Christmas

Our favorite pandemic Christmas activity was visiting town hall. They put all the decorations up even though the Christmas parade was cancelled. We spent several evenings hanging out in this social distanced winter wonderland. 

A big ol' tree

I loved walking around the lights just as much as the kids did

Santa's sleigh. It's the real one for sure. 

Now for a little photo shoot of my Christmas babies by the tree

This year was defined by a dozens of Christmas crafts hung on our tree or diligently wrapped as gifts by Elliot. Pretty much everyone got at least a paper heart from Elliot. Annie got multiple magic wands and pictures of herself and cats. Her favorite things!

Gingerbread house time! Thanks Megan!

Timmy's Baby Yoda Christmas card was the best we have ever received 

The Nativity! Mary and Joseph made a grand entrance on their elephant turned donkey.

Baby Jesus has never been cuter

Angels and a shepherd

I think Jacob was a sheep?

Christmas sing-a-long! I absolutely love Christmas music. 

Elliot with his sweet stack o' gifts on Christmas morning

Testing out the new push up handles with daddy. This baby is going to be swoll!

6 Year Old Elliot!

Elliot had a great birthday! His real birthday fell on a Sunday this year, so we had him open some of his presents a day early. 

Just Dance for the Nintendo Switch! We have been watching YouTube videos and dancing along for months now. Having the actual game is way more fun. 

Elliot requested a strawberry cake this year. My little artist enjoyed decorating it almost as much as eating it.

Leftover frosting from gingerbread houses? Throw it on the top!

The cousins gifted him a giant thing of glow sticks to fuel the ultimate dance party

Other gifts included a construction paper craft book with enough paper to last him several years from Mimi. And silly scissors. Needless to say, we had a very happy boy!

 Elliot is continually surprising me with how bright he is. The other day at the park he had to go to timeout. I hauled him to a park bench, and he hit me. So, the time out got extended to 6 minutes. He got quiet for a bit and then said, "That is 360 seconds! That's WAY too long!" I asked him how the heck he knew that, and he said "60 times 3 is 180, and 180 plus 180 is 360." What kind of kindergartener can do that kind of math? As a bonus, the math calmed him right down. Elliot also LOVES comic books and spends an hour or so reading before bed every night. We took out the lightbulbs and put a lamp on a timer in his room to try and stop him from staying up so late reading. He also loves to create things. For my birthday, he randomly decided to make a card that spelled out "Happy Birthday Mom" with leaves from our backyard taped to a piece of paper. He's always making little creations like that for people - such a sweet boy!

Family Time

It was awesome having Jonny and Megan's family here for 3 weeks! We were supposed to only get them for 1, but with the whole Covid thing they ended up spending the 2 weeks they were supposed to be staying with Megan's parents at our house instead. 

I looked out the window and what did I see? Seth and Catherine on the wall by the tree!

We were outside more than I have ever been outside in a single month. We were outside every day for long periods of time. There wasn't much else to do with Covid closing everything, and near the end of December it was the only way we felt comfortable meeting up with Megan's parents, Stephen and Claudia, and Mary's family when they came down. We made multiple trips to Madera canyon and did all the walks around Rancho- to the dirt bike arena, the tree house, around the lake, and to the copycat monster that lives in the drainage pipe (that last one was a much bigger hit than I anticipated). 

Jonny with an armful of babies at the field

Megan introduced us to Honeybee Canyon. It is up in Oro Valley and a 40  minute drive, but it was worth it for the awesome rock climbing. 

I assume this must have been a dam back in the day

Elliot is getting brave these days!

Many a game were played. Megan introduced us to some new great ones like Crypto and Skyjo.

There were always plenty of kitchen helpers

Our Walmart grocery pickup randomly included this impossible meat. We didn't order it. We did side by side taste testing with ground beef for our Christmas Eve tacos. The fake meat tasted great but was less greasy than the ground beef, so it stuck to the pan more. It was a fun experiment!

Back outside, this time in Saguaro National Park. We had to take the twins to show them some Big Cactus. We wore masks most of the time but did take them off when we were the only ones on the trail. 

These two are something else. They would just pace around while playing out some tower defense video game in their heads. They would say things like "on level one the blaster shoots one bullet per second, but then on level four it upgrades to five bullets per second." They are just totally on the same wavelength!

Slapping out some sandwiches and tortilla wraps for the Blood Crew

We spent an afternoon playing field games on the soccer field. Activities included three legged races, bring home the bacon, and picking tiny cactus needles out of Seth's thigh because Catherine put a prickly pear fruit into his pocket. 

The kind of dinner that has a lot of fun but very little eating.

I'm pretty sure this was the night that we jointly celebrated our anniversaries by ordering Kababeque takeout while feeding pastaroni to the kids. There is no casting pearls before swine in this household. 

Back to Madera Canyon, this time with the twins and Claudia's newly released from quarantine family!

Jacob rocking the rock slide. There are some perks to having the stream all dried up. 

Ethan and Annie "napping"

 One of the best parts of the holidays for me was that I got to spend a lot of time nerding out about the Stormlight Archive with Jonny and Megan. Brandon Sanderson is my favorite author, and he came out with a new book in November. Jonny was starting the series, and Megan finished the new book ahead of me. I read a lot, but this book series is the first that has got me diving into fan theories. It was really nice having a book club!

How Covid Stole Christmas

 Let me start off by saying that we did have a lovely Christmas. It just wasn't at all the Christmas we were intending to have. 

The original plan made back during the summer was that all of the Bloods were going to come to Arizona for Christmas. ALL of them. Like 40 people. It was going to be the first time that everyone has been together for maybe a decade what with people going on missions and having babies. Not wanting to miss out on a good time, my parents and Breezy were going to come out too. Covid was trending down when we made these plans, and we were hopeful that things would be pretty safe here during the winter. Spreadsheets were made figuring out where everyone was going to sleep, and Claudia and I had a whole list of mostly outdoor fun activities we could do. I was secretly hoping to convince Mom & Dad Blood to move out to a nice one story house out here now that they don't have any kids in West Virginia.   

Right after Thanksgiving, Stephen tested positive for Covid. This was 3 days after he had been in our house for me to give him a haircut, so we assumed we were all exposed. Stephen quarantined himself in his room for 10 days and the rest of his family and my family went to get tested. To our relief, we all got negative results. Stephen's quarantine ended and Jonny's family flew out.  Happy times were here again... until Claudia got sick. She went and got tested a second time only a few days after her first test, and that one came back negative. Now Claudia's house (where Mom & Dad Blood and Daniel's families were supposed to stay) was a red zone, and my family and Jonny's were exposed too. Everyone else cancelled their flights (Except for Jacob and Joanna who couldn't), and we got to do another delightful round of Covid testing. 

For posterity... Covid tests are NOT FUN. They stick a swab WAY too far up your nose. I have now had 4 of these fun little tests. 

Round 2 of testing was on December 21. Apparently there was a massive backlog of tests that week because only 3 of the kids got back their results. Megan had some cold symptoms, so we really wanted to get her results. Unfortunately, they didn't end up coming until they had already flown back to Maryland. This was extra unfortunate because they were hoping to spend a lot of time with her parents who live in Oro Valley. Her Mom is going through radiation for cancer, so they wanted to be extra careful. We ended up having Megan's parents hang out in our backyard on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and we met them outside at Honeybee Canyon and Madera Canyon a few times. It was far from ideal, and I felt awful not being able to be a good host to them but didn't want to be the facilitator of an outbreak. 

The constant decision making was just excruciating. When can we start doing stuff with Stephen and Claudia's family again? Do we need to wear masks if we are outside? Do we make Megan wear a mask 24/7 inside our house since we never got those darn test results, and she might have Covid? Which day should the 10 day quarantine start on? It was also hard seeing how disappointed my mom was that she couldn't be out here. It was the smallest Christmas she has ever had and the first one with no kids. 

That said, there were definitely things I loved about this Christmas. I loved that we had Jonny's family and the twins with us. It was enough people to feel like a party with much less chaos than the full Blood crew. Not that I don't like that too, but it was nice having it be a little smaller. I liked that I had better conversations with the twins. They tend to get overpowered when everyone is together. I got to go on a run with Joanna that just felt great (even if I was exhausted for the rest of the day- all the Bloods are freaking gazelles!) 

I was able to spend more time thinking about how I am so grateful to have a family that I so genuinely enjoy being around. Having all the usual ward and community events cancelled this year made me more grateful with what I usually have in that department and has me motivated to try to re-establish connections with friends that I haven't seen since the pandemic started.  

Elliot's Code of Laws and Other Antics

Elliot laid out an in depth code of laws regarding his bedroom which was codified in a chain of index cards taped to his door handle. A translation of my favorite section reads "Only kids allowed no grownups allowed. This all does not matter at night." That last little loophole was added so that I could tuck him in at night. 

A ghost tapping your head- the ultimate punishment! 

Elliot's spongebob art exhibit, inspired by a comic book we checked out from the library

Aaron and the kids spent a Saturday helping Stephen dig holes for his new fruit trees (avocado, peach, and two mango!) They tried wetting the ground to make it easier to dig. Spoiler: It was still not easy to dig. Stephen eventually borrowed a jackhammer. Anyway, the kids found out that they could make awesome silhouettes on the wall by spraying each other with water.  

These two kids often request to eat lunch outside like a picnic.

Yummy yummy pomegranates! We got maybe 20 this year. All the time spent nurturing our fruit trees would make it hard to ever leave this house. 

Non-newtonian fluids + small children = long clean up times. But the kids had a blast so there's that. 

We bought a set of resistance bands! I love them. We keep it anchored to the bottom of our bedroom door, and both Aaron and I do some reps as part of our bedroom routine.