After Christmas Flurries!

 

All the excitement at our house starts after Christmas! It started with MORE snow flurries…more than we’ve seen in years!

 

Looking out on the deck:

Next came the flurry of arrivals. We met Josh at the airport as we came in from Sequim and he came home with us and did the normal rescue job on all our computers. What a guy. He fixed and fixed and fixed. And now we’re all fixed…until we mess something else up!

Eli arrived on the 30th and it was so great to catch up with him! He lent a helping hand with the “fix-ups” and it was great to have he and Josh with us when we went to Ogden (with a stop at Arella) for a tour of the new house, a New Year’s Eve celebration and Jared’s birthday party!

For the tired Loosli kids’ sake, we rang in the New Year with the kids at 10 o’clock, which was really midnight at Times Square where Charity was busy celebrating with her friends and about a million other people. She stood in the middle of Times’ Square for six hours waiting for the ball to drop.  We searched the TV in vain to see her accomplish her goal to kiss a stranger in Times Square at the stroke of midnight. We missed it, but she did it… and ran…and checked another thing off her bucket list! Funny, funny girl!  Once she gets a goal in her mind…..

Back to the Loosli household. They put the kids to bed except Ashton who babysat while we dashed down to a comedy club just down the street from where the Loosli’s live. Jared’s friend from high school in Ashton, Idaho was the headliner and he was hilarious!  It was a fun new way to bring in the New Year!

HAPPY Pecan Pie JARED!

Instead of being with the Carvers on New Year’s Eve this year, we decided to have a big celebration with them on New Year’s Day.  Since we live in a Winter Wonderland, we got out all the sleighs, snow shoes, cross country skiis, wide variety of snow pants, coats, gloves and hats and a great time was had by all! 

We had three big pots of soup, salads, rolls, corn bread, desserts and hot chocolate galore! It was fun for Lenna and I to play some piano duets (thanks to Aja who gave them to me for Christmas) while people visited and I think everyone had a great time! It was great to be together again!

Sorry, so blurry, but what can you do??? Family members will recognize the faces!

 

Trina’s cute son Eddy even came with his darling new wife Dianne.  That kid who doesn’t look too excited about the chili is Bobby’s little boy Thomas.

Lloyd’s daughter Mandi came too and brought her hubby three darling children:

Here is Mandi’s husband Brett and their youngest Tasha.  Older sons James and Jared have become cute young men since we saw them!

Chris and Nickie’s oldest and youngest Justin and Jake are growing up as well as cute Sammy (below). 

 

 

Can you believe that Jess and Brad’s oldest Austin is almost 15???  What a darling teenager he is!

 

And of course Emma is always a star!

 

And we were especially thrilled to have Nick and Megan’s boys…Cole and Tray. Are they adorable or what?

 

 

 

And what a joy to see these grown-up beautiful cousins together:

And just to let you know I was there:

In the midst of the party, Charity whose plane had been cancelled got on an alternate red-eye at 3 a.m. and arrived straight from her adventure at Times Square just in time to give us the gory details and head to bed!

You might think that was enough for day but…NOT!  The fun was just beginning.  Noah arrived at the airport from Christmas in Texas just in time to go to the Jazz Game. Even Charity and I got to go and Jared joined us too! It was a terrific game!

Do you think they were pretty excited?

Just to add frosting to the cake, the Carvers were also at the game. Chris had a couple of his boys and Lenna and Clark were there too!  Clark is the only one we caught before an usher shooshed us out!

The next day was Sunday and after a fun time catching up with lots of ward members, the last of the gifts under the Christmas tree were opened: Shirts for the upcoming FFFE in Mexico. 

 

Josh was on the other couch, too busy for silly things like pictures so Charity sat in for him!

 

And as a finale, we went to Saren and Jared’s for a delicious turkey (pre-birthday party for Ashton) dinner so that Noah could see their new house. Wow, it’s so fun to have family close enough to actually have Sunday dinner with!  AND to have a flurry of five of our nine children all together at the same time. So fun!

So after three trips to the airport in two days, the last of the kids, namely Charity, just took off for home tonight.  Her flight was cancelled but they put her on a flight home that left 15 minutes earlier, got in 15 minutes earlier and landed at a closer airport to BART and to Ashley who was going to give her a ride home. Serendipity rides again!

Wow, what a wonderful holiday season!  Now I’m going to have a few minutes to finish my flurry of New Year’s resolutions!