December in Pictures

For the three of you that still read this blog occasionally, here are our highlights from December. 

Our washer broke down the first week of December. When we bought a new one they told us that they could not deliver until the end of the month. So Chuck and I strapped it down to our motorcycle trailer and Chuck spent the afternoon installing it himself. 

The first Saturday in December was my second time volunteering at Ignite, Encircle's yearly LGBTQ youth summit.  

Jared played in his band's Christmas concert.

I spent a Saturday with HEROIC volunteering at a Christmas party for endangered kids. This was my first trial run for Hippolyta. 

Jared turned 16!  We celebrated by having bacon pizza and then hanging around the house (that's what Jared said he wanted to do). Jared also went on several drives for Driver's Ed this month. 

We were super excited to have Kate and Ben with us over Christmas. We did so many fun things!  Here we are painting this year's Christmas ornaments. 

For this year's family ornament, I 3D printed a pokemon for each person and then we painted them. 

Some of the fun things we did is walked around Ikea, played some games, played the bells together, and we put together this gingerbread train. 

Our dramatic production this Christmas Eve was a reader's theater of The Christmas Carol. 

Every holiday includes making and eating good food. I'm not generally a traditionalist when it comes to holiday food choices but Kate wanted to bake a pie together and so we tried our hand at a new apple pie recipe.  It was the best apple pie I've ever eaten. (I'll link the recipe at the bottom of this post*). 

I didn't take any photos of Christmas day.  After opening presents, we played some games and went out Pokemon Go raiding.   The day after Christmas Kate and Ben went to spend some time with Ben's family and Ruth, Jared and I went to my family's Christmas party at my SIL's new house. 

It was so nice to visit with everyone. I got to hang out with some of my nieces and nephews that I rarely see and I got to meet two of their new babies - which was a treat. 

And a final note:  Quaid bought Ruth a video game called Red Dead Redemption 2. It's this amazing, totally immersive cowboy game.  It only took one playing session to have both Ruth and I hooked, so we've been spending every spare moment playing the game for the past 3 weeks.  We both finally finished today, new years Adam. 

*www.allrecipes.com/recipe/12682/apple-pie-by-grandma-ople/    We used Fuji apples - which were perfect. 

Note:  You may have noticed that I've been posting less often.  It's true.  After ten years of writing this blog really faithfully, my family has just shrunk to the size where I don't have as much to say.  So a bi-weekly format seems more fitting. 

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving!  We spent Thanksgiving day at my mother's house.  I had one sister and one brother there and their grown-up children and spouses, and Quaid came along with us again this year.   The food was good and the visit was nice.

That evening Kate and Ben came over and they spent the next day with us.  We went shopping and on Pokemon raids.   We cut snowflakes and chocolate dipped pretzels. It's such a fun stage for our family to have adult kids and no little ones; we are pretty free to come and go as we please.