December 2021 Part 9: The Everyday Haps

And now, for the monthly ordinary/not so ordinary haps:

I left my camera on the couch. I knew I shouldn't have been lazy about it, but I was tired. I found it on the floor. I couldn't get the lens cap off, so I ended up needing to unscrew the filter to get the cap off and assess the damage. This is what I found:  

Thankfully it was just a filter that broke, but I also had to order a new lens cap. Learn from my mistake: don't be too lazy to take care of your stuff! 

The kids played games together. 

Nana and Papa came for a visit. 

Gabe had his turn for the spotlight at school, so we picked out photos and sent them to CVS for printing. We picked up a poster board, and I had big plans to make it look really good. Later, I was upstairs working on my computer, and I could hear him down in the kitchen moving papers around. I just knew that he was working on his poster, but I was trying to finish the lesson or whatever I was working on, hoping that he didn't do too much damage. He announced he finished his poster, and I must admit that I loved how it turned out and I love that he did it all by himself. 

We got our kids vaccinated for Covid-19. They were all really brave. I confess I have mixed feelings about this, but Brian really felt the urge to do it, so there we were. 

We set up our old apartment 4' tree in the office. The lights needed to be replaced, so the kids picked blue ones. I have mixed feelings about this as well. 

We finally got to go to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with Dustin & Serene and Scooby & Jon. It was amazing! 

Brian caught our farewell group hug on camera. 

(left to right: Scooby, Serene, Me). 

Gracie continued to sleep through most of the days. 

We had dog piles. 

I went with Michael on his field trip to the Natural History Museum at the U. 

We found out that he's taller than some of those mummies. 

Brian packed my lunch for the field trip: 

We, of course, continued to be true blue BYU fans. 

Gabe worked on his writing skills. 

Rachel made this sweet snowman at her school Christmas Party that I was in charge of. Did I mention I foolishly volunteered to be the party mom for the year? Thankfully, there were cool moms that volunteered to help, and so I didn't have to come up with this craft. 

And after who knows how long, we got to meet up with Michael and Kristina for their baby's blessing. It was at Michael's parents' house in Sandy. 

So we got the traditional Michaels shot: 

And our two families together. 

It was so great to see them. Michael's parents and grandparents are always so warm and welcoming that they're basically our family too. 

Michael really got into drawing BYU stuff and taunting his Utah Ute fan schoolmates. 

We visited our friends the Watsons for dinner. It had been WAY too long!

We got ski goggles in preparation for skiing lessons. 

On the day Brian and the kids were going to go skiing with our neighbors, the weather was quite terrible, so they went to Airborne instead. 

And we had friends over for New Years. As usual, we had a kids' countdown early so that they could go to bed. 

Dustin and Serene's family stayed the night, as well as Jen, so we had more fun the next day, but that was in 2022, so we're not going to talk about it here. 

2021 was a really fun year for us. We planted trees, we visited lots of cool places, we met new people, we added a shed and a deck cover to our estate, our theater got installed, and so many other things that I hopefully documented in these blog posts. Stay tuned for all our adventures in 2022.