UGH... Blogger loaded this photos backwards for some reason so I'll be starting at the end of December and going backwards through time to the middle in this post. Sorry.
New Years Eve we last minute ended up going up to Tiff and Todd's. Ashley wasn't feeling well but Jared and some of his kids joined us for a glow stick Karaoke sing and dance party. It was really fun. We went up around 7:00 and stayed until midnight. We had Martinelli drinks, vegan cheese fondu and chocolate fondu and a bunch of things to dip. I made artisan bread.
The day before Dad left, we installed the SATECH smartcell flooring in our exercise room. We ran out of material and couldn't finish it but Dad could tell how much I wanted to finish it soon and shipped the rest of the stuff to us and Chris and I finished it ourselves a week or two later.
Chris got some paint on him from spraying the ceiling. It was way more time consuming that we thought but it looks really good and was faster than rollering/brushing it. When you take into account the sides of each beam, and around pipes and all the nooks and crannies in the ceiling its a lot more surface than you'd think and the new spray paint attachment for our air compressor worked good it's just gravity fed so trying to spray the ceiling means the paint doesn't run through it easily in that upside down position so it just takes time to get the paint in the right spot to spray.
Dad came to our rescue and helped us figure out a bunch of the wiring. It was WAY trickier than we thought. The wiring in place beforehand wasn't very intuitive and had some funky things not put right. But now Chris knows a lot more about electrical work! We took out the two florescent lights and installed 4 canned lights and combined two separate lights into one circuit and cleaned up a lot of the junk wires now that we'll have an exposed ceiling and not drywall it in. This was an idea Chris got off of Jess and Ryan's exercise room. It helps us get as much height as possible in the low ceiling space which Chris needs when he's running on a treadmill. It was a brilliant idea.
We took some days off working on this project just before Christmas. We've been working on it pretty hard trying to get to the point that we can install the floor when my dad's in town over Christmas break. Drywall done. Ready for mudding then paint!
Alec turns 14. This was a pretty low key birthday for Alec. We weren't doing a friend party and his got his main present on his half birthday this past summer: a bike. So after opening up a few smaller things in the morning, Alec made a comment that it felt like his birthday was already over (just a few hours after waking up). I surprised him last minute with having some of his Betteridge cousins come hang out and also last minute, sleep over. They played games, video games and ate some of Alec's favorite snacks: vanilla wafers and Wethers caramels. He requested a raspberry vanilla trifle for his cake and I was happy to oblige.
Alec is really growing up. He's totally a teenager with the mood swings and sullen independence / i-don't-care-about-anything attitude that goes with it. Its fun to watch him take charge of his life and stay after school for things he's involved with. Sometimes, its to finish work for a class, but mostly its to work with his lego robotics club, or ultimate frisbee, or in the spring it'll be archery and his technical theater class. He's really amazing with building things and coming up with awesome engineering feats. He has a special relationship with Max and Theo. He's so patient with them and plays with them and genuinely seems to enjoy their company. He has good friends he plays Mine Craft with and his involved with his Teacher's Quorum Presidency. He's willing to bring bread for the sacrament and set things up on the weeks that we attend church. He's been a trooper as we've tried to figure out the right kinds of medication to help us make his ADHD diagnosis that we got in the fall work for him. I've come to understand that this condition is not a failing or a broken condition... it just means his brain is wired DIFFERENTLY. And there are ways to use this different way of thinking to his benefit and really show what an amazing brain and soul he has. He's continued to excel with the Alto Saxophone and is also starting to play by ear some favorite songs on the piano. He likes Hamilton music, big band music, any music from his favorite video games.., like MineCraft. We love Alec!!
Christmas Day was different in that we didn't get together with any family or go anywhere. Some of us stayed in our Pjs all day. We had a fancy turkey dinner. It was a lot of preparation but having NOT had anything like this for Thanksgiving the month before, it was fun to prepare it and delicious. The eating of it always goes by super fast though.
Funny thing about this year is that the kids didn't wake up until after 8:00. I guess we stayed up pretty late the night before and it was dark or something, I don't know. Chris and I were upstairs waiting for them for a while. We even had time to put together a breakfast casserole that we didn't plan on making. The kids all got scooters from Santa and a lego set from us. We also surprised the kids with a Nintendo Switch!!! We saved it for the very end and it was fun to see their shocked faces. Christmas Eve we did a virtual nativity with the Betteridge extended family. Our part was how the Book of Mormon prophesies tied into the nativity story and we showed Nephi's vision of a virgin bearing a son, and Samuel the Lamenite and Nephi praying for the sign of his birth to be given to spare the lives of the believers. It was different and crazy in new way. Not crazy because of a lot of relatives in one house but crazy in an our-kids-have-been-stuck-with-eachother-for-too-long-they-fight-and-whine-constantly kind of way. Also I had really high blood sugar numbers that I think I finally determined on Christmas Eve was due to a yeast infection. I was really emotional and in a bad mood and felt bad and guilty for not being peacefully, spiritual, and happy on this special day. We forgot to take pictures in our jammies before putting Theo to bed, so we quickly got him back out of his crib for 3-4 pictures. Then we put him back to bed and got Max to bed and the kids settled downstairs when we remembered we forgot to record our song for Mom and Dad's present. So we brought the kids back up and tried to sing the song only to discover that the piano accompaniment Tiff and I had worked hard to record 2 weeks before had gotten recorded over by mistake only that afternoon. So we started recording it a'cappella. Max heard us singing and started crying because he was missing out on something. So we re-recorded it with him in it and I tried to look happy and not totally annoyed with kids contentious behavior and the other unexpected problems. We also had recorded individuals retelling family history stories that they'd researched and presented. Alec chose to to a lego stop motion video which he was still putting the finishing touches to Christmas Eve night after bedtime. I always wish for a quiet spiritual moment to bear testimony with the kids about the miracle of having a Savior on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day and its so hard to get it. The kids have recently been fighting me on gathering and being quiet during spiritual family moments. Maybe someday I'll figure it out? My gift to Jesus this year is a pretty big project. I've been adapting the 10 chapters in my Emotional Resilience book into 43 FHE lessons directly suited to the interests and ages of my kids. I have each lesson outlined and even little prizes/handout toys and badges with a hand designed logo for each chapter. We'll have weekly challenges and jewels they can add on to their badges and individual journals we will decorate so they can keep track of their efforts. We were going to hand out the journals Christmas Day and have a nice devotional about it but it never happened. We'll save that for the New Year, I guess.
Chris showed the kids how to make candy canes! We haven't done this for years. We didn't have corn syrup so we substituted honey for it and you could really taste the honey in them.
We tried to gather 'virtually' in small groups with the Betteridge Family over the Christmas Break. The kids and I made a bunch of different batches of jello play-do and we met at a park one cold cold morning to give it to mom to give out to all the grandkids under the age of 7. Then we planned a time to all play with the play dough together over zoom. It was really cute to see all the kids and what they liked to do with the play dough.
This funny pictures shows what a good appetite little Theo has. He is often the first one at the table and the last.
I tried a new version of Challah bread this year. We rolled up cinnamon sugar in the snakes and then braided those together for a cinnamon swirl challah bread. It. Was. SOO GOOD. Definitely a repeat.
The older Betteridge girl cousins gathered for a nutcracker night. We got matching nightgowns for them all and the ones in UT tried on Tiffany and Mary's old point shoes and the ID cousins took turns doing their ballet recital pieces for us. Then we watched the Royal Ballet's Nutcracker 2019 performance together while we snacked on treats. I made baklava and cookies and Ashley brought yummy fruit and GF pretzels and Tiff brought some flavored nuts etc. It was really fun and the first time we've seen some of these cousins in person for a very long time. Tiffany's family had COVID and were finished quarantining so I felt it was fairly safe to get together with them.
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