Christmas Day

I love Christmas morning!

Opening stockings

I didn't know much about this Harry Potter game other than the fact that it had great reviews. I assumed it was some sort of trivia game from the books. Turns out it is a cooperative, deck-building game. We love it and have spent many hours playing it this vacation!
(Camel Up was a family gift from the Dockstaders. Laser Tag was a family gift from Santa.)

 Carter was so excited about the Escape Room in a Box. He got to stay up till 10:30 one night working on it with his mom and dad.

Austin's big present this year was a gum ball machine. I'm tired of him begging for a quarter or bringing his own quarters to spend on the gum ball machines at the grocery store. Now he can re-use his money on his own gum balls.

Bryson has had a lot of fun with the science experiments in a box, which was a present from Grandma and Grandpa.

Not pictured are some experience gifts that Santa brought of rock climbing and a trampoline park.  I got Matt some really nice white shirts and some cologne. He got me a new pink running jacket, griddle, and rollerblades. Carter and I have enjoyed rollerblading around the neighborhood together. I love having a fun exercise option!

Matt's parents and sister's family came to visit in the afternoon.

Austin opening some Paw Patrol clothes.

Carter and Bryson got a soccer ornament and Caleb got a baseball one.

Playing with cousins and with MeeMaw's puppy.

Austin being silly and wanting his picture taken 

We hosted my family that night for dinner and games where Clayton deep-fried a turkey with his new fryer! It was very moist and yummy. We love that Lindsey and her family were able to join us this year for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's so nice that they live within a shorter driving distance now!

Christmas Eve 2018

As always, Christmas Eve is one of the evenings we look forward to the most. So much fun and family packed into one night! There was some tension over some details with acting out the Nativity, but it all worked out. 

Chimes

Nativity

Baby Luman was a very patient baby Jesus.

Gavin playing "Silent Night" in the background.

Caleb playing "What Child is This?"

Carter playing "We Three Kings"

Rolling the dice game

Kids' white elephant game

Austin ended up with some Hatchimals and skittles, which he was thrilled about.

Grandma and Grandpa opening up blog books of their mission to Denmark. My mom got very emotional! Lindsey and I took turns posting my parents' letters while they were on their mission to a blog for extended family to read about their mission experiences. I found a company that helped to make the process fairly easy to turn the blog posts into a book.

Gingerbread Houses

We were looking for an activity to do one afternoon and decided to "wing it" with materials we had on hand to make some gingerbread houses.

Austin's house

Bryson's house. He asked me to take pictures of it from all angles.

A few weeks later we made this other one at Austin's request, which was a gift from Matt's co-worker.

Pictures with Santa

Our neighborhood provides an opportunity to meet Santa each year. A lot of parents dress their kids up really nice for these pictures. That's not how we roll...

Austin wasn't scared of Santa this year!

I love Bryson's face in these pictures. The person in line before us was a family from church. The mom was holding a baby who kicked Bryson in the eye right as they went up to take pictures. Bryson is red-faced in these pictures from crying, but I love how he tried so hard to smile even though he had just been crying!

My New Nephew

Clayton and Kara had their baby on Thanksgiving day. He was such a big boy at almost 9 lbs! This is me meeting him a few weeks later. Such a precious bundle. There is something so special about holding a new baby that is recently from heaven.

Baby Luman (family name)

Lucky Night

We love that our neighborhood does so many fun activities with our HOA fees, and we love participating in the family bingo. We happened to have an extremely lucky night. Caleb won the first bingo of the night, followed a few games later by Matt and then another win by Caleb later. Within 45 minutes we had won 3 times and decided to call it a night in case our luck continued. The boys love it and are quite serious about it, although Bryson was quite upset that he never won and didn't want to leave yet. Our prizes were a football, and 2 gift cards for $15 each. 

Thanksgiving 2018

We made plans to go camping Friday/Saturday after getting together for a Thanksgiving feast on Thursday, but the weather showed 60-75% chance of rain and the temperature predictions kept dropping to the low 50s. Cold + rain = not fun camping. So we altered our plans and cancelled our reservation and opted for camping activities instead. Of course the weather ended up being beautiful...

Roasted hot dogs for lunch

S'mores

Playing at a park

Going on a hike

Fall Sports Season

Bryson had his first season of a sport and played soccer. Bryson was excited for every game but whined and complained about every practice. After a few weeks it was obvious that he didn't have the drive or natural athleticism of our older boys. As competitive parents and with competitive older boys, it was difficult not to be frustrated with Bryson during games. Run after the ball! He did do a good job of staying in between the ball and the goal when defending, but he didn't get close enough to apply any real pressure to the player with the ball. Matt coached the team but was at a loss for how to help the players improve. They worked on basic skills, but trying to teach the players to hustle seemed to be a foreign concept in their brains. For this soccer league, different than Caleb’s, you rank your child’s ability according to experience when you register and that’s how the teams are divided up according to those rankings. All the other teams they faced had at least 3 good players that could dribble the ball down the field and score goals. Matt finally approached some parents on his team to ask how they ranked their child. 3 of the 7 players ranked their child as very experienced when they were obviously not since Bryson was better than all 3 of them. So Bryson’s games were pretty painful to watch. He did improve throughout the season and scored a total of 5 goals. (My other boys at Bryson's age scored 2 or 3 goals per game.) 

He was so proud of his trophy at the end of the season. It helped that they won their last game (their only win of the season), so they went out feeling like they won first place! :)

We were excited for Carter to make premier since he was combined with 10 year olds for the fall. Carter had the same coach as last season. The coach really likes Carter, but unfortunately the coach drafts a team horribly choosing players he knows instead of players that are best. For example, Carter was drafted 3rd when he should have been drafted towards the end since there were strong 10yo who had experience pitching. (This was Carter's first season playing kid pitch vs. machine pitch last season.) This fall season was even more painful than spring. Loss after loss and the morale of the boys got so low. Matt was an assistant coach, but he had little control over decisions made during games. He made suggestions to the coach, however they were mostly ignored. The coach got discouraged as well towards the end of the season and blamed refs on bad calls and finally gave Matt more control because he didn't care anymore. Matt enjoyed being in charge more because he really wanted to coach Carter's team this season from the start, but the directors would only give him an elite team and Matt didn't want to be the reason Carter didn't make premier. Despite the games getting closer, the other teams were just better. So Carter's team only won 1 game and got last place in the tournament.

Caleb had a fantastic season of soccer because he had a great coach and a great team. It's been 3 years since Caleb has played soccer, so he had to put in some hard work to hone the skills of other players on his team that have played more regularly. There were 4 boys from church on his team (including Caleb), and they were probably the best 4 on the team leading out on aggressiveness, hustling, and scoring. He had so much fun playing with his teammates and scored many goals and was a huge asset to his team. They had an undefeated season.

Ribbon Festival 2018

Caleb participated in a Suzuki Ribbon Festival where he played two Suzuki songs from the current book he is in (4) in front of a judge and an audience. It's simply a chance to practice performing with pressure and give the students more experience. Caleb didn't perform as well as he had practiced at home but still did very well! The other students in his group were quite talented playing some very difficult songs so it was fun to listen to them!!

Caleb and his good friend, Tyler, who started Suzuki about a year ago.

Tyler is tall for his age and Caleb is short for his age--makes for a big difference even though they are only 3 months apart! Caleb and Tyler were actually in a car accident earlier in the day on the way home from a soccer game. Tyler's dad was driving and someone ran a red light and hit them. Fortunately no one was hurt, but the truck was totaled. They were both a little shaken up the rest of the day.

Bryson's 6th Birthday

Opening presents first thing in the morning. Unfortunately Daddy couldn't join us after seminary as he had a work meeting to rush off to, but he listened in over the phone.

Mastermind, balloons, Kinetic sand, magnetic building blocks, gum

Eating lunch with Mr. B at school. Then he passed out powdered donuts as a birthday treat to share with his class.

Instead of a party this year, we went to Red Robin as a family after his Saturday soccer game. Here is Bryson's birthday treat!

Celebrating on Sunday with some cake and ice cream.

Bryson loves pumpkin bars--since I had just made them recently, I suggested this pumpkin crumble cake instead.

As I suppose is bound to happen, this year was a Mom Fail. Bryson didn't love his presents or cake and was pretty upset that we did a family activity instead of a birthday party (which we had discussed the previous week and he was okay with). We ended up exchanging some of his gifts, and he eventually got over the fact that he didn't have a birthday party. He asked for the cake for breakfast the next morning and enjoyed eating it over the next few days, so his attitude did play into the birthday fail. Hopefully next year I can get it right!