The End of the Holidays

WoW!  Did we ever have fun all the rest of the way through the holidays and into January 6th! It was so great to have the Looslis to play in the snow with Josh, Charity, Eli and Julie on New Year’s Eve! 

We had our annual Carver/Eyre New Year’s party first at the “Kangaroo Zoo” in North Salt Lake where the kids and their cousins jumped on blow-up toys until we thought they would blow up too!  Pictures are all in my Iphone and I haven’t figured out how to transfer that to the blog…yet!

Next we all traveled to Arella, the Carver’s fabulous new Pizzaria in Bountiful (in the parking lot just north of Costco).  Forgot to take pictures but a grand time was had by all, in spite of a nasty loss by the Jazz. The food was terrific, seeing the Carvers was so fun, the kids were great and the atmosphere was magical for New Year’s Eve!  We exited in time for the adults’ party which went on to 1 a.m. and brought in the New Year at BaliWood with quite a crowd including Josh’s great friend Dave Pabst and his wife Mindy who have been taking such good care of Grandma in Logan AND Nelson!

 

It was Jared’s birthday, as always so we had the privilege of celebrating with him too!

On New Year’s Day, Dad went to pick up Grandma in Logan and took her to her annual siblings’ party in Provo.  The rest of us went to Avatar and had a wonderful time! Reviews went from “I was sweating through the whole thing and couldn’t believe it was so long” to “This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!” 

As you can tell, Jared particularly like it…or maybe it was just being away from the twins for a while that made him giddy! 

That night Grandma came to stay with us and and the following morning before Josh returned her to Logan, she was delighted by the twins and Eliza who enthusiastically sang “Oh boy I got Joy” for Grandma. How fun that was to see Grandma smile as those three sang to her, perfectly in tune, with two of the three rocking back and forth on their tiptoes!

The next day we hosted a Wellesley Tea at our house for prospective students.  It was so fun to have Saren and Charity there (we missed you Saydi) to help host and a the lovely Audrey Smith who is the Utah recruiter for Wellesley, who brought all the food and directed the discussion.

 

We had about thirty five to forty girls and their parents as well as other Wellesley Women to talk about the “joys” of going to Wellesley!

The following evening was Inklings at our house which is always fun!  We had been trying to get together with the Claytons before we left for our trip so Dad invited them to come an hour early so we could talk before everyone else arrived, which was so fun…except that Dad neglected to tell me that he invited them for dinner!  That was a pretty wild scramble and some day I’ll tell them that I wouldn’t have served them dry chicken and overcooked rolls, had I known they were coming to dinner. 

After all those festivities we were left with two days to pull together a thousand loose ends and pack for our 30 day trip to Boston, New York, Monaco, Riyadh, Jeddah, Ammon, Beirut, Kuwait and finally to meet Tal and Anita and then Charity and her roommates in India. Many details will follow as we go!  What a truly fun holiday we had this year.  As our family grows, things will be different ever year, but as far as I’m concerned, variety is the spice of life.  So here we go with a LOT of variety….