Reindeer Games

We opted to start Christmas morning by opening presents at our house before going over to Mimi and Grumpa's house. The kids woke up at a sane hour and it was nice not having to make the kids wait for a big group to wake up and assemble. We devoured the classic pull-aparts and did a bit of extra gift swapping.

 Max majorly enhanced our Christmas Day celebrations by introducing "Reindeer Games," a series of Christmas themed challenges for three teams captained by the three kids. It was SO FUN.  

First up: Unwrapping boxes with oven mitts on hands

The Shiny Nose Challenge- we put vaseline on our noses then transferred cotton circles from one bowl to another. It took my teammates a while to tell me that the competition used creative means to finish in a crazy short time. I should have thought to use my beard as velcro or breathe in. 

Attempting to stay in the square while marching in time with the music

We were shocked that Isaac was absolutely KILLING it at scooping marshmallows while blindfolded until we realized he was peeking the whole time. 

The challenge was to see how many candles you could blow out while saying "Merry Christmas" as forcefully as possible. Blake blew us away.

Reindeer hooves 

Team streamer pull

The Cup of Cheer- I have no clue how Morgan drank that water so fast. I don't understand the physics of it. 

Max said "the next game will be messy" and Blake IMMEDIATELY stripped his shirt off like he was just waiting for an excuse to do so.

The snow shovel- we had to scoop up flour in a card in our mouths and dump it into a bowl. In the grown-up round, we had to do it in a 3 person relay race. You have to hold your breath to avoid blowing all the flour off your card. We were doing great until one person laughed, and we all ended up covered in flour.

We tied marshmallows to string that went over a rope and down to the challenger's ankles. They had to lift their feet to get the marshmallows to lower down so that they could try to grab them with their mouths.

Blake got so aggressive with this one with no success whatsoever

Annie got all tuckered out and fell asleep by the fireplace at the end of the night

This was one of my favorite Christmas Days that we have ever experienced!

We got to hang out for one more day after Christmas. The big hit of the year was a cardboard construction kit. The kids made quite the elaborate fort that eventually included multiple rooms with connecting tunnels. Isaac swears that food tastes better in the fort and opted to eat his dinner there by himself a few times. 

The Bloods Stink at Christmas

Much to Aaron's dismay, I started setting up the tree while people were still in town on the day after Thanksgiving. 

 

Babies and twinkling lights <3

How cute is this winter baby?!?

Annie was a total Christmas Elf in both fashion and willingness to help set up the tree

Celery arm is still going strong

Mimi was a powerhouse at the interfaith Creche Festival this year! We got to pitch in helping sand and stain lots of display stands. Mom lured me over to help in the evening by letting me talk her and Breezy's ears off about my predictions for the soon-to-be-released Stormlight Archive #5 book. It was a beautiful event!

To cap off a great night, I got to hear my mama sing "In the Bleak Midwinter."

Next up was our ward Christmas party, featuring a yummy dinner, cookie decorations, games, and a Santa photo op. 

Isaac hugs everyone these days. I'm honestly surprised he wasn't trying to smooch Santa as well. 

Then the Johnsons started trickling into town! Blake, Clio, Max, and Morgan stayed at my Parent's house and Aunt Trisha stayed with us. Blake was here for about a week before the rest of the people rolled in. We had many great jam sessions, with the most memorable being when he and Breezy wrote a lovely song called "The Bloods Stink at Christmas."

Hot tubbing and polar plunging were frequent activities over the break! Blake won the contest of least audible reaction to the cold. The rest of us whimpered. 

Mimi reading the kids "The Mitton." Annie is pondering how any fabric could stretch enough to fit a bear. 

 

The kids always love exploring the Town Hall lights in the evenings. Isaac thought that this big walk-in ornament was a Liahona. 

Elliot is perfecting the art of the lounge

The dads catching a little siesta

The lad being cute when he was supposed to be taking a siesta. I thought that napping under the tree was a cute idea, but the lights were too fascinating so we had to relocate him. 

Isaac and Trisha hit it off this year

Christmas Eve Fondue! This picture features Blake being #1, Papa doing an interesting dance move, Morgan growing a hand out of her head, and Elliot being a bowl of cheese. 

Papa loved having some baby bonding time

Elliot treated us to a shadowbox nativity play with Mimi narrating 

We ended Christmas Eve with a sing-a-long with Blake on guitar, me on viola, and Breezy on her new autoharp until she got tired of Blake making her memorize his altered chord progressions on the fly. 

Kimberly Ann and Annie Kimberly sung their hearts out.

Elliot Creations

One of my favorite things about Elliot is that he is always making stuff. He will look at a box and have an impulse to create a functioning latch lock into the hatch he cuts into it, or spend hours making card games out of index cards. Here's some of my recent favorites. 

Play dough fortune cookie (given to me)

This big box was a robot, a reading nook, and a stairs toboggan 

Building some robots

Elliot has gotten really into programming video games. He's made a dice simulator, a clicker game, a platformer game, and a 3-D game with Aaron.

He made up a game with his cousin Aaron called squishy defense that involves moving a lot of squishy toys around and tracking their stats. He programmed himself a random move generator in Scratch so that he can have someone to play against when Aaron is tragically on the other side of the country. 

Elliot was out of screen time for the day, so he made himself some detailed notes for the following day. Pages like this give me mad scientist vibes.

He invents a lot of 1 player games to entertain himself. 

He figured out how to make these origami triangles that fit on your fingertips. Then he colored them to look like pizza slices. Then he made a game with them. Then he made this cryptic guide that only he can decipher. 

Here's a whiteboard he made in his pre-laminator era. There was a piece of white paper with tape over it on the other side. The thing that makes this a very Elliot creation is that list of uses on the back, which include dry erase board, clipboard, fan, frisbee, and marker holder. 

I'm pretty sure this was him keeping records about MTG decks

I love looking through Elliot's folder that he brings home from school because he has the best doodles. This was on the back of a spelling test.

This hat has a ball made of crumbled paper inside. There are four game modes, and a section on each edge of the origami hat/cup to record the high score for each mode. It's all made from a single piece of paper!

Goober mode activated

This school picture cracks me up. 

Elliot is always coming up with something cool for us to look at! What will he think of next?

Elliot Turns 10

Elliot the Great is now into his double digits! I was going to write that I can't believe it, but that's not true. I think I have consistently treated Elliot as older than he is because of how bright and independent he is.  He's a great kid and a huge source of joy in my life. 

Instead of a birthday party, Elliot decided on a family trip to the Great Wolf Lodge to celebrate this bigger birthday. It was a great choice!

We checked the kids out of school early on the Friday before his birthday to drive up to the waterpark in Scottsdale. We got to spend Friday and Saturday in the waterpark and slept there Friday night. Mimi came along to enhance the fun and take very helpful shifts taking care of Felix. Mimi is the queen of the lazy river!

Annie and Elliot were both tall enough to do all the rides, and they did all of them- even the "Wolf Tail" where you stand on a trap door that drops you into a steep and speedy tube ride! I love watching my kids be brave.

Here's a video of Elliot on the Wolf Tail. We were riding slides for hours and didn't get bored of it. 

Ye Old Wave Pool

Felix did great napping in his stroller or in the towel cabanas that Mimi made for him. 

Isaac loved the one tube ride he was big enough for and happily spent hours by himself in the kiddie slide area. Isaac is such a happy kid. He's happy playing by himself but will also stroll up to the lifeguards or other kids in the area and start chatting their ears off. 

We had a crazy surprise- my cousin Amy Lacy and her family were randomly at the Great Wolf Lodge overlapping with us! They have a daughter around Annie's age. Naturally they hit it off, and Annie was glad to have a buddy to play with. I love having Johnson cousins everywhere!

There was a Santa photo op in the lobby. The birthday boy was not too into it.

Elliot's actual birthday fell on a Friday which happened to be the ward Christmas party. He didn't want to miss that, which is why we did Great Wolf Lodge the previous weekend. He invited some friends over to play video games between school and the Christmas party on his birthday. He opted for Reeses Cheesecake for his birthday cake for family dinner on Sunday. 

Elliot has been doing a lot of growing up lately. He's increasingly responsible, and spends less time pestering his younger siblings. He is incredibly sweet with Baby Felix, and is quick with witty remarks and victory dances. He's silly and competent. He's a great guy!

Winter Wonderland

Decembers in Arizona are so pleasant. It's a great time to be outside in the desert. The Coes were visiting family in the Phoenix area and said they could come down for a day trip, so we met them in Honeybee Canyon. Elliot begs to go there frequently, but it is just far enough away to keep us from going frequently. I'm glad we had the Coes as an excuse to get up there!

This huge stick was very fun, but eventually had to be confiscated due to contention and lack of control by the younger kids trying to lug it around. 

A highlight was when Walter told Wyatt (who is the pickiest kid I have ever met) that he would give him money if he ate an ant. He popped it right in his mouth and downed it!

The following week, we spent the afternoon in Saguaro national park. A highlight was that I recognized Ranger Freddy at the visitor's center. He manages the Park's Instagram account, which is always full of great info about the local flora and fauna. I got to chat with him for a bit, and he gave me some free NP stickers! It was a true brush with celebrity for me.

In other news, these two goons moved in with us! They moved their stuff in the day before heading to Utah for Christmas, so it feels like they moved in at the beginning of January. We had to petition them to get them to move over from Stephen and Claudia's house for the second half of their one year stay in AZ. Unfortunately, Joanna had to take off for 10 weeks for a rotation in West Virginia right after they moved in.