January Happenings

I know we're still in January, but let's get a start on happenings this month.

Canyon always likes me to record him passing off certain songs in piano.  He loves playing & gets really excited when he completes a challenging song.  Here he is playing "Beauty & the Beast."

Trek & Bladen have been out filming with his drone (We all got a drone from Tylee for Christmas too so the 2 of them have been flying them regularly for fun.)

I've been painting more this month than I have in the past. I got a lot of fun painting supplies for Christmas so I'm loving it.  I'm still taking a watercolor class & learning new techniques & skills.  Not everything comes out as well as I'd like, but I always learn & that's what is important to me.

Lorien & her friends got to skip school on Thursday since they didn't have to take their finals that day (if they have an A in the class, they are exempt from finals).  It was fun driving them all to the BX to hang out for the rest of the afternoon.

 

Metz, France

We had planned a big trip to Wernigerode Castle & the Harz Mountains for New Years (which has been cancelled once already due to COVID), but it once again got cancelled.  COVID can go away already!  I wish it would, but apparently it's going to to be around for a while.

So, our trip got cancelled & we needed somewhere to go before Cadence left back for the states.  We decided to take a day trip to Metz, France.  It turned out to be a great idea & we had a blast together.

The Christmas market was still going on when we arrived so we were extra excited about that!  The boys wanted to ride the ferris wheel while the girls shopped. 

After the ferris wheel, we visited the beautiful cathedral there in Metz.  The stained glass windows were gorgeous in this cathedral.

We took a long walk down the city to the river to play at the park & fly Bladen's drone.  The buildings around the river were beautiful.

While the kids played at the park, Bladen & Trek practiced flying Bladen's new drone.  Bladen did really well with it; Trek . . . not so much.  Within minutes he had the drone stick in a tall tree.  Poor Bladen was devastated.  There was NO WAY to get it down.  It was REALLY stuck.

Eventually (about 20 minutes later), Trek was able to throw a shoe up at the tree & knocked the drone out.  Thank heavens.

We found another section of Christmas market on the other side of the city.  There was an ice skating rink & all sorts of yummy foods.

I got more raclette, as did Cadence & Trek.  They didn't like it as much as I did which was great because I had leftovers for 3 days!!!  YUM.

Metz is a beautiful city.  I'm glad we were able to go there with Cadence before she left to go back to college.

It was a wonderful Christmas break!

 

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from the Potter House!!!

We woke up Christmas morning to see that Santa arrived for the kiddos!

Lorien got a Skateboard,

Canyon got a Luigi Lego Set, 

Bladen got a small drone, 

Taya got some rollerblades,

and Craiger got a Harry Potter lego set.

I love how excited they get when they walk into the room on Christmas morning.

After enjoying gifts from Santa, we opened up all of our presents from my friend Nancy.  Nancy is like our fairy godmother!  She spoils us rotten every year with new clothes, shoes, jewelry, coats, & winterwear.  She LOVES shopping for clothing & it's her favorite thing to buy at Christmastime.  Honestly, we miss her so much & wish we could see her more often.

Lorien bought Cadence a HILARIOUS blanket (as a joke) with pictures of her favorite actor/hollywood crush all over it.  It's HILARIOUS.  I love her face.  We were laughing about it most of the morning.

We drew names for each other for Christmas & Cadence got Trek's name.  She had a custom map of Roshar engraved in wood to hang up in his office.  (It's a map from his favorite book.)

We took a few pics of each of us JUST with our gifts from Nancy this year.  She really does spoil us rotten.

The kids get 3 gifts from us:

a want present

a need present

& something church related.

The want gifts are always the favorite.

Lorien's want gift was also hilarious.  As soon as she bought that funny blanket for Cadence, I went searching for one for her of HER favorite actor.  And they had one!!!  The two of them were hilarious.

A new tradition we started this year was "daddy gifts."  I guess it's always been a tradition, but new for our immediate family.  When I became an adult, Santa didn't give me gifts anymore (which is normal), instead, my dad started to give adult children "daddy gifts" specially picked by him (& my mom) that were extra special.  They're never anything we ask for, he just thinks about what he thinks we'd like & surprises us.  My dad continues to buy daddy gifts for Trek & I & my brother & his wife every year.  This year he bought me a beautiful painting of Jesus Christ for my wall.  He picked out some battery/cordless saws for Trek & his wood working.

Trek & I talked for a while about what to get Cadence.  She is a college student & "needs" a lot of things, but never really gets anything she truly "wants" anymore.  So we found an artist online that paints beautiful scenes from her favorite book series.  I know she's shown me his work before & I knew she loved it, so we picked out 6 paintings for her & Trek gave it to her as her first "daddy gift."

She cried.  It was so wonderful.

They are gorgeous paintings.  She got some frames & is hanging them above her bed in her bedroom in her apartment at school.  She LOVES them.

It was fun to see everything they got all put together.  They had a great Christmas.

We usually spend the rest of Christmas day, assembling & playing with all our new toys & then of course cleaning up the huge mess of paper & wrapping that happens on Christmas morning.  But after everything is done, later towards nighttime, we go downstairs & open our stockings.

The kids have told me that stockings are their favorite part of Christmas.  They love that we wait until later to open them because "it makes Christmas last all day long!"  They are nothing special & are usually filled with boring things like toothbrushes & toothpaste, but the kids love them.

They've always been my favorite part of Christmas as well.  As a child, we didn't have a lot of money & barely had gifts at all, but the stockings were always there. . . & we'd each take turns adding something to everyone's stocking.  A lot of times it was homemade which made them extra special.  I remember years of making handwritten cards, or painted rocks for my family.  The kids do the same thing now.  Our stockings are a hodgepodge of small gifts, candy, actually useful things like toothpaste & bandaids, & then carefully picked out or homemade gifts from each other.  It's truly special.

 Merry Christmas Everyone!