Iceskating at Christmas Break

Today we all decided to go iceskating.  Natalie had a few old tickets from when she took lessons that we thought we better use.  Kate was home so we went for a skate.  Olivia thought she found her gift.  She was pleasantly surprised at how good she was at iceskating. 

 

  

The Christmas Cup!

The Christmas Cup is our newest tradition.

While Anna and I were shopping on Black Friday morning, Jeff was creating the golf tournament,called the Christmas Cup.  It  involved 19 players of all ages.  He tried to make it even, so the experienced and the inexperience had an even playing field.  So this is how he did it.  We played in three groups and individually on the first round.  If you hit a tree you'd minus a point, but it had to be unintentional.  Then if you hit the bar by accident and were twenty feet away, then you'd get 2 points off.  Then if your par was over 7, you'd get par 4.  Then in each group the person with the highest par would get the magic putt card for the next hole.  The magic putt would give you a par 3 no matter what.  Then at eachhole there was an opportunity to minus one more, but only for the winner.  Each hole had a different catigory.  For instance,closest to the hole on the third throw, shortest drive, shortest putt, etc.  Then after we finished the first game, we got in line from lowest score to highest.  Then the highest was partnered with the lowest, the  second highest was partnered with the second lowest, and so on  Then the second round was played best throw.  Which was great.  When it was all said and done, the best player still did win.  Michael is our pro.  At the end he and Kyle had a shoot off because they were tied for first.  Kyle tried to respect his elders and let Michael win.  Kate came in a close third.  It was so fun even for the inexperienced.  We also got a little game bag with an orange a treat and a water bottle.  Jeff thought of everything.

                     We also had to sign in.  This was official!  Jeff is explaining the rules of the game.

                                                Here are the players.  It's anyones game.

                                   The winning group walking in slow motion.  Look at that attitude!

                                                                        The shoot-off

                                 Kyle was a good sport and presented the prize to the winner.

Decorating for Halloween.

Our Halloween tradition for decorating is done on the first monday of October.  So I decided to make some popcorn balls and wondered if I knew how to make them anymore.  They were good but falling apart.  Then we pull out the vampire portraits to display.  These date back many years to a day when Kate decided to take pictures of everyone dresses like a vampire, makeup and all.  So, in case anyone is like, "Why did they do that?"  We have fond memories of dressing up and pulling them out every October.  The witch cut out is all the way back to my Elementary teaching days. 

 This year we used a lot of cobwebs and it was really fun.  It is a pretty cheap way to decorate and requires you to refrain from dusting.  Perrrfect!  Then the homemade spiders top off the magic.  Ok it's not that magical, but to a kid tradition does make you happy.  Our little hunchback is our favorite guy.  I painted it with a lot of help from my friend Tracy and it was worth the hours.  We call him Frankie. I guess he reminds us of Frankenstein.

Conference Traditions

This conference we had some visitors.  Eliza and Joseph came from Pocatello to watch with us.  We love having them.  Joseph is in dental school at Pocatello for his first year. We have evolved over the years with the activities that we do to help kids pay attention.  We used to do packets from the friend and we have always done Bingo on the last session.  The easiest is notes, so that what most of them do.  Then after each session we give prizes/rewards for any little thing.  Even if you are in the room you get a little prize.  Then it ends with me or Jeff asking questions about what people said for a little snack.  It has been years in the making, but conference is usually a sweet memory with our family.  

While the boys were at priesthood, we had a girls night that entailed, hair and makeup makeovers.  Each person was in charge of the makeover of another. 

I was in charge of Natalie and Olivia did Eliza's hair.  Later on we adjusted both Natalie and Eliza's hair because, "Hey we had time."

Natalie did mine and Eliza did Olivia's.  I've got to admit that Eliza made us step it up a little because Olivia's hair looked amazing.

Anna had to go to work, so I did Kristen's, and Eliza did Natalie's.

Livvy and Nat did fantastic as you can see!