Our final days of 2021 were spent in lots of happy ways! Baking cookies at the Ronald McDonald House- a sweet service because (although my kids think the name is hilarious since they only associate it with McDonalds) the Ronald McDonald House holds a special place in my family's history since my parents stayed there while my brother Aaron was in the hospital with eye cancer, or retinoblastoma. My mom was pregnant with me and I was named after another mom that was a good friend to her during that incomprehensively tough time in her young mom life.
Our baking service was all fun and games until a grandma came into the kitchen and told us about her five-year-old grandson who had developed a sudden fever on Christmas Eve and passed away just a few days later. They were just waiting to find all of the donors to share his organs with. It was a sobering reminder that we have so much to be thankful for!
It finally snowed! Noah was nearly in tears as the days leading up to Christmas brought no snow, but it finally came!
And brought some extreme cold to go with it!
But boy was Noah happy about all the snow!
We enjoyed a few good afternoons of sledding, building snow forts, and making piles and piles of snowballs.
Our friends Helena and Diego joined us! They are from Brazil and love snow maybe even more than we do!
Leah and Helena built Emma a snow... coffin? They had fun with it whatever it was!
There was lots of time to rest over Christmas break too, which we all needed!
We went to the temple! It was such a cold night, but we were so happy to be there.
We stayed warm at the zoo by visiting all of our favorite indoor exhibits, including the gorilla family, which consists of the grouchy dad, the pregnant and restless mom, the mischievous teenage boy, the dramatic teenage girl, and the two tumbly little toddlers. They are all fascinating!
Emma took some great pictures in the aquarium!
We know right where Brazil is now!
It was extra hot and humid in the Lied Jungle.
Emma's Christmas wish came true- a sleepover with Little Leah!
Truly her wish would be to still live just down the street from her bestie, but this was a pretty great deal too.
We also watched a few SpiderMan movies and a few Harry Potter movies- some parts were scary!-
and did lots of puzzles and games-
Once Grandma and Grandpa even joined us!
And in exciting birdwatching news, we had a new visitor to the birdfeeders! I'm still not sure why everyone else wasn't as excited about it as I was.
The dark-eyed junco is the plump little hallmark of winter birds!
Leah and Adam had a great winter youth conference that included ice skating and Chick-fil-a, and Emma also went ice skating with a friend!
Adam's getting taller, but he's not that tall yet!
Church was cancelled during Christmas break due to the extreme cold and icy, snowy roads, but we still had an excellent home church. I'm so grateful that we worked hard to form that good habit to lean on when needed!
Emma even built us a podium, complete with a microphone!
And all of our New Years Eve plans- a stake dance for Leah and a party for the rest of us- dissolved into a "quiet" night at home when fog turned into icy roads covered by snow. We still had a great time celebrating with just the 6 of us! It was a happy, solid end to a pretty great year.
Bring on the new adventures of 2022!
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