don’t know if he really did or if he was just trying to scare me. You’ll have to ask him. The day after we got home some poor guy was eaten by an alligator in Florida so I hope Levi was just trying to scare me. We saw rhinos, flamingos, giraffes and gorillas as well.

My favorite thing at Animal Kingdom was the Tree of Life. It was a huge tree with every imaginable animal carved into it’s trunk. You could stand there for hours and not find all the animals carved all over this thing. It was amazing.

Libby and Reagan were brave enough to try Everest, the big rollercoaster there that the others had ridden the day before. I think everyone except me rode it several times. Pandora, the Avatar world, was the overall favorite, though. This world was incredible to walk through. We all rode the Flight of Passage and everyone loved it except me. 🙂 It had too many steep drops for my taste so even though you’re basically stationary the entire time, I kept my eyes closed for a lot of it. I was able to see that the Virtual Reality affects were amazing-at least in the 5 seconds when my eyes were open. Don’t tell my kids-they think my eyes were open most of the time. 😉

That night Rock and I went off on our own for a dinner date at Disney Springs while the kids all went back to Epcot so they could ride Guardians of the Galaxy. Another BIG favorite.

Up next; our last day in Florida at Universal Studios.

On day 3 we hit a couple different parks. We went to Hollywood Studios to see the Star Wars world-Galaxies Edge. The Rise of the Resistance ride was amazing. LOVED it. I would have gone on it again if the lines weren’t so long.

I was feeling sick with a cold I thought I had beat on this day so there aren’t a ton of pictures. The kids and Rock had fun riding all the big rides there, but the lines were a lot worse this day so they spent lots of time waiting in lines. Half way through the day I had to go back to the hotel to sleep, so Reagan and Liberty came with me and the other three hopped over to the Animal Kingdom to ride Everest over and over. That night we all went to Epcot for dinner and watched the fireworks there.

On our first morning when we woke up to see giraffes out our windows we also saw this interesting looking pen outside our window.

We figured it was something used when working with the animals one on one or maybe where they worked with injured animals. We didn’t think anything else about it. Until 2:00 AM on our 3rd night there, when the fire alarm went off. We all stumbled out of our beds and groggily followed all the other guests down the hallways and stairs along the fire exits. When we got to the main floor, guess where they ushered us? Yep. Into the funny looking pen. Now we knew what it was for. The boys were in different rooms and we didn’t even get put in the same pen as them. We stood there with a ton of other people for about 10 minutes before they turned off the alarm and let us go back to bed. Needless to say we didn’t get the early start we were hoping for on our 4th day.

Day 4 was Epcot. Rock, Liberty and Reagan opened the park so they could ride the Frozen ride and they still had a 40 minute wait. But they loved the ride and tried to get me to stand in a 2 hour long line all day so I could see it. No thanks. I really liked Epcot, though. We wandered around to all the different countries. Our favorite was France, where we rode the Ratatoulie ride-VERY fun- and ate lunch at a Creperie. We did the Canada ride Rock remembered as a kid, and the kids made fun of him for thinking it was amazing as a kid. We ate gyros in Greece while the kids ate some Egyptian and Brazilian food and listened to the awesome Japanese drummers. The Disney Princesses were out and about that day, but this was as close as Libby got to her favorite:

We ate dinner at a fancy restaurant in Italy and then split up again. Levi and Cade stayed at Epcot to ride the Guardians of Galaxy, Rock went back to the hotel and Liberty, Reagan and I went back to Magic Kingdom to watch the fireworks one more time and ride the teacups-for memory’s sake.

Stay tuned for Part III of our Disneyworld adventure!