Sarah came home this week!!!!  Yay!!!  Kevin took a bus up to Rexburg on Thursday night so he could drive her home.  We knew from the weather that Saturday was supposed to get a lot of snow.  It got so much snow, that Kevin's dad lent him his jeep so they could get back safely.  So, we will still need to go back and get Sarah's car at some point, but for now, Sarah is home, done with finals, and ready to live with us again for a few months.  We are so ready for her to be back, too!!

Megan worked holiday hours at Funfinity all week including Saturday morning.  She needed the evening off so she could go to the Christmas Dance with Kaden!  They wore "ugly" sweaters, decorated gingerbread houses at a friend's house where they had lasagna, went to the dance, and then went to another friend's house for cheesecake afterwards.  Fun times!

Mariah had three basketball games last week!  She is having fun and playing hard!  On Saturday morning, her team had a fundraiser offering breakfast with Santa.  She wore an elf hat and served fruit and we all came and ate pancakes and Beth and Cali and Chey even talked to Santa!

 

Cali and Chey had a basketball game on Saturday and they lost but played hard.  Their coach is really pleased with their hard work and good technique!  They also had basketball practice and tennis and a piano recital!  They played a trio at the piano with Bethany!  It was so fun.  The highlight of the week was their school choir concert where Cheyenne sang a solo!!  She didn't even tell us about it!  She wanted it to be a surprise.  It sure was.  She sang lovely!  What a brave soul!

Bethany had her dance recital on Saturday!  She looked so cute and danced so lovely!  Meg had to work, but the rest of us all went and ooed and ahhed over her and her dad bought her flowers.  No wonder she loves to dance!

Benjamin doesn't really like dance concerts, though he does much better with them than choir concerts.  He told us that he didn't want to go to the pancake breakfast because they wouldn't be serving vegetables and he needs to eat his vegetables.  (We did get him to go, though).  We also watched Forgotten Carols over at Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik's house tonight and when he got bored of the movie, he whispered to me, "Can I have the keys so I can drive home and get some toys?  I'll come right back!"  Um . . . no, sweetie.  That's not going to work.

Megan worked 18 hours this week at Funfinity, including a 9-3 shift Saturday during the busiest hours!  She came home exhausted and collapsed on the kitchen bench.  She's a hardworking gal!  She got asked to the Christmas dance by her sweet friend, Kaden, on Wednesday night and she delivered cupcakes that spelled "Y-E-S," on Saturday.  Good thing she made them Friday night or she would have been too exhausted!  Also on Friday night, she and I performed at our ward Christmas party.  She played mandolin and I played fiddle and we played "Carol of the Bells."  We totally rocked it.

Mariah went to Las Vegas this weekend!  She went down with the basketball team to play in an invitation-only tournament at Bishop Gorman High School.  They played in four games and got back after midnight on Saturday night.  She was pretty exhausted when she got home, too!  My mom and dad were able to watch her in some of her games there!  Mariah loved that and I love it, too!

Cheyenne and Calianne had another busy week with tennis and piano and basketball.  We are all looking forward to when it is just piano and basketball.  That's plenty!  Especially since they are on two basketball teams.  They played a bantam game yesterday evening.  They got beat but they played really hard.  Their coach was proud of them!

Bethany is enjoying her basketball practices twice a week, and she is my only player who can do a lay-up.  I'm pretty impressed with her.  She is also getting ready for her dance recital next week AND her piano recital.

Benjamin met a new friend in primary.  They talked Minecraft.  Ben was excited.  He's biked over to his house three times this week!  And they have played things other than Minecraft--mostly because of their moms!  Ha ha!

Kevin's cool media team at work helped him make 10 videos this week to go along with the book he is writing on betrayal trauma.  He's been very busy, as usual.

Katy did some accounting and did some reading and tried really hard not to be busy, as usual.  Ha, ha!

And she just took this one picture from our ward party.  Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

Tuesday was Mariah's sixteenth birthday!  She has grown into a beautiful young lady and we love her so!  Don't worry.  We played her lots of sappy turning sixteen songs!  We had a lovely birthday dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik's on Sunday and opened presents and such on Tuesday, too!  She had basketball practice all week and her first home games on Friday!  She played the majority of the JV game and a good part of Varsity, too.  Kevin and I watched her play (as did Megan and Cheyenne) and it was great fun!  What a great girl she is!

This is us cheering Mariah on at her game!

Megan had a busy week as college application deadlines for BYU and University of Utah were December 1st.  Yes.  She submitted both applications on the same day.  We're willing to bleed red and blue at this house!  She's also been busy at work as Funfinity stays open until 9pm every night during Christmas season.  Apparently, though, when she and her friend, Rebekah, work, sales go up!  Enough that the owner has taken notice.  She is pretty cool.  It's not so hard to notice.

Cali and Chey continue to find time to tell me they're bored in spite of piano lessons once a week, tennis twice a week, basketball practice four times a week, and their first bantam basketball game--which they won.  Oh, and they do go to school, too.  Actually, they have new pieces for piano and have been sitting down to play often throughout the days.  I pretty much love it!  They're also big readers and fill their time with that, too.

Bethany had dance and piano and lots of play dates.  She is also trying to lean Ben's Minecraft game, you know, to spend quality time with her brother.  Her basketball team started practices this week and I have it on good authority that she is her coach's favorite!  (Ha, ha!  That would be me!)

Benjamin is still enjoying school and striving to do his best.  He is also liking Karate and finding his cousin, Dylan, on Minecraft.  He's broken all his pairs of glasses again and has a split lip.  He's awesome!

I found time to go hiking with Robin again this week.  We went on a trail at the mouth of Provo Canyon.  It was beautiful and I wasn't cold, but I was wet when I got home!

Gorgeous, right?

It was Thanksgiving week!  That meant lots of fun things like only two days of school! and Sarah comes home!  and roadtrip as a family to see family!  Yay!

Sarah had classes up until 2pm on Tuesday and she drove some friends to various spots in SLC after that, so we didn't see her until late Tuesday night, but don't worry, we still got all our squealing in.  We love having that girl at home!

We left for Las Vegas early Wednesday morning and the cousins did much more squealing when we arrived and they all saw each other that afternoon!  We made it in time to go see a movie together, Fantastic Beasts, at the local theatre.  Fun times!

Thursday, before the feast, we went to a park to get out some energy and went on a small hike.  Everyone met at my sister's, Amy's, house for Thanksgiving dinner later that day.  We had over thirty for dinner including my mom and dad, my family, Amy's family, Maggie's family, David, Diane's family, and Pete's daughter Samantha's family.  It was a full house!  There was a lot of noise and a lot of great group games going on with the cousins, and talking amongst the adults.

On Friday, I took some little kids over to Diane's to play while we visited.  Then we went back to Amy's for leftovers for lunch and then we packed up the cars and went to explore the Las Vegas wetlands!  There was a free museum with fun exhibits and lots of trails.  It was a beautiful day and tons of fun.  We stopped by my brother, Pete's house after that to say hi.  Then back to Amy's for pizza and final visiting and final cousin game playing!

Me, Amy, Maggie, Diane

We left early Saturday morning after having a great visit!  We needed to get Megan back for work by 4:00, but we were also watching a storm that was supposed to come that night and rage all day Sunday.  Sarah decided to drive the rest of the way to Rexburg that night so she could miss the storm.  That left us just a small window of time to put up the Christmas tree and get it decorated!  Challenge accepted!  It was so fun and didn't take us long and we were so glad to have Sarah and Megan both there!

We miss this girl!

What a week!  Happy Holidays!

This was Utah "Apply for College Week!" or some name like that.  They gave seniors a chance during school to fill out applications and some of the colleges in the state waived their application fees (not very many, though!).  Meg finished her application to USU and is about half-way through her applications to BYU and Uof U.  Fun times!  Ok, not really, but they did give her a cool sticker.  Our high school's football team played in the state championship game on Friday and Megan went up to Salt Lake City with some of her friends and most of the student body to watch the game.  We lost but Meg made good memories--and got a cool new shirt!

This is her cool FCCLA shirt and her "I Applied" sticker!

Mariah had basketball practices and cross country practices all week and left Thursday morning for the regional cross country finals in Arizona.  The boys team and girls team and the teams from Mapleton and Spanish Fork went down on one bus and won't be back until this afternoon!  They had a great race, though.  The girls placed 3rd in their "non-elite" race and the boys placed 3rd in the elite race.  The boys will go on to nationals!  We will be happy just to get our little girl home!  But we're glad she got to go!

Chey and Cali did tennis twice a week and basketball twice a week again.  On Monday after school, they brought their friend with whom they walk, and they stopped at their Grandma Gazdik's house for games before coming home.  Fun times!  They also had a college day at the junior high.  The only college clothes we had for them to wear were BYU ones! They looked pretty cute.  On Saturday, they had a piano recital where they played two duets they've learned together and then performed them again at Duet Festival later that day.  It was a busy piano day!

Aw, you can see from the picture that Bethany performed at the piano recital, too!  She played a duet with her teacher and did a great job.  She also cleaned her room on Saturday with Ben, and I really liked that, too!  She is still enjoying school and dance and neighbor friends to abundance!

Benjamin has had a cold this week, but seems to be coming out of it.  He's liking Karate still.  I pick up three children in addition to my own after school three days a week and Ben enjoys sprinting to the car and exulting in his first place finish--every day.  Competitive kid, I think!

Kevin left Friday morning for Las Vegas to do a training for therapists at UNLV and then a training for church leaders that night.  We got him back the next day around 3:00 and he went straight out to the yard to get our leaves up and to the composting place before it closed at 6:00!  He's a hard-working guy!

I've been busy getting the ward ready for Christmas and to keep myself busy while Kevin was gone, I repainted my bathroom.  I love how it turned out!  *happy sigh*