Christmas Break and New Years
We had a week of pretty lazy days and hanging out in between Christmas and New Years. Kirk and his family ended up not coming up after all. Their dog swallowed a bunch of socks on Christmas and ended up needing surgery. So their trip got cancelled. Bummer. We were looking forward to seeing them.
The day after Christmas we met up with my Aunt Bonnie and my cousin Justin and his family. My Aunt Bonnie was in town over Christmas staying with Justin and Hannah. We met up at a Mexican restaurant for lunch. It was good to see them! We had a great time and the food was delicious!!
Some of the cutest kids around!!
Tyler had a doctor appointment with his endocrinologist in Coeur d' Alene. He got a new omnipod style insulin pump and continuous glucose meter. They are amazing! Instead of an insulin pump with tubing that attaches to an infusion site on his stomach he now has a little tiny pod that he can attach anywhere...tube free. Also his continuous glucose meter is super tiny now and attaches to his upper arm. To test his blood and get his glucose reading he just scans himself...like he's an item at the grocery store. :) No more constant finger pricking and even his old continuous glucose meter was much more involved than this new system. He is pretty excited about it! We took advantage of the opportunity to be in CDA together and went out for Greek food after his appointment and out to tromp around the lake...which you can barely see in the back ground.
Reilly had to work that week too but she stayed with us rather than going back home to her house which was fun. We watched a lot of movies and played a lot of games. Skipbo was our game of choice this year. We have had that game for forever and never played it. This year we had about a million Skipbo tournaments. Reilly gave us all make overs and taught me how to *properly* do my eyebrows. Ha ha! She trimmed everyone's hair and we girls did many facial masks.
Trying four different ones!
The kids and I went out to lunch a few times as well and I scheduled dental appointments and doctor appointments during the break. Kameron had his yearly check up. Our pediatrician retired and I'm not going to lie I cried when I found out that Dr. Morgan was retiring. I love our pediatrician so much. Kameron saw the new group and they were fine. He is now 5 foot 11. He was pretty excited about that! Come on 6 foot! His knees are still pretty messed up from running and he needs more PT. Also his blood pressure was up so he had to go for his first labs and blood draw. He was a little freaked out but was a trooper. All his labs were normal. We've been monitoring his BP the last 2 weeks at home. He goes back for another check next week. We tend to be a little freaked out about high blood pressure after Tyler's whole deal!! All four kids saw the dentist. Ailey even had an orthodontist appointment too. We really crammed the appointments in.
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| Mother Son Lunch Date for Crepes! |
We had a ton of snow so we tried to get out and play in it as much as possible:
So beautiful!!
The sun came out and I had to find some open water!! Snow makes me feel so claustrophobic. I need to find open/running water multiple times during the winter to help alleviate those feelings. It's weird but it works. FYI- Reilly told me never to post this pic because we look like two crazy bugs. Well...Two Crazy Bugs it is!! #Kids
We were still cooking and baking and eating up all of the leftover Christmas treats:
Ailey made us some delicious soft pretzels!!
Tyler made us a giant batch of lefse which was supposed to be for New Years Eve but we ate a whole bunch of it before...as well as on New Years. It is SO GOOD!! I love all of Tyler's Norwegian traditions that he shares with us.
New Years Eve was supposed to be spent with my brother Kirk and his family but as that didn't happen we celebrated at home and had a great time (for most of it). We had a delicious dinner of tempura shrimp, salad bar, Reilly's corn dip, lefse, Tyler's amazing cheese platter, and cream puffs for dessert. The cheese platter is our kids favorite part of the holidays. Every year Tyler buys about eight different cheeses from around the world and makes a big gourmet cheese platter. My kids are cheese snobs. They love ripe rich cheeses and the sharper the better. This year the favorite was a fabulous English port wine cheese and the runner up was a super mature and very aged smoked Gouda. My personal favorite was a mustard ale English cheddar. What am I talking about?! They were all fantastic! Tyler does such a great job with his cheese platter!!
Reilly treated us to one of our family's favorite games...Johnson Tries. If you will recall we love the Jenna Tries Instagram account where Jenna tries all kinds of weird junk food. We did this last year with weird foods and then all year we have been constantly snap chatting each other "trying" rando food and beverages. This year it was the "weird beverages" edition. Reilly and Kam ran all over town and purchased all kinds of juices and pop for us to try. We played multiple rounds during dinner. It was awesome and revolting.
Round One:
Elderflower and Rose Lemonade and an Asian Mango and Passion fruit drink.
Round Two:
A Mexican Tamarind soda and a Hawaiian Passion Fruit juice.
Round 3:
Pok Pok Drinking Vinegars. (Let me preface this by saying that I LOVE the drinking vinegars from Pok Pok in Portland so we were VERY excited to find these at Albertsons!!)
Round Four:
Brownie Caramel Cream Root Beer
Round 5:
Cock n' Bull Bitter Orange Soda and Stewart's Key Lime.
Cock n' Bull Bitter Orange tastes like you ate a rotten orange out of the garbage!! And...Kam talks in a strange accent...why...no idea...and he liked it! He's disturbed.
Round Six:
Americana Huckleberry Soda and another Cock n' Bull selection of Ginger Beer which also happened to be diet which only made it more disgusting.
Cock n' Bull Diet Ginger Beer Soda was...hands down... the worst thing we drank!!
Round Seven:
Selections from the Asian Market: Yogu Time Lychee Yogurt Drink and Peach Milkis a Korean Soda. I will also state that Milkis is one of my all-time favorite drinks!! I buy this as a special treat for myself. The vanilla is my favorite and strawberry is my second favorite. We were excited to try the peach.
And this is where things took a turn but I am posting this because it's real. Sometimes our kids act bratty...and they fight...and they aren't supposed to say "Shut Up!" #reality
Round Eight:
Hawaiian Sun Guava Nectar and Mogu Mogu Passion Fruit Flavored Drink that informs you on the bottle that you "Gotta Chew it." Hard pass. I still shiver thinking about the "chews".
As much as I would love to post all the videos I won't...but I will tell you that the worst drinks BY FAR...were the Cock n' Bull drinks both the bitter orange and the ginger. 100% disgusting...with the Yogu Lychee drink close behind. It tasted like rotten milk and lotion and yet still tasted better than the Cock n' Bull drinks! The best was the Caramel Cream Root beer. It tastes like Mormon Family Reunion Homemade Root Beer which is one of the best things ever! The Huckleberry Soda is also fantastic. The Peach Milkis was pretty good. We liked the Grapefruit Drinking Vinegar but hated and I mean HATED the Thai Basil variety. Everything else was either okay or pretty bad. The chews in the Mogu Mogu drink were DISGUSTING but the juice part was good. All in all it was a pretty entertaining dinner!!
The rest of the night we played a ton of games!! More Skipbo, Jenga, Spoons, Bryn's Mouse Trap game, and the new game that Kam got from my mom called Spontuneous! That game turned out to be really fun and a new favorite! But alas...the good times couldn't last. The competitive spirit got out of control during Spoons and ended up in a shouting match with Reilly stomping downstairs in a fury. She went to bed without ringing in the new year. Oh well. Spoons will do that!! If you can't take the heat don't play the game! Such is life. The rest of us had a great time!
We watched the ball drop on Times Square. We tooted our tooters and popped our poppers. We toasted the New Year and banged on pots and pans. We went outside and yelled our welcoming of 2018 and watched the awesome fireworks that were being shot off by our neighbors. All in all, despite a few testy moments, it turned out to be a pretty great New Years Eve.
It is always our tradition to take down our Christmas trees and put away all of our Christmas decorations on New Years Day. It is always a fairly dreary day despite a big crockpot of hot chocolate to drink and queso and chips to keep us going. But it was nice to have everyone there to help (except for Reilly who high tailed it back to her house very early that morning) and the job got done. January is my least favorite month so it ended up being okay that we eased back into it with an extra week before school started although I hope that the school district does things differently next year. On to 2018!
Happy New Year!
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