2019 In Review

Big Dates For The Smith Family In 2019

1/ 6 Charles turned 13 which meant we now had 2 teens in the house 

1/13 Elisa visited her mom in WA

4/4 Elisabeth made high school cheer

4/9 Charles had weekly baseball games. Fall he played basketball.

4/29 Jane was the speech festival finalist for her classroom.

5/21 Nora had a tumbling performance.

6/26 Drove to Oregon to visit family. While there, we also made a day trip to Redwood forest. It was Scott and the kids first time visiting California. 

7/4 Family reunion in Idaho with Elisa’s family.

7/18 Elisabeth got her drivers’ permit.

7/25 Scott & Elisa celebrated 16 years of marriage in Park City, riding horses & doing ziplines. 

8/17 Elisa made a weekend trip to WA to visit her mom and they stayed in the San Juan Islands.

9/7 Scott did a sprint triathlon. 

9/14 Elisa ran the Cottonwood Canyon Marathon and qualified for Boston.

9/20-21  Salt to Saint Relay- Scott did a cycling relay race with some friends. He took a pretty bad fall, but thank goodness he was wearing a helmet because it got really beat up. 

9/29 Elisa led her 4th primary program (children’s choir at church).

10/18 Grandma and Grandpa Smith came for a visit.

10/19 Annabelle started soccer again, and Scott coached.

11/6- Elisa’s mom passed away. Elisa and all her siblings were there with her mom who had struggled with pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor cancer for 10 years. 

11/16 Jane had her first gymnastics showcase.

11/22 Charles chipped his two front teeth...they were repaired immediately, but he will one day need a crown or two, and possibly a root canal. 

Books Read:

1. Washington: A Life by Ron Chenrow (Even though I finished it this year, I started this 2 years ago. It's massive and I was listening to it on audible) @
2. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
3. Daring Greatly by Brene Brown @
4. Mindset by Carol S Dweck @
5. Clean and Lean by Dr Ian Smith
6. Body Love by Kelly LeVeque
7. Beauty by Robin McKinley
8. The Last Word by Samantha Hastings
9. Promises and Primroses by Josi Kilpack @
10. The Broken Road by Richard Paul Evans @
11. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
12. The Truth About Miss Ashbourne by Joanna Barker
13. Educated by Tara Westover
14. The Lincoln Hypothesis by Timothy Ballard
15. The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel Siegel
16. Angel by Danielle Carriere
17. Girl Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis @
18. Russell M Nelson: Father, Surgeon, Apostle by Spencer J. Condie
19. Twelve Days of Christmas by Debbie Macomber
20. Book of Mormon

@= audible

My goal for this year is to finish 24 books, or about 2 per month.

Recitals, Suttons Visit, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve Celebrations

December is always a busy month with getting ready for Christmas, end of term school items, and holiday concerts and recitals. 

 On the 17th, Scott's sister Krissy and her family flew in from North Carolina and stayed with us through Christmas. They took off again on the 27th. We enjoyed spending time with their family, and having little ones around again...it's been a long time since we've had little ones at home.

 Charles on a Deacon's temple trip.

 Charles also finished up his Eagle project and got all his papers turned in. We're still waiting to hear back about when his court of honor will be. He did his eagle project with Bear-O-Care, a nonprofit that is a daycare for adults with severe disabilities.

 I finally put some family pictures up on our walls now that we've been in this house for over 3 years! These are hung in the basement and you see it just as you walk down the stairs. I actually hung them about a month before, but forgot to take a picture of it. It took me a couple of hours to get them all hung fairly evenly. 

 The evening of December 23rd, Krissy's family took our family ice skating at outdoor rink near by, as a Christmas gift. We LOVE ice skating.

 Wade stayed at home with baby Wade, but Ruth and Pierson joined us. It was tricky as they're young, but they did good and held out for about an hour.

 This employee was dressed up just like Buddy the Elf! Loved it! I told Scott he should get an outfit like this, but he didn't seem to like that idea, lol.

 Scott and I prepared dinner on Christmas Eve, and Krissy and Wade did dinner Christmas day. We had strombolli and salad on Christmas Eve and Ham and Cheese Sliders on Christmas Day. Everything was delicious!

 Christmas Eve we had sugar cookies(I had frozen leftovers from our party) and this Italian sweetbread, Pandoro.

 When you slice it horizontally it's shaped like a star; a Christmas dessert.

 Christmas Eve, as always, we acted out the nativity and sang carols throughout.

 Christmas morning people can open their stockings whenever (the young girls opened theirs very early in the morning) and then once everyone is up, the kids all took turns opening gifts. This year we told them no earlier than 7am.

 When my mom passed away, she had a ukele that I was able to secretly bring home and then I gifted it to the family, from her, on Christmas. Elisabeth had been asking for one for Christmas, so she was particularly pleased and has been playing on it regularly since.

 Annabelle, Charles and Scott have been playing on it too sometimes.

 After the family left, one morning Jane and Nora wanted to go shopping with their Christmas money. So we went out for a couple of hours, and we got lunch at Cafe Rio as well, which is always a big hit.

Here's Nora outside of Target; she wanted to pose for a picture. 

 New Year's Eve(day), our dear friend Stacey (kinda like a stand-in grandma to our kids) took me and the kids to see the new Frozen 2 movie. And all the kids were super excited that she got them concession food...because mom NEVER does that! I rarely take them to the movies in the first place  because it's so dang expensive, and I just can't bear to pay even more for extremely overpriced food. But they all LOVED it and it made for a wonderful start to their New Year's Eve.

That evening Elisabeth and Charles were out with friends, Annabelle was with friends until 10, and we stayed up with the girls (You have to when you're waiting for kids to get home and to pick them up) and played games.

Christmas Activities and No-Sugar Challenge

Once we hit December, we've had many Christmas activities including a ward Christmas Breakfast at the church, 

 printing out and sending Christmas cards,

baking lots and lots of treats and cookies for our Christmas Open House,

I literally baked something every day for about 5 days before the party. I made a huge batch of sugar cookie dough and frosting early on in the week, we made the pretzels several days before, then chocolate cookies with candy cane kisses, and candy cane cookies with chocolate junior mint centers, we baked and frosted the sugar cookies (sugar cookies take the most time), and the day of we made candy cane popcorn. 

We also had some appetizers...veggies, 5 layer dip and chips, baked brie with crackers and apple slices, taquitos, and jalapeno poppers. We had SO many leftovers. I planned to have some so that we could have them out for Elisabeth's piano recital she puts on for her students, which was the following day (glad we planned it that way). But we had way more than we needed, even with the recital. I froze a couple dozen sugar cookies, and we had the kids bring plates of treats to teachers, friends etc. It all worked out.  

For the recital, we had about 32 seats, and we filled them all, and that was with the OwYoungs not being able to make it. Elisabeth is planning to add 2 more students at the new year, so we may need to move her recitals over to the church. 

During all this, Annabelle, Nora and I did a no-sugar challenge...well, we could still have one treat a week, and an extra during our open house and on Thanksgiving. We did this from November 18th through December 18th. I'm glad we did, because it helped us to not over indulge too much over the holidays. This was our treat one week: me- popcorn with DelishFish gummies, and Annabelle-chocolate chip cookie.

 We love Saige; we've been neighbors for 6 or 7 years...we were neighbors in our previous neighborhood, and again now. Saige is 10 and has a type of seizure disorder and she has special needs. She'll let us curl her hair for special occasions (it takes a while and she doesn't have the patience to let her mama help), and she was sitting with us at church for a couple of years, though lately she's been staying home. We love spending time with Saige.

 And a couple of other random pictures from the beginning/middle of December:
7-year-old Nora cooking eggs,

 me shopping for a winter coat (my zipper broke on my last coat, last year),

 and me after a sweaty workout. I sweat a lot during most of my workouts. I love to work hard and get stronger so I do it most every day, minus Sunday.