New Year's Eve / Harris Burning Man

On New Year's Eve we went to see the Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which Jared and I mistakenly thought at least half of the boys would catch the meaning of. Gavin and Jonah noticed and enjoyed the comedic scenes and after a little coaching Liam and Caleb could articulate the value of creating a life worth living, or like one of my favorite verses in the Book of Mormon states: "to act and not to be acted upon." After the movie we came home to a late dinner, and rang in the New Year about 10:30pm with a few spectacular leftover fireworks from the 4th of July. I know, it's early, but always I think starting off the New Year is best with a good night's sleep.

The next morning, Jared woke up early to get a campfire started in the backyard and I made the boys' favorite blueberry muffins with the streusel top. Before venturing outside, we sat down and individually wrote out a few things we each wanted to get rid of and "burn" out of our lives this year - a tradition we started last year with some friends. This time we also illustrated with pictures of ourselves, so we could burn the old self in effigy.  We've named this tradition Burning Man (our own little version of the "Burning Man" festival held in Nevada over Labor Day).  Like Burning Man, we are celebrating, lighting something on fire, leaving something behind, and we are in our own way building a sense of community among the six of us.

Here we are preparing our people....note Caleb's is folded and kept secret, which was his choice, and despite our repeated requests for him to share, he never did. I'm still curious and hope one day he'll open up. The rest of us shared what we were burning which included things like sighing, eye rolling, excluding, or being impatient.

We then made our way outside to stoke the fire and get some good flames going before we burned our old selves in picture form. Jonah kept changing chairs to avoid the smoke, to no avail. In his own words: "smoke follows the pretty one"!

Often when something needs to happen in order we either start with youngest to oldest or oldest to youngest. This day it was oldest to youngest:

Note: the flame thrower in the foreground....one of Jared's favorite gifts to date.

The rest of the day was spent together jumping on the new trampoline, playing board games, and watching more episodes of the 'rebooted' Doctor Who, a British show revamped in 2005 that we got into over the break, making in through all of season one before the boys had to go back to school. Here's to a New Year and the second annual Burning Man.

Really....a trampoline??

Do I worry about my children injuring themselves in all sorts of ways?? Yes...but have they ever.....no unless you count the time that Caleb took a vicious spill off his long board without wearing pads or Liam getting a bum bounce on the baseball field resulting in his tooth piercing his lip. But, that's really it and yes, I'm knocking on wood now for continued luck. So every summer for the past 6 years we have had what we call "summer rewards" where we encourage/bribe/motivate the boys into keeping up with a few things like reading, music practice, typing exercises, math websites, as well a few goals they come up with on their own like trying new recipes, writing a book (s), solving the rubix cube, and on and on. If they complete their goals, they get some sort of individual reward but this year we decided that we'd offer a collective reward and finally get a trampoline. I've long been the parent in the family who has put a damper on the trampoline idea and Jared, who grew up with one, had finally convinced me that they boys would be fine and that I should loosen up a bit. So during the summer they spent some time shopping for the perfect tramp and of course came across an Olympic 14x16 wonder. It was well built and could feasibly hold the weight of our entire family and was spacious enough that I felt they could play on it safely. Yet, we couldn't justify the cost simply for doing a little math, reading and music over the summer, so we left them empty handed. Summer ended and the school year started back and they would only bring it up now and again assuming that I had changed my mind back to my original stance of not wanting a trampoline at all. I said nothing in response to their accusations because we had decided it would be a perfect combined Christmas/Summer rewards gift. But when it was delivered in 4 gigantic boxes they started to think about the trampoline again, but I threw them off explaining effectively that winter was not a good time for a trampoline because the cold temperatures and snow can damage the mat and they were satisfied. So after all the gifts were unwrapped from under the tree we took them outside to unveil what had been laying under a tarp all those days. They were surprised and thrilled and wanted to put it together right then even tough it was only 30 degrees outside. We put them off and waited another day until the weather warmed back up to a reasonable 50 degrees. The frame was assembled one late afternoon and the mat put on the next morning. None of the photos show the net enclosure, but it too is in place to ease my worry.

Many hours have already been logged playing a game they call "dead man" which is like Marco-Polo, cross-over bounce and bum wars...all those great games I did play at my friends who had tramps. Gavin and Caleb can do a front flip and Jonah is almost there. Jared too showed off his flips with a tight tuck and fast rotation. Liam and I are still trying to get our nerve up to do one. The best time was when Jared and I snuck out of the house and jumped by ourselves laughing and getting winded more quickly than we ever did as kids and talking about sneaking out one night for a sleepover!

Jonah spent time helping by making video selflies and showing them to us:

Christmas Break

This year I knew winter break was going to be a lot of home time and in the back of my mind I was a little worried that we'd all drive each other nuts.  We were not traveling to Utah to ski, we were not even going to WV to ski like we did last year during the break.  So now that all is said and done, I really never imagined what an incredibly peaceful, relaxed and bonding this time would be for our family.  We did have those moments when tears were shed and voices were raised and Jonah was accusing others of "ape-rage" (I have no idea where he got this word, but he's been using it to describe brothers being out-of-control-mad) even though by my ears he is usually the one "ape-raging" :). But those times were few in number compared to the hours and hours they spent together in relative harmony.

Christmas Eve was spent at the Evans for our traditional clam chowder, wild rice mushroom soup, and this year instead of bread bowls, R. (our new Bishop) made a heavenly brioche. The evening was also shared with two full-time Missonaries which really added to the fun of the evening. We enjoyed a spiritual message by E. that focused on the story in the Book of Mormon when the people were anxiously awaiting the signs of the Saviors birth and were both relieved and overjoyed when the night sky stayed light and the new star shone. We bid farewell and came home to new p.j.'s and a reading of Luke 2 from Jared and lighting our candles one last time and placing one more piece of straw on the manger for something kind we had done that day before sending the boys up to bed.

Once again, Liam found the dress-up box and adorned himself with all sorts of great finds. He opted for poses this year instead of reciting comedic lines from Napoleon Dynamite. He really does love the stage and showing off his stuff!

Round two for the fondue pot....the first time E. brought it over to our house for some divine dipping on New Years Eve.

After some coercion by Jared, Gavin got into the spirit of Christmas and helped Jonah prep the letter and treat for Santa and his reindeer. This is the first year that Gavin doesn't believe in Santa, being that there are 7 billion people on the earth and the logistics of delivering that many gifts are absolutely impossible. Jonah still maintains his belief simply because he's seen the "magic" in Harry Potter and reasons if Hermione Granger can have a bag that can hold everything, so can Santa.

Unlike last year, we had nothing major to assemble or maneuver into the house, thank goodness, and had stockings and gifts ready in just a couple of hours. Santa doesn't wrap his gifts (a brilliant tradition from Jared's family) and everything else was wrapped in reusable fabric and cloth ribbons (a brilliant idea from my friend C.).  We had ONE bag of trash that went out, pretty remarkable for a family of six, but I won't tell you the number of boxes that are still in the garage from all the online shopping, but at least we can reuses those easily. But back to Christmas morning. At 7:30 they gathered on the steps and patiently waited for Jared to take a few photos before making their way down to their stockings. This year Santa surprised Caleb with a Go-pro camera, Liam with a new base guitar and amp, Gavin with an iPod mini and Jonah with a iPod mini. In that moment of discovery I think Gavin may have changed his mind and decided maybe Santa was real because he knows I would never get one of these "gaming devices" for him after ranting for so long about how I didn't want them in our house. They had a few other nick-knacks in their stockings, but spent the next several hours with their gifts. After eating monkey bread and smoothies for breakfast we got back to the gift giving about 10:30. The boys were mostly excited about their gifts to each other, which over the years has become one of their favorite traditions of Christmas. They were each generous, creative and thoughtful with what they decided on and bought with their own money.

Making their way down to their stockings:

Liam wanted to get Jonah and Gavin (and himself) a "silky"for Christmas. Caleb has had this random piece of fabric from an elementary school project that he calls his "silky" which he snuggled with on a regular basis for  several years. Liam has always wanted it and so Caleb, now that he's not quite as attached to it as he once was, offered it to him for $50 about a month ago...so generous of Caleb.... but Liam agreed! It's seriously a $1.00 piece of scrap fabric, so of course we nixed that sale despite Liam's protest of being able to use his own money the way he wants to. So one evening in the chilling rain, I took Liam to a fabric store where we spent 45 minutes feeling different pieces of fabric for that right degree of stretch and silky feeling. He finally narrowed it down and both Jonah and Gavin were beyond thrilled. They both wore them as capes, snuggled with them during movies and slept with them at night during the entire break. It was a very thoughtful and perfect gift.

Liam also gave Jonah a model rocket and Jonah decided on getting Nacho Libre and School of Rock for Liam.

Caleb showing off his new Zildgian crash cymbal from Gavin:

Both Jonah and Gavin got new knives from Liam and Caleb and Jared was showing them the tricks to not getting cut!

You can see both the new knife and Gavin's "silky" as well as the awesome slippers Gavin bought for Jonah:

Finally the much anticipated gift from Caleb to Gavin...the huge box kept them all guessing what could be inside and Gavin was completely surprised with his new bean-bag chair!

And to round it all out Jonah's day was finally complete when he opened up the one and only stuftie of the day: a Rhino from Grandma and Grandpa Hill!

The boys were excited to present me with this Sodastream which we have already enjoyed several times. I drink sparkling water at dinner most nights, so now I don't have to waste all those plastic bottles!

We managed to get through all the gifts by about 1:30 and the rest of the day was spent playing on their new devices or Monopoly and then settling down for School of Rock!

Their final gift was a giant 14x16 trampoline that deserves it's own post..........