New Year's Fun with the Johnsons
Saturday, December 31st - New Year’s Eve
We arrived at John and Nikole’s house at 5:15 and Lindsey, Ashlyn and Shelley weren’t far behind us. Nikole had a yummy bean dip waiting for us and then we ate a delicious Cafe Rio Salad dinner with cookies and treats for the rest of the night. We watched football, taught everyone how to play Architects and then Murder with Dice — pausing to go watch the ball drop and do our New Years Celebrations. The cousins loved being together. We continued to play games until 2:30 and then tackled the drive home in the full snowstorm. I drove the van and had a tricky time just trying to turn around. John helped me by giving me instructions to slowly inch back and forth and then go slowly down his big slippery hill. We definitely need to get some better tires… we should have checked on that before we headed into the winter land up North. Yikes. I’m really loving it in St. George.
Sunday, January 1st - New Year’s Day
The snow continued to fall all through the night and most of the day in Draper. At 10:00 Shelley received a text that church - a block away - was cancelled for the day. We enjoyed the day with Shelley… opening presents and having a mini Christmas. Cute turkish towels for all! We gave Shelley a 6 book book club membership, a fun grey Stanley and then a frame with a ‘photoshoot in Mexico’ coupon attached.
The boys went out and shoveled the Grandma’s driveway - which took forever - while Chris drove Ryan and Cassie up to the airport.
Chris seemed happy with the road conditions so we decided to keep our plans to head to Provo for dinner with the Jacksons and Theurers. We thought we’d stop by my mom’s house to grab something we had forgotten but quickly changed plans when the roads up on to the hill were bad. We ended up driving 3 miles an hour down a couple of slippery hills and then got to one that was seriously slanted as well and we ended up sliding right into the curb. We tried several things to get out but ended up needing the help of Jon and Pete to get the van into a better situation before leaving it altogether. Yikes. We ate a delicious dinner with Megan, Jon, Pete, Ali and kids and even though we were a bit consumed with the weather, the van and getting back to Shelley’s house, we managed to get caught up and enjoy a couple of hours together. Katie came from the Lodge with Dallie and Abby and joined us for dinner. Meg is the best host… the food and table settings were fantastic. Loved seeing her beautiful home all decorated for Christmas. They always cut down a beautiful tree and this one was the tallest yet. So fun. The Jacksons lent us Romney’s car and we used that to drive us back to Draper. The roads were horrible but with better tires we did ok on the freeway at lower speeds. (I love St. George.)
We visited for an hour with Shelley before heading to bed at 11:00. Our earliest bedtime all week. We need to get on a better schedule soon.
Monday, January 2nd
With the snow still falling we decided to stay inside all day. Chris woke up the kids and we did a family work out downstairs and then put all our phones in a basket for a phone-free day together. Chris had us all put three ideas into a bowl and then we randomly pulled one out. The first one was Chris’… AZUL. We even got Grandma to play with us. Then we picked out Shelley’s… watch HEAVEN CAN WAIT, which we did while helping Shelley put her Christmas tree away.
We worked together to deep clean Shelley’s kitchen, window sills, baseboards, vacuum and sweep. Nikole and John and Ashlyn and boys came over to Shelley’s house at 6:00. Chris picked up a pizza and salad at the Pie and then we ate and played a couple games of Azul together. We taught Nikole and John the Azul Summer and they liked it. Nice to gather here. Katie joined us for the night and is quite the AZUL fan herself. When the Johnsons left we watched WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING and then headed to bed. : )
Tuesday, January 3rd
Lots of sleep, some journaling (loving my new laptop) and then a family exercise session. Emily got dropped off at Shelley’s house, Chris went down with Katie and picked up the van - easy with the weather better and he and I headed up to Fashion Place mall to do some returns and then decided to take advantage of the clear roads and drive home. It was a good drive. Nice to be home and have a day to get organized before school starts on Thursday.