December

The last month of the year, with birthday's, vacation, and holiday's, and it was just as busy and fun as one would expect it to be. Matthew signed up for a 50 mile climbing race happening in May and was planning on doing a 200 mile road race in the Fall, so he spent pretty much all of his spare time after work and on Saturday morning's training. We also started counting calories in an attempt to loose a bit of extra weight. I've been very impressed by his dedication and the 100% effort he puts into each ride. I've ridden a bit too, but mostly just for stress relief. We found out toward the end of the month that Jeb, with whom he was planning on doing LaToJa in September, had decided not to do the race. Matthew was really only doing it to do it with friends, so the choice to also drop out was not a difficult one. He's still doing Iron Horse, but doesn't need to train quite so intensely for that.

At the very beginning of the month we attended the Temple to support the Obrock's in receiving their endowment and getting sealed. That day we also decorated for and attended the ward Christmas dinner. I then spent the next two weeks purging closets and organizing rooms. The Jolley's, Jensen's, and I traded off tending several times and I ran lot's of errands getting ready for our Holiday festivities. Matthew and I both had eye exams and book club. Surprisingly, neither of the boys had class parties or performances, or at least not one's that I was made aware of or invited to. Their winter vacation started on the 19th and from that day until the end of the month there were only two days that didn't involve play dates or house guests. By the end it had gotten a little intense for me, but the kid's loved every second of it and were so happy to be surrounded by friends and family. We hosted the D&D family party as well as our Christmas Fiesta. We celebrated birthday's for both Matthew and Hyrum, the Kress grandparents and Sarah arrived today, and we've got Hyrum's baptism coming up on Saturday. All this fun and excitement have resulted in many late nights, leading to spontaneous naps in random places and an often over stimulated and grumpy three year old. All in all though, our children have behaved wonderfully and it's been delightful to have them all home with me for a couple of weeks.

Projects this month have included the two moose blankets I made for my mom and Naomi, which I'm very disappointed to note that I neglected to take any pictures of, and a new kitchen table with refinished chairs. Matthew threw it together with pocket hole screws and finished it in less than two weeks. We love having a bigger table when company is over, though the cracks between boards are more annoying than Matthew expected and it's likely he'll build a new top in the very near future. And, in other exciting news, work has begun on the new K-8 school across the street. They say it should be completed in June 2018 and open that fall semester. We've all enjoyed standing at Mercy's window to watch the big land movers push dirt around and I'm amazed at how much progress they've made in just a few days.