Pershing Cabin Fun

 We headed up to Payson to spend a few nights in Bella's soon to be in-laws the Pershing's cabin. They are a very generous, kind and fun family. We had a blast. We went on a 6 1/2 mile hike. Stayed up till 1 am playing games and slept in..true cabin living. We are so happy that Bella will be joining such an awesome crew.

Olivia's birthday, 18 again!!

 Olivia turned 19 although she would like to claim she's still 18!! We love this crazy, fun, witty, beautiful woman 💕 She's rocking her first year of college. She's in the Eller Business college at the University of Arizona. She's majoring in both french and business and hopes to do a study abroad in France this summer. This woman is going places!! Happy birthday my Janey twin 🎉🎶🎂

Christmas Eve Christmas Day

 Christmas Eve we had Nana and Papa, Nancy Rains and Sam Pershing over. We played games, at cheese 5 ways, sang songs and watched the Nativity. It was awesome. We got the kids matching PJs. Anna was excited to finally be able to match her sisters! 

Christmas day we went to Barbara and Ron's all the Tucson Howe's were there. It of course was great fun and the dessert table was out of this world!! Unfortunately no pictures.

Nana and Papa wearing their festive sweaters!

Olivia made this yummy Brie.

Christmas break

Christmas snuck up on me like a kid who doesn't know the months in the year. I was living like the 2010's with no Amazon delivery. We had to physically go into stores and buy things the week of Christmas. NEVER. AGAIN. It truly took the joy out of the season stressing if we would find the gifts we wanted to get for the kids and other family members. I did not make Christmas goodies for friends, my hope is to get Valentine presents out...but alas 2021 was another difficult year with covid, masks, concussions, Achilles surgery...life is a rollercoaster. Grateful to have a hot tub to soak in!
 

Holman turns 17!!

 Our sweet little Holman is now 6"2' and not so little anymore!! He is still recovering from his concussion so I'm sure his birthday was kind of a blur. We had grandparents over for cake and pizza on his actual birthday. Then on Sunday we had Georgie and her family over for dinner. He chose cheesey barley soup, bread bowls and eclair cake. Both events were great, honoring one of the best man that I know. Holman is funny, generous, kind and sensitive to people who struggle. He doesn't ask for anything so finding him gifts can be challenging. So grateful I can learn from him and I get to be his mom.

Bella's engaged!!

Bella and Sam joined us for Thanksgiving then they headed to Sam's family cabin for the weekend. Little did Bella know (but I'm sure she was hoping)  Sam had a romantic proposal planned! He took her hiking in the woods and his cousin, aunt and mom were camped out ready to take pictures. They even got a video too!! It was beautiful and we are beyond thrilled to have Sam join the family!! We found out later that Anna made Sam promise to propose on her birthday. They are planning to get married on March 5th. Bella Pershing sounds nice ❤️

 

Anna's 12th birthday

Can't believe this beauty is 12!! We just love our Anna Panna!! Olivia and I gave her pink highlights to celebrate.  She continues to amaze me with her artistic abilities. She is so creative. She is super funny and gets me rolling with her wit. She is very smart (I wish she knew that) and also very tender hearted. Her birthday dinner was cornbread (her favorite), mashed potatoes and chicken tenders. Every birthday Benjamin takes the kids out for Donuts with Dad, or Frost with Father or Pancakes with Pop. She chose to get drinks with dad for her birthday at Starbucks. The lady in front of them paid for their order. There are generous people out in the world! What a lucky thing to happen to lucky charm daughter. Love you Anna more than you will ever know 💞

 

Thanksgiving, November 25th

The Webster family was gracious enough to host Thanksgiving. It was our two families, Nana and Papa,  Sam Pershing, Emma's fiance Josh and the Webster's foreign exchange student from Japan. It was lovely. We ate like kings and celebrated  in Hillary's renovated kitchen. It's always so nice to see the cousins laughing together.

Lindsey made these turkey hats for the Webster family years ago, they are so well made!!

Hillary sporting a mullet. Too funny!

 

Holey shoes

I picked up Parkin to go to the optometrist and afterwards I told him we were going to buy gifts for some elderly people for Christmas. Ever the happy kid, sounds good mom. Then he said hey look at the hole in my shoe... Needless to say we went show shopping too. Never the complainer.

 

Marathon to wheelchair

 Three years ago on November 2nd Benjamin and I ran a marathon. Benjamin got this photo throwback when he was laying in the hospital waiting for his heart procedure....what a difference three years can make. The procedure was supposed to trigger an arrhythmia with a shot of adrenaline. They had it pumping for an hour, no arrhythmia. The doctor was hoping that he could isolate where his heart was misfiring so they could oblate it. No such luck. Benjamin didn't think it was a waste because they changed his heart medication and now they know adrenaline doesn't trigger his arrhythmias. So he can work out with no worries. We have definitely hit our deductible this year!!

Halloween

Anna was Scooby Doo with a group  of her friends. I'm always amazed by her creativity. She made the ears herself. She went to the ward party on Friday night and went to a friend's party on Saturday.

I've been prepping my kinders for weeks on what "The Magic School Bus" is. Their excitement over holidays and spirt days is contagious. Almost as contagious as Benjamin's excitement over being the Magic School Bus. He claimed he had to wear a boot because I didn't pay a parking ticket, but with the Friz no way!

Olivia dressed up as a scarecrow and her friend dressed up as Kim Possible 😁

 

Junior year concussion continues

 Unfortunately Holman kept up the family tradition of getting a concussion junior year. He was involved in a five car collision. A distracted driver ran into a friend of his that he's dating, Georgianna, she got hit at close to 60 mph and she hit Holman, he hit the person in front of him and that driver hit one more car. It was a doozy. Our red truck is a goner. He had plans to graduate early but now he is not supposed to have more than two hours of school a day. Georgie and him are pretty pathetic. At least they have someone who can relate to their pain! They were supposed to go to homecoming together but instead they had a couch date.

Boys go to Mexico!

 Benjamin and the boys got to go to Mexico with President Curtis! They had a fun time playing tennis, golf, swimming in the resort pool and of course the ocean. Benjamin still has his boot, but managed to have a great time too!

Fall break just for me...

I was the only one that had Fall break this week. The boys have it the coming week and Anna just has two days. I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. In life sometimes that's what you need but apparently I just felt extremely lazy. I did some housework and I did some schoolwork. But it was a bit of a let down. Benjamin and the boys went to Mexico on Saturday so the girls and I went shopping for family picture outfits. It's an exhaustive process so we had to replenish and the Tucson famous TripleT Truckstop. It's a culinary experience worth ones time. The servings are ample, desserts are huge and the variety on the menu is impressive. Truly the highlight of my week off!

 

Anniversary bust

23 years of marriage has taught me 1) Marriage is a leap of faith. There are no guarantees. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Nobody knows the dance you do 2) sometimes you laugh and sometimes you cry, do it together 3) family traditions no matter how small or silly create stability children/ adults depend on 4) Find a common goal and dream it together. This brings me to my last lesson. When your husband tells you the softball championship game is on the first night of your anniversary getaway and that the team is one player short but he's ok with missing it say..ok. If you say, "no stay and play! We'll leave after" it might ruin the blessed weekend. Witnessing him rupture his achilles heel on the last inning was gut wrenching, almost as hard as hearing your angel orthopedic surgeon tell you surgery is recommended and absolutely no exercise for the next 6 months.When the weekend is shot, when setbacks, disappoints and crazy happens...5) get DQ

 

September 15th mud pit pool!!

 The pool was such a mess from the flooding. Frogs galore and algae. The only thing we could do was drain it and hope the monsoon season was truly over. We were able to pump most of it out but the bottom of the pool had a layer of sludge that we had bucket and wheel barrel out. At the end we had to shop vac out. It was stinky 😁We were covered in slime and stink!