Chad put together an amazing scavenger hunt for the Parry side of the family. He spent hours working on it after people showed interest in the puzzle he did for my birthday. Elisa did a lot of it too but she just likes to give me the credit. I think this tradition is going to grow.

Our final gift was a script, set and supplies to make puppets for a Christmas play. People got way more into creating their puppets than I expected and we got some great video footage of the chaotic production.

Daniel spent Christmas Eve doing our last minute Christmas shopping for my family. He is such a good sport. Oddly enough the rocket supplies we sent him out to get for my dad ended up being one of the gifts Chad received from his parents. David, Jason, Chad and I put together some pretty impressive contraptions. We didn’t do the rocket from the kit because I like building disposable rockets out of spaghetti and cardboard instead. David got even more creative and built a rocket-engine-powered pinwheel.

This was my first Christmas celebrating in Idaho. Santa Claus came to Christmas Eve dinner and I was way more giddy than half the kids there. I love Santa! Elisa’s excitement helped the kids get over their stage fright. It was nice getting together with family. I am so glad we are close enough to take advantage of the family celebrations.

Chad went back to Salt Lake to work for the first half of the week before New Years. Eden and I stuck around with cousins and got sick. When Eden’s nose is running there is no reason to ever put on clean clothes. Ever.

The day everyone left for home it began to snow. It was beautiful. I was bummed that I didn’t feel well enough to get out and play in it. Honestly it was nice to snuggle up on the couch and read a book.

I got a stomach flu last week. I had to stay home for a couple days. Ugh. It’s better than the real flu though. Eden and Elisa didn’t pick it up, thankfully. It’s always nice to have Chad home, even if he is sick.

Eden discovered that her favorite food is egg nog. She drank my entire glass on Friday night. She was practically hyperventilating she was so excited. We discovered we need to limit her intake. A half hour later we were at IHOP to celebrate my birthday. (We’re IHOP fans, OK?) All of a sudden Eden lost all her egg nog. 4 times. Good thing we weren’t at a posh restaurant, right? Or at home! It turns out that Eden wasn’t sick though. She had just lost her first gallon challenge. Surprisingly, the next night she still hyperventilated the same way when she was in the same room with egg nog. The second time we cut her off after half a glass.

My birthday was on Friday. Elisa made me a treasure hunt through the apartment. I didn’t have to keep asking for hints like last year, which is good. I was still pretty beat from being sick, so it was nice to have a laid-back night.

Elisa and I went to Park City on Saturday. Thanks JB and Hillary for watching Eden all morning! Elisa did great on her skis. She learned to turn again and went pretty fast all morning. The biggest success was that it wasn’t scary or freezing. That will make it easy to return to the mountain another day. It was scary, but I didn’t think I was going to die. 🙂

Eden is always trying to run back and forth across the church pews. She keeps playing with the families that sit behind us. Sometimes she asks them for a hug, so they pull her over onto their bench and play with her for awhile. For us it ends up being a pretty low maintenance meeting, because someone else is always entertaining her.

Two weeks ago a lady handed Eden a vial of hand sanitizer. About three quarters of a second later I saw her snatch it back away. Later she whispered to me, “As soon as I gave her the hand sanitizer, she went for the cap and started twisting it off. How did she even know what a cap was?” Yep, Eden likes caps.

Later on in the meeting she went to play with a man on the opposite end of the bench. He saw her staring at his smartphone. So he put it in its case and snapped it shut, and handed it to her. Eden didn’t hesitate. She undid the snap, flipped open the bifold, grabbed the phone, and started pressing buttons. Later he said, “She went right for those buttons, didn’t she?” Yep, Eden likes buttons.