On Christmas Eve, we gathered for Plowman family dinner at Biz's and Jeff's home in West Bountiful. We had all the fixings for a Christmas dinner, including ham, candied yams, funeral potatoes, charcuterie, meatballs, and other goodies.
Dinner was followed by our annual Christmas story pageant. The niblings enthusiastically dressed up as shepherds, wise men, angels, stable animals, and of course Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. In fact, six-year-old Tanner got a little too into the part of playing the baby, seen here resting (and cooing?) in the lap of his three-year-old sister Sadie, who portrayed Mary:
As always, the kids had a wonderful time taking part. As part of the pageant, we continued the family tradition of listening to Dad's recording of the Christmas story as found in chapter of the gospel of St. Luke.
Perhaps we began a new tradition by also playing a recording of Mom reading The Monster at the End of This Book, a family favorite since my siblings and I were very young, while Biz turned the pages in the story. We collectively felt her loss rather acutely during this holiday season and on this particular night, too, but I think this moment helped many of us to feel she wasn't really that far away from us.
In fact, it gives me a great deal of comfort to think that if she weren't already one of the angels who sang at the birth of the Christ child 2,000+ years ago that she is one of those angels singing His praises now.
Next came the exchanging of gifts. The niblings drew names from a hat to purchase gifts for each other, while my siblings and I did the same for each couple in the family. This way, everybody got to open at least one thing. Sadie was especially grateful for and protective of her Frozen action figure set:
Then followed a few family games, including a new one, "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Cup," that Biz borrowed from the Johnson Files, one of our favorite Instagram accounts. You had to be there to grasp what exactly this involved—but it was fun for all who played.
Christmas Day was, well, a rather lazy day at our house. Santa Claus came and left goodies, and JB and I exchanged gifts, too. My wife is very thoughtful when it comes to this sort of thing. One of my favorite presents was this T-shirt, based on The Lord of the Rings book/film series:
Hopefully, your Christmas was a good one spent with your own loved ones, too. If not, here's hoping for better times ahead and a better year for us all in 2024.
After a few conflicts, family vacations, and more than one cancellation over the past few months, we were finally able to synchronize schedules to take 10-year-old Christian and his brother, seven-year-old Graham, out for their birthday outings with Fun Aunt and Uncle. They chose to go up to Boondocks in Kaysville.
Upon arrival, we divided up. JB took Christian mini golfing, while I took Graham to the arcade. Graham got right to work, winning two large bouncy balls from The Claw:
He wanted to go back to try to win a third one, but I legit thought we didn't have enough room in the car for another one for the trip home (they took up quite a bit of space).
Also, Skee-ball.
Meanwhile, JB and Christian had a great time golfing. Christian even scored a hole-in-one on one of the holes.
On our way home, we stopped by Swig for treats, because a trip out with us comes with that extra benefit, too. We had another wonderful afternoon with the niblings.
On Saturday, we took our 11-year-old nephew Jake out to Nickelmania for his annual birthday outing with his favorite Fun Aunt and Uncle. As a bonus, his 9-year-old cousin and good buddy Christian joined us for the occasion.
Though we played a few of the classics (Pac-Man and whatnot), Jake was most interested in accumulating tickets to redeem for a number of tchotchkes and knickknacks. And we always do what the birthday kid wants (within reason). So, that's what we did.
As you can see from the picture, they actually shared our ticket total 50/50 and were spoiled with a lot of good stuff.
On Saturday, it was our nephew Ike's turn for a birthday outing with his favorite Fun Aunt and Uncle. This incredible little five-year-old's birthday is on October 25, and, nearly two months later, we finally were able to coordinate our respective schedules to go out to Nickelmania. Biz and Kate joined us for the occasion.
Ike is a big fan of driving/racing games, and he chose a number of those kinds of games (car, motorcycle, snowmobile, etc.) to play. We also pooled our collective efforts and tickets to get the kids some goodies and swag when it was time to check out.
All told, it was another memorable Saturday at one of our favorite places in Utah.
Our niece Kate's sixth birthday occurred a few weeks ago. For her birthday this year, we were able to arrange for an outing with her in much less time than we did ... because, you know, the Pandemic That Shall Not Be Named.
At the store, Kate picked out a LEGO set. We took her and it to our house to build the set together.
Here's before:
It had been too many years since I last built anything LEGO. Fortunately, Kate has been doing a lot of LEGO building and understood the directions very quickly. We may be a bit biased, but she's one of the smartest six-year-olds we know, and she is great company for a Saturday afternoon.
