Christmas Day, and the end of 2025

Ok, moving along to wrap December up… Christmas day came and went.

Phew, it was a LOT. But I’m such a sucker for traditions. So I loved gathering with everyone in the girls’ room for them to open stockings:

Our kids surprised us with our own “stockings” this year and that was pretty sweet.

Then into the family room with the “Santa” gifts complete with Santa’s signature squiggly writing just like our Santa’s writing growing up.

And taking our time opening gifts, everyone getting a chance to open, and hug and happiness.

Boy oh boy, there is nothing better than having little kids join the Christmas party.

Eggs Benedict traditional bit of stress but everyone helping. The hollandaise sauce exploded all over when I accidentally gave it one more pulse after I took the lid off. Yikes!

At least the freshly squeezed orange juice Nana and Papa brought was protected with a lid! And I must say, that breakfast went another year without disappointing.

Papa and Nana always join us for breakfast usually with Dave’s sister Carol Lynn, and his brother Bob came too this year. And I love gathering close, hearing about all the favorite Christmas things and eating the fruits of our Eggs Benedict labors:)

We hot tubbed, did a thousand loads of laundry, started returns, oogled at cute babies:

And got packed, and headed out in search of skiing snow in Utah that evening.

Utah

We figured since most of us had to get back to Utah eventually, we all went up.

The skiing? That part was sub par. There is no snow in Utah this year!

But the company was phenomenal.

And we did find some pretty good runs.

Murphy was pretty excited about the snow and Elle was there for her in it.

Love these two oldest with the two eldest grandbabies:

Eyre Family Christmas Party

My family likes to do a party on “Boxing Day,” and we were so happy to be there to join in.

There are lots of musicians in my Eyre family, mostly in Saydi’s family. Those musicians don’t include me, unfortunately. But they sounded so good and I was so inspired to keep going on my cello lessons.

Pothier Game Night

We had some Pothier time too. Game night with Dave’s sister and her new husband and oldest kids. Love them!

Sunday

We had one more Sunday ALL together and it was my favorite.

Especially our little second hour family meeting.

Light Show

We went to a pre-New Years light show.

And as you can tell, we had some excited girls for that.

Midway

We went to Midway one day.

New Years Eve

New Year’s Eve morning with no skiing, just sitting around the kitchen talking about New Years Resolutions while whipping up ocean pancakes. This was honestly one of my favorite parts of the whole week. Man, I miss their littleness so much, and always will. But I LOVE their “bigness” in such a fierce way. I love who they are becoming, each one so unique.

An impromptu afternoon downtown after dropping off Elle at the airport, just Dave and me with these three. I love those different configurations.

By New Years Eve we were all pretty tuckered out. Elle was back with Carson in San Francisco, Max and Abby headed back to Provo to situate after being gone for two weeks with little babies in tow. Claire and Grace headed to a party in Midway with a bunch of friends. At first Lucy was heartbroken it would just be back to the three musketeers to celebrate the new year. But Grace and Claire (as well as Claire’s friends who came up to get her) gave her a very heartfelt invite to join them at the college party. Somehow because she was given the chance to think about it and felt invited, she decided it would be ok to stay with us for a game night. And it really was ok.

Dave had the sweetest, earnest talk with Lucy sitting at the table, cards stacked ready for games in front of them.

We have been so worried about Lucy, and love that she requested help trying to figure out how to not procrastinate and get on a better schedule for the new semester. I love that she and Dave set up some ground rules that helped us all feel so much better about the upcoming semester.

After all that, we played games, just the three of us, just like old times, and brought in the new year with sparkling cider and the other college kids coming back before we headed to bed, a new year stretched out in front of us..

But first, before we get to Claire’s mission. Let’s talk about THIS:

…which deserves a post all of it’s own…coming up.