December Fun

We had a great December!

December was a busy month! We packed in a ton of fun Christmas adventures. It was a great way to end a long, crazy year!

We went on a cute wagon ride down in Genola.

Dax liked making steam from his hot cocoa. It was chilly!

We stopped at Salem Pond. 

The trees on the water are beautiful.

Mom and Dad love this simple adventure.

Mom and Dad rode this slide together. 

We went to a cute Christmas spot in PG.

It was also freezing this night, so we bought apple cider.

Dad and Dax snuggled up to stay warm.

The ponies wanted to warm up with some of Mom's cider, too.

We spent a lot of time with the husky puppies at Laurie and Glen's house. The boys loved snuggling the puppies and watching them grow and change. And Aspen sure loved Randy.

Seth loved picking up the puppies.

They were so cute and little.

Dax did so well with the dogs. It was a good for him.

We went every week to check on them.

Mark was good at getting the puppies to sleep.

Dad doesn't love dogs, but this dog loves Dad.

There were also some other fun December activities. Here are a few highlights from the month.

Seth loves to dress like this.

We froze, but we also enjoyed watching the Geminid Meteor Shower.

We made the cutest ornaments this year.

Seth dressed as the Grinch for Grinch Day in his class.

We played a lot of new games together and laughed a lot!!!

Seth is always drawing. We loved his Grinch and Max pic.

This is from the Christmas Convergence. I want to remember that we got to see this cool event.

After Christmas, we stopped at Cabela's and the Train Shoppe. It was nice to be able to be out and adventuring a little bit. Hopefully in January, we can get outside some more, too!

We have a lot fo pics of the boys next to the Cabela's fish tank.

Mark is getting a little too big for these rides!

Dax, too!

We were sad that this train isn't running any more, but we took some fun pics by it!

The Train Shoppe is always a fun outing.

We love learning about the animals from Dad as we walk through.

New Years Eve in Idaho

We hadn't seen Grandma and Grandpa for a long time, so after Grandma recovered from Covid, we decided to go up for New Year's Eve. The weather was really nice. In fact, December really didn't have any storms. We spent two nights with the Daniels, and the Ferlans were with us quite a bit, too. 

On the day we arrived, Grandpa had reserved tickets to a movie in an actual theater. This was a pretty big deal because 2020 hadn't really allowed an outings like that. We watched a new movie called The War with Grandpa, which was also unique because movies haven't generally been released this year. We really enjoyed the time out together, and Grandpa made sure there were plenty of treats, too.

It was fun to go to the movies!

The boys love spending time with Grandma.

Mark is so good to play with the little cousins.

New Years Eve was the next day, and the kids were really excited to wake up at Grandma's house, because she lets them wake up early and watch cartoons. When Mom and Dad finally woke up, Mom enjoyed going to visit her friend Angee who just moved to Rigby, and Dad helped Grandpa build a shelf. Later that day we had fun playing games. Then we helped Grandma prepare a big dinner. We had missed coming up for Thanksgiving so Grandma and Grandpa saved a turkey to eat with us on New Year's Eve.

Stephane made party hat rolls! She is so creative!

It felt a lot like Thanksgiving!

We enjoyed our big dinner with the Ferlans, Brittany, and Grandma and Grandpa. Then we filled the night with fun activities. The boys watched the Jazz game while the girls did some nail activities. Then we played games until close to ten. Grandpa had brownies and ice cream for dessert. Our final adventure came when Stephanie brought out her dollar store bags. She had purchased noise makers, and confetti, and poppers, and all sorts of things to celebrate the New Year. The cousins made a lot of noise for about 20 minutes, and then we sent the Ferlans on their way home, and went to bed!

Abby painted Mom's nails.

We played a lot of games!

We also played games on Grandma's phone and iPad.

Dax did a puzzle with Grandma and Brittany.

Happy New Year!

It was SO LOUD!

We take a picture at Thanksgiving every year, so we had to squeeze one in during 2020!

Randy's Birthday

Randy rarely wants cake for his birthday. This year he chose trifle. 

We love figuring out the best way to celebrate Randy for his birthday. The boys helped me create signs for Dad's door, and they did their best to let him sleep in. I cooked up some eggnog french toast, which was actually delicious even though I don't like eggnog, but Randy loves it.

We took it pretty easy after breakfast and played games and open gifts. Randy was excited for his new impact drill and used it to clean the stovetop.

Opening gifts with the boys.

Then we went to an early dinner at Tepanyaki. Randy has been wanting to take the boys for quite awhile, so we all went for this birthday. We had a wonderful time. Our chef was extra amazing and the boys loved the food. Only Seth got a little nervous of the fire, and he would only eat fried rice, but that's normal. Mark and Dax both really enjoyed it.

Someone was nice enough to take our picture!

After dinner, Mom surprised Randy with tickets to Evermore. He has been wanting to go to this park for such a long time. So we took a little date and went to Evermore. It was an interesting experience, but we loved the walk-through Christmas Carol play and the bird show. The lights were fun, and it was funny to see how intense some people were about being involved in the park.

It was fun to go on a date for Randy's birthday!

Evermore is set up like an old medieval village.

There were cool lights and statues.

It was a fun experience!

The last thing we did was enjoy a delicious strawberry trifle (Dad's request). We are so lucky to have Randy. He is smart, funny, hard-working, kind, reliable, punctual, and of course, handsome. Happy Birthday Randy!

Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Christmas was amazing this year. The kids are getting bigger, but we still have plenty of Christmas magic here in the Ockey home.

We kicked off Christmas Eve by delivering treats to Randy's sisters since we didn't have the Ockey Family Christmas party this year. It was fun to see everyone even though we kept our distance and wore masks. We also made a stop at the South Jordan Candy windows. The windows were fun, but the boys didn't bring their coats, so we ran from window to window as quickly as we could.

We love checking these candy windows out every year.

After we returned home, we built gingerbread creations. I would say we made gingerbread houses, but Mom was the only one who actually built a house, so we will call them creations. Everyone made the most amazing things, though, and it was fun that the boys are finally able to do it almost entirely on their own.

All set for gingerbread houses.

Dad made an airport.

I love this selfie that Dax took.

Dax's Y was SO cool!

Mark built a temple complete with missionaries and a newly married couple.

Seth made Michael Jordan's house.

Mom made a more traditional gingerbread house.

We opened pajamas for Christmas Eve and sent the kids to bed at their normal time, which was different than the rest of the break where everyone had stayed up way too late.

Cutest brothers.

We are usingb Mom's new tripod to take more family photos.

We made the kids promise that they wouldn't wake us up until 7:00 am on Christmas Day. We heard them start moving about 6 AM, but they were good and didn't come in until the clock chimed 7! Then we headed down to see what Santa had brought. Seth got his Air Jordan shoes that he wanted, and a Jordan jersey. Mark also got his request: an electric guitar with amp. Dax got a music player and headphones and an electric blanket to snuggle. Everyone had a wonderful time opening gifts and giving each other gifts.

Lined up oldest to youngest to head downstairs.

Seth wears his jersey all the time!

Seth LOVES Michael Jordan.

Dax listens to his music almost every day.

Mark plays this electric guitar every day. 

It was a happy Christmas morning.

Dax made Mom and Dad special awards for one of his homemade Christmas gifts.

Seth named his new snow leopard, Arctic.

The big gift was an NBA Jam arcade game. Even Dad was pumped for this gift. The boys played most of the day and everyone had a great time!

Everyone can play NBA Jam together.

The boys had so much fun playing together.

The rest of our day was calm. Grandpa Ockey stopped by. We read books and played games. We did puzzles. Then we had a nice ham dinner for Christmas. Dad folded fancy napkins and everything. Mark bought everyone their favorite ice cream from Handel's as one of his gifts, and then we played a new game. Doodle Face had us laughing hysterically as we each drew different parts of each other's faces.

It was a wonderful Christmas.

Look at those fancy Christmas tree napkins!

Mark was laughing so hard that he was crying.

Dax tried to match his face.

Seth's looked the most like him.