Caleb's First Temple Trip

I have to quick write about this before I write about our cruise!

In the beginning of January, Caleb was ordained as a deacon at church. Because he is turning 12 years old this year, he gets to move up from Primary (the kids' group) and into the Young Men/Young Women group! It's always exciting when they get to move up. I remember being 11 years old and a whole head taller than most of the other little kids as I sang in the primary program! Caleb was definitely to that point. He was really looking forward to being in the cool teenager group!

So part of turning 12 this year also means that he got to go to the temple for the first time! We left Gabe and Avery home one Friday right after school and Josh and I took Caleb to the temple. Afterwards, we went to Freddy's and Caleb got a full meal plus ice cream (as the middle child, he takes full advantage of his opportunities to be spoiled. lol)

Here are a couple pictures of Caleb!

Also, Avery had both of her top two front teeth that got very loose right around the holidays. She did lose one before Christmas. We were hoping the other one would fall out and she would be able to sing, "All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth," but she hung onto that second one until the first week of January. Now she is starting to get those new teeth in and I can already tell they are coming in SUPER turned. :{ Looks like braces will be in her future.

Oh, one more fun thing we did right before school started back up on January 2! We took the family ice skating in Idaho Falls on New Years Eve Day. The last time we went, Avery basically demanded that we carry her the whole time (while skating... so it was pretty fun... not). But this time she actually stayed on her own two feet the whole time! She did have a few falls, but she improved so much from the first minutes on the ice to the time we left! Gabe and Caleb basically already had the hang of it from last time. They did take a couple falls too, but nothing too bad.

Then we rang in 2020 (a new decade!) by staying home with our kids and watching movies and eating lots of food.

We have had a TON of snow in January so I was pretty excited to leave and go to Florida and the Caribbean! Here are a couple of pictures of the snow in our backyard and the kids sledding.

Now... onto the cruise post!!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas has now come and gone already! It's Sunday, December 29th and the tree is down and all the stockings and decorations are put away into their storage bins in the garage. (Someday I will have a basement with organized shelves and bins.) The kids now know about the Florida trip/cruise we are taking in 16 days and everyone is excited! Before I start, I want to include this picture of baby yoda because it summarizes how Josh is involved at Christmas (haha):

Here is how the past few days went for us...

Monday, December 23rd
Josh took the kids shopping at Walmart in the morning (he doesn't like to buy my Christmas presents until about two days before Christmas... lol) and I stayed home and cleaned and prepared the chocolate Christmas pies and a breakfast casserole for the Rhodes extended family Christmas celebration. At about 4:00 we left our home and drove the hour to Driggs to Ben and Heather's (Josh's sister) house. They just built this house over the summer and moved in so it was the first time everyone really saw it. The living room and kitchen area is very spacious (something I really want in a future home if we ever have one!)

We had "breakfast for dinner" and then had our little gift exchange. We had all drawn names to exchange at Christmas last year. There are 22 grandkids plus the oldest one is married now so 23 if you count her husband. Then there are 13 adults (Jake is officially out now since he and Jenni are in the process of getting divorced.) So basically all 35 of us had exchanged names and there was a $5 limit. Our family had Gemma, Quinley, Blakely (three little girls ages 5, 6, and 9) and then Hayden (cousin Lori's husband), and Heather (Josh's sister). Avery had I had fun picking out Hatchimals, fuzzy socks, and stickers for the little girls. Hayden got a blanket and Heather got some soap and some cinnamon bears.

I don't even remember who all gave us our family's gifts. I know Gabe and Caleb both got pocket knives for their gift. I got some treats from the Caramel Tree. Avery got this bracelet set with stickers and Josh got some doggy bags and a piece of fudge that looked like poop. haha

We drove home at about 9:00 and luckily there was just a light rain starting as we got home.  Here is a picture of all the cousins and one of Caleb beating the piñata (moments before it exploded.)

Tuesday, December 24th
The highlight of the day for Caleb was that I had purchased some movie tickets for Josh and the boys to see the new Star Wars movie, Rise of Skywalker. It came out on Thursday of last week but I made them wait until Tuesday because it was only $5!

While Josh and the boys went to the movie, Avery and I went sledding at the little hill over by the high school. It was so warm out that we were sweating as we walked up the hill. The sun was shining and it was probably about 35 degrees. We had gotten quite a bit of snow in the first two weeks of December, so all the snow that was just barely left on the little hill was from a while ago. Luckily there was just enough to sled! This was the first Christmas Eve/Day that we didn't get any fresh snow! All the roads were clear and it even rained a little!

Once the boys got home from the movie at about 4:30, we ate our Christmas Eve dinner of ham, potatoes, green bean casserole, corn, orange jello, rolls, and Christmas pie. It was a pretty simple dinner, but that's because my children are very simple people and won't eat anything if it has things mixed in! They wouldn't even touch the green bean casserole because that was too crazy for them!

After dinner, we always let the kids open one present and every year it's the same thing: pajamas. Avery got a pink Santa sleeper and the boys just got some green plaid pajama pants. Then we watched Christmas Vacation and got ready for bed! Avery set out some carrots and cookies for Santa. Caleb read Avery some Christmas stories before bed. It took the kids a long time to fall asleep (as it always does on Christmas Eve) and then once they finally did, Josh and I did all of our last little elf duties. This year I was probably more prepared than I ever have been, but we still didn't end up getting to sleep until midnight!

Wednesday, December 25th (Christmas!)
Caleb was the first one awake and even though he knows about Santa, he was still excited to wake up Avery and show her the stockings and gifts Santa had left! We had told them they could wake up at 7:30 and get into their stockings, but they couldn't wake us until 8:00. In their stockings, each kid had gotten a couple of little presents that were wrapped and we always let them just open those right away. Avery got some Hatchimals, Caleb got some Star Wars vehicles, and Gabe got some little brainteaser puzzles.

Once they woke us up, we watched them open their Santa gifts first. From Santa, Gabe got a skateboard and a sled. Caleb got a sled and some XBox games and a Boba Fett Lego. Avery got an art set, a Hatchimals stuffed animal and a squishy journal that she wanted. Caleb was also very excited to open the Iron Man helmet that my dad had sent. That was one of the first presents he opened and he wore it for the rest of the day. I have lots of pictures of Caleb from Christmas Day wearing his Iron Man helmet. Avery got a pink unicorn backpack from my dad and Gabe got a $50 Amazon gift card, which he still hasn't used. Gabe is the type of kid that never spends his money and never asks for anything, so who knows what he will get with it.

Their other presents from the money sent by grandma Sue, grandma Dahlke and grandpa Bestor included -

Gabe: a sweatshirt, church pants, sweatpants, soccer cleats, snow gloves and hat, underwear, socks, and bath and body set, new school shoes, a fuzzy blanket, headphones, magnetic balls set, phone charger, a book about driving (scary to think he starts driver's ed next year), a Disney Infinity character of Yandu for the XBox, a nerf gun target game, drone with a camera, and a snowball making tool.

Caleb: a sweatshirt, a Mandalorian T shirt, and Baby Yoda T shirt, church pants, snow gloves and pants, underwear, Star Wars socks, a bath and body set, headphones, magnetic balls set, phone charger, a "Be More Yoda" book, a Disney Infinity character of Yoda, some Magic Tracks to share with Avery, and a drone.

Avery: some pants, a couple long sleeved shirts, a few sleepers, underwear, socks, shoes, a bath bomb and lotion set, a few little books about Beanie Boos, a unicorn/bunny stuffed animal that came inside an egg (so weird, right?), a play doh set, a friendship bracelet making kit, headphones, and an alarm clock.

AND THEN there were the cruise boxes. Basically, after they had opened all of the Santa gifts and their other gifts that were labelled from relatives, Josh brought down three big boxes, one for each kid. Each was wrapped in tropical wrapping paper. They were pretty confused as to what the boxes meant at first. But once they opened their box, inside they found about 7 little individually wrapped presents. These presents included things like, a new swimsuit, some shorts, Avery got some tropical print sun dresses, the boys got a couple T Shirts, some flip flops, and lastly, each kid got a snorkel set.

About halfway through opening these little gifts, the boys both started to say, "We're going someplace tropical!" Caleb had guessed both Disneyland and Hawaii. Gabe didn't really guess, he just kept saying, "You're freaking me out. I don't like surprises." Finally at the bottom of each box, they had a puzzle. The idea was that each kid would put together their puzzle and it would tell them one of the places we were going. Gabe had one that said "Cozumel", Caleb had one that said "Grand Cayman", and Avery had one that said, "Florida." However, after them trying for about 20 minutes and still not getting their puzzles together, we just gave up and told them.

Caleb had guessed, "Is it a cruise??" And so we finally told them, "Yes, it's a cruise...." and then I said, "There's one more surprise." I then handed Caleb a gift that was a picture of this other family in a frame. He exclaimed, "Colter's family is going with us?!" And he was very excited about that. Caleb is probably the one that is most friends with Colter. Avery gets along with Colter's little sister, Landyn, and Gabe will hang out with Caleb and Colter I'm sure, but also with the adults. He's probably the only one I was a little worried about when this family decided to come along. He would NEVER admit that he's sad about not having Caleb's full attention, but I think he might be a little bit.

So that was our Christmas! Our kids sure seem spoiled if you ask me! Now we are all faced with the task of trying to eat healthy and work out for the next few weeks so we don't all look obese on the cruise. Caleb and Gabe have even started going to the gym with Josh the last few days. Avery and I have been doing home workouts with the 21 Day Fix DVDs. haha

We are all very excited!! Now it is Sunday and we just have three more days left of Christmas break. I'm not sure yet what we are doing for New Year's Eve. It finally snowed today (and quite a bit of the fluffy, movie set, kind of snow!) The kids have to go back to school the morning of Thursday, January 2nd, but I have a feeling there will still be a lot of absent kids until the following Monday. Gabe is a little stressed about missing school for the cruise, but Caleb and Avery have no concerns about it whatsoever. lol Here are a couple other pictures of the kids over the past week sledding and things and Avery in her new dance costume!

That was our Christmas! Looking forward to the next month!

It's Almost Christmas!

I wanted to quick write a post before Christmas because then my next post can be just about Christmas and the holiday activities!

First Teacher Exam
The main thing that I am excited to share is that I PASSED my first teacher's exam! There are two tests that I have to take in order to become certified as a teacher and the first one is called the "Professional Teacher Knowledge Exam." I had studied for it the whole month of November and then I decided to go ahead and take it a few weeks earlier than I had originally planned. I was going to take it on December 18th, but I decided to just take it on December 2nd and get it over with so I could enjoy the holiday season! I'm so glad I did!

Josh and I drove down to Pocatello (where the testing center is) after dropping the kids off at school. I was kind of a nervous wreck, so we stopped at TJ Maxx so I could calm my nerves with my best way possible....shopping. We bought a few things for the boys for Christmas and then drove over to the testing center. I was there from about 11:00 - 2:00. Once I came out, they gave me a print out of my multiple choice score and I saw that I PASSED! But then I still had to wait for another week to receive the results of my essay since that has to be read and graded by an actual person! That week was the worst. If I would've failed the essay portion, I would have had to take then WHOLE thing over (including the multiple choice!) But I felt like I had written a pretty good essay, so if I wouldn't have passed I would've been a little upset. Thankfully, I received a 5/6 on the essay (4 and up is passing.) Now I have to study all of the English/Literature content and prepare to take THAT exam. I am hoping to take that some time in March.

Shop with a Cop
Another fun thing that happened in the past few weeks was the Shop with a Cop day. Josh had worked the night before until 2:00am (that always seems to happen) and then he had to be at the Rexburg Tabernacle by 5:45am. That is where they meet up with all the families that have been chosen to participate and they get paired up with their specific child. Next, they drive down main street to the McDonald's with the child in their front seat and their sirens going. They eat breakfast (for free) and then drive to Walmart. From about 7am to 8am the officers and their assigned child get to go shopping and pick out things for their family members. I left the kids home sleeping and went to Walmart to help with the wrapping center. Josh was assigned an eight-year-old boy named Woodrow that actually goes to our elementary school, so I got to say hi and snap a picture of the two of them together. He picked out some gloves for his dad, a fishing pole, a hot wheels track, and a few other things for his siblings. It's always fun to see the kids get excited about shopping for their families.

Santa
Avery and Caleb went with Josh to a neighborhood Christmas party a couple weeks ago. I wasn't feeling too good and Gabe was gone to a friend's birthday party so we didn't go. At the party, Santa made a special visit! I had told Josh that he needed to take her to this party and get a picture of her with Santa, or else we would have to brave the crowds and go to the mall in Idaho Falls. He made the smart choice and took her to the party. Here are a few pictures:

Sledding in the Backyard
Josh used the table from Halloween (the one that Gabe used to scare everyone!) and put it into the backyard about a month ago. Every time it would snow, the kids would pile the snow around it. Eventually, there was a nice little sledding hill for the kids to play on. Avery will climb up there with her little sled and she's able to make it all the way across the backyard to the playhouse. We haven't really had any snow the past couple of weeks! We did have quite a bit the first two weeks of December. Then it kind of stopped and warmed up and they are saying we shouldn't have any until after Christmas! I would be just fine with that. We've still got plenty on the ground so it should be a white Christmas either way!

That's about it! I feel like we haven't been too exciting lately! We mostly hang out indoors and watch movies on TV. Caleb's favorite is the Mandalorain on Disney Plus. He is in love with Baby Yoda (as is most of the rest of the world right now.) His favorite thing to do is find Baby Yoda memes and text them to his friends from school (with my approval of course lol.) Here are a couple Baby Yoda pictures in case you have been living under a rock and missed out!

I also took the boys to Fat Cats on Saturday for an afternoon of bowling and arcade games while Avery was at a birthday party and Josh was at work. I schooled Gabe in air hockey but he won in bowling.

Next time I will talk about Christmas and how we revealed a BIG SURPRISE to the kids about our travel plans for January! Merry Christmas! (This was our best attempt at a nice family picture before church today!)

A Warm November and a Happy Thanksgiving!

This month of November was such a pleasant surprise! When we had that little snow storm hit right before Halloween, I thought, "Oh great... the next six months will be filled with snow." But then the snow melted away right after Halloween and we didn't see another single flake until November 27th! (The eve of Thanksgiving) Then it decided it was really going to let loose and it snowed for the next 5 days straight! So right now we have a good 6 inches on the ground and the Rexburg roads are filled with icy, packed-down snow in their usual Rexburg winter fashion. I really try hard not to even leave the house and drive around town when the roads are like this, PLUS filled with college students from California who have never driven in snow before! So it may be a loooong winter of being a hermit if this snow doesn't melt.

The month of November has been a lot of hanging out at home. I have been studying every spare moment for this teacher exam I have to take. I actually am going down to Pocatello tomorrow morning to see if I can pass this first exam. It starts at noon and is supposed to take about 4 hours. I am NOT excited for it. If I do pass (hopefully), then I will start studying for the second half which is in the content area of English. Once I pass that one, I can start applying for teaching jobs. I am guessing it will probably be next fall when I would start teaching full-time.

The kids are all content hanging out at home after school and playing the XBOX or watching TV. The latest excitement is that we just subscribed to the new Disney Plus, which enables them to watch every Disney movie or TV show. That's kept them quite entertained. Definitely worth the $12 per month.

Avery is doing tap lessons every Tuesday after school and the boys are on a break from sports right now. Gabe tried out and made the highest level of travel soccer team a couple weeks ago. I was hoping he wouldn't because it's also the most expensive! lol But he's excited about it so I guess we will pay for it. *sigh* That starts up with indoor practices at the end of January and goes until June! They play games all over Idaho and a couple in Utah I think.

Caleb is trying to decide what he is going to do for the next few months. I told him to sign up for recreation leauge basketball again but I think he is dragging his feet because last year he had kind of a useless coach. He might just play church ball instead. (A group of boys from our church have games once a week.) Caleb also finally had his end-of-season football party on November 14th. We had it at the Vivint building (Josh used to work for them selling home alarms) and they were able to play basketball and ping pong. We had a big banquet for all the boys and their families and then we showed the highlight video that I made. It was a fun night! All the boys got awards and Caleb's was "Most Dependable Player" because the coach said, "We could always know for sure that Caleb wasn't letting his guy through and he didn't mess up on snapping the ball once all season."

Avery got to have a fun "Frozen" day with me last weekend. The new movie, "Frozen 2" came out and the local movie theater had an event where you could come and meet Anna and Elsa before the movie and do some other activities. The boys had gone with Josh to help his dad move some hay so me and Avery had a girls day. We met Anna and Elsa, saw the movie, ate lunch at McDonalds, (and even got a Frozen toy in the Happy Meal) and then Avery went to a birthday party for her friend, Adrie. She said that it was "the second best day ever" (after a day at Disney World). Here are some pictures of the "Frozen Day." Also, note that Avery lost one of her front teeth right before this. She has already lost just her two bottom ones so this is the third tooth ever that she has lost.

In addition to her "Frozen Day," we also had a little "spa night" a couple of nights earlier. Both of the boys had friends over and were busy playing Madden on XBOX, so Avery asked if we could do a spa day and put masks on our faces with "pickles" on our eyes (I realized after some questioning that she meant CUCUMBERS.) Here is Avery with her mask, her cucumbers, and her nails done.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Avery finally wore us down and convinced us to put up our Christmas tree. We had been telling her, "Not until after Thanksgiving" for about two weeks already and then FINALLY we agreed. So it was Sunday, November 24th when we finally put it up. We justified it by saying, "Thanksgiving is late this year."

For Thanksgiving, we went to our church just down the road. Josh's sister was going to host everyone at her house, but as the guest list grew she decided to reserve the church and have it there instead. It worked out well because then everyone did the traditional game of lighting (basketball) after eating. (Not me... I was in a food coma.) Here are the grandkids that were there (except for Gabe because he had just barely stepped out, but he was there too!) Shannon's family and Heather's family didn't come this year because they were doing other things. So this is just the kids of Josh's brother (Bryan) and two of his sisters (Janelle and Jenni). Tyson (the boy in the pink shirt in the front row) is a Junior and plays on the high school Varsity basketball team so he typically beat everyone at lightning. lol

On Black Friday, I started out by shopping online the night before and I should have just stuck with that! But no. I was lured into going to Kohl's because I had some $10 coupons that had to be used in store. I even had a couple of friends give me theirs so I had a total of 3 $10 coupons and 1 $5 coupon! I couldn't let that $35 go to waste! However, if I would have realized beforehand that they couldn't be used on toys, candy, Under Armour brand, Levis, and a whole host of other things I probably wouldn't have dragged my whole family along to Kohl's at 9am on Black Friday!

We created quite the scene at the check-outs as one by one all of use failed to be able to use our coupons. It was one per customer so I had told each of my kids, "Here is your coupon, go get in line." Gabe had just a pair of Under Armour socks. They were going to be about $12 so he had the $10 off coupon and I gave him a few bucks in cash to pay the difference. Well nope! The coupon wasn't allowed on Under Armour! Meanwhile, at a different checkout lane, Caleb had an $8 blanket to buy. Well nope! He needed to have OVER $10 in order to be able to use the coupon. So he tried to grab a candy bar at the checkout to bump it over $10, but NOPE! That wasn't working because it was candy! The cashier had mistakenly told him, "Oh, you must not be able to use it on the blanket," but it was actually the CANDY that was messing it up. So then Josh ALSO had a blanket. NOPE! Same problem. He just got out of line and was like, "I'll go look for something else." Meanwhile, I had a few little toys and also some socks. Well apparently I couldn't use the $10 coupon because the socks were only $9 and the toys wouldn't help bump it up over $10 because the coupon wouldn't apply to toys. So then I at least could use just the $5 coupon on the socks! SHEESH! And literally all of this was happening at the same time at four different registers. I have never been so frustrated with Kohl's in all my life. In the end, we did end up leaving with 2 blankets, a pair of shorts for Gabe, a pair of socks for Avery, and four little Hatchimals toys (for the gift exchange with Josh's extended family... we have a bunch of little girls to give gifts to.) But we ended up paying full price for one blanket and leaving one $10 coupon unused. I think total we ended up spending about $30 for all the things, so still a decent deal. But it also came with the cost of about 50 people in line staring at us as all heck broke loose and every cashier's light started flashing for help. Oops. Maybe they shouldn't have so many friggin' exclusions on their coupons!!

Then I also went to Bath and Body and got a whole bunch of hand soaps on sale to give to teachers and friends. Everyone can use soap, right?! After that it was about noon and we were all ready to get the heck back to our quiet house in Rexburg. Idaho Falls was CRAAAZY! When we got home, Josh took the kids sledding at the sand dunes and I stayed home and studied. Caleb looks really small in this picture but I think he was standing downhill. haha

Last but not least, I have to share these awesome pictures of Caleb. There is an ap that lets you age progress a photo so that you look like forty years older. Well here is Caleb's current school picture next to him as a grandpa. hahahaha The missing tooth only adds to the appeal.

He kind of resembles Santa Claus right?? And on that note.... Merry Christmas!!! ;)