Brooke’s cousin Natalie is celebrating her FIFTH birthday today. This post is all for her.
Here is the picture of Brooke that I took while I was talking to you on the phone.  Remember I said she had her pacifier in her mouth and she was holding a can of beans? Here it is!
Here’s a picture so you can see the butterfly clips in her hair that I was telling you about.
Here’s one last picture just for you. Have fun at your birthday party! We’re sad we’re missing it.
It was time for the ward Christmas party and Rebecca asked me to take the pictures again this year.
Christmas was fun, but the week after Christmas was even better. My brother Ben and his wife Haley surprised us with a visit. The first thing Ben said to me when he told me he was coming was, “Get a babysitter. We need to do an escape room.”
I told him I had an even better idea. Enter Lockbox Mysteries. My super clever and creative friend started this business which is basically an escape room in a box. You rent the box from her and inside there are clues and codes and locks and boxes that you have to crack in order to solve the murder mystery.
We went over to Jeff and Sarah’s house and the six of us shooed the kids in the basement with a movie and popcorn while we (literally) donned our detective hats and got to work solving the mystery.
It was so fun. I had done one escape room before and this was every bit as good as that was, but we were able to do it in our own home! No need to pay extra for babysitters! No need to possibly be grouped up with weird people you don’t know! You just play with all the weird people you already know!
Not to brag, but we solved the mystery in 46 minutes and used zero hints.
If you’re local, you should definitely get a group of friends or family together to try this out. We all loved it!
We took advantage of the first real snow of the season and went sledding:
What is is about kids all bundled up in snow attire that’s so adorable?
Someone please give Haley the best aunt award! Turns out Madison is a total thrill-seeker, and she loved going down the biggest hill. Haley walked Madison up that hill and slid down with her at least five times. Each time Madison would jump up out of the sled before Haley could even catch her breath and yell, “Again! Again! That was so fun!”
We went back to Sarah’s house to warm up and take cute cousin pictures:
But SOMEONE wasn’t having it.
Sarah’s boys got a lot of dress ups for Christmas that were put to good use during our stay:
Brooke went cross-eyed over her cross stitching:
Dollar skate night was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up:
Bonus! Princesses were there!
Brooke helped Haley and Sarah make pizzas and was very proud of her accomplishment:
Ben and Haley love to play games. They always introduce us to fun, new games. Codenames quickly became a favorite:
If Codenames quickly became the favorite, we might say Legacy Pandemic: Season 2 slooooooooowly became the least favorite. If you’re unfamiliar with the game, here’s an amateur’s synopsis of it. It’s a cooperative game which means you all work together to beat the game. In this case, we were trying to find a cure to save the world from a pandemic.
When you start the game, you’re happy and excited and smiling:
As the play progresses you draw on the board and add stickers and pathways. Some cards have things you scratch off. You can only play the game in its entirety one time. However, the game consists of 12-24 rounds, and each round takes about an hour to play and an eternity to set up, so when you tell your brother and sister-in-law that you’re “game” to play the game, you better know what you’re in for.
Sarah and I most certainly did not know what we were in for.
I think we knew how seriously Ben takes his games, but we had never seen this type of serious. There were multiple dramatic pauses, giddy exclamations, and intense shoulder rubs during each round.
This was a game of logic and strategy playing to Ben and Haley’s strengths…and not so much to my and Sarah’s. Sarah bailed on us about four hours into the game. Some of the more invested players did not mourn that loss, though others keenly felt the absence of her cheers, hollers, and dance moves.
We took a break from our game playing, and I was able to remember I had a husband and a life outside of supply cubes and Hollow Men. We had a fun group date at Boondocks for some bowling, laser tag, go-karts, and 4-D movies.
We saw the princesses again!
Do we look like expert bowlers? Because we are not.
After our Boondocks break we went right back to our marathon game. Hours and hours and hours and hours later we did it. Against all odds we saved the world from disease. Our score was kind of crappy, but we blame that on the fact that we misread a few key rules which made our play much more difficult than it would have been had we demonstrated better reading comprehension skills.
The game ended and I felt a strange emptiness. My brain had no idea what to think about. I kept worrying about our cities and hoping they were doing okay. Now that several weeks have elapsed since we played, I no longer dream about epidemics and outbreaks…but I think it will still be some time before I agree to play a game like that again!
We had the best Christmas. I have lately resolved to get out and do more things as a family. I’m a huge homebody, but I want to take better advantage of all the fun to be had around us…starting with a festive trip to Temple Square!
We love to visit Temple Square with our friends from our Orem days. Brooke and Emma hit it off as if no time had passed…except time has passed and now instead of running off to play with stuffed animals they take selfies when they see each other?! They’re growing up!
I forced the family to humor me on a two-hour roundtrip road trip to look at Christmas lights. They grumbled the whole way to this office building which had lights set to music:
They complained a little less when we saw the magnificence of the Tree of Life in Draper (though in spite of the fact that I hollered ten times for the kids to get their coats before we left, Caroline apparently didn’t get the memo):
We hit up the Christmas streets in Taylorsville and South Jordan and ended at this house:
The kids were completely awed at the unbelievable number of decorations and lights that this house had and finally conceded that they were glad I had dragged them out on an adventure.
The kids’ favorite holiday tradition is making candy houses:
We always get together with Dallas’s cousins for a Christmas party. Brooke got a good hug from Oma during the party:
We lit luminaries at the cemetery and sang to Opa and Great Grandma and Grandpa Stadelbauer:
Christmas day came and the kids were super excited:
We had a couple Santa mishaps this year which threatened to ruin Christmas. Santa got Caroline a Lego set she already had and he also got Brooke a Lego set that ended up NOT being a Lego set but a knock-off Lego set. Oops. Get your act together, Santa. Sheesh.
The girls got socks and underwear. I jokingly asked them to hold them up for a picture and they surprised me by complying immediately. Ha!
I’ll end with a sweet Spencer story. My parents went to Jerusalem a few years ago and brought all the kids back a nativity. When I was putting it out this year Spencer was sitting on the couch quietly watching me put each piece in its place. When it was all set up he peacefully sighed and said, “That’s my favorite Christmas decoration.”
