Double Digits!

Rand's 10th birthday started out as all birthdays should: with a giant donut and balloons all over the house.

His two besties, Cooper and Jesse, came home with us after school. We were supposed to be going to Lowe's trampoline park, but a blizzard set in and we barely made it back alive from picking up cheeseburgers for them, so we weren't sure if we'd make it. 

After cheeseburgers, fries, brownies, and ice cream, the weather cleared a bit and we decided to go for it. Because eating your weight in birthday junk food and then hitting up a trampoline park just seems like a really great idea. 

The boys had a blast, though!

Saturday we celebrated with the family and had Rand's favorite foods: pork burritos, 7-layer dip, and ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. We were even lucky enough to have Aunt Jill and Uncle Dave come over for the shindig!

We're lucky to have such supportive family on both sides. We love having so many people around who love our kiddos!

And man, we're so grateful for this guy. I can't believe it's been 10 years since he came into our family. Every year I think about how terrified I was when Heavenly Father told me we needed to have another baby, and how I was convinced it was a test of my faith. I had no idea that Heavenly Father was just trying to bless us. And what a blessing Rand has been. Happy birthday Rander Mander!

January 2025

In January we played with the Glorbs Santa brought the boys, had a New Year's Celebration that mostly involved eating way too much, and Cole printed off some cool stuff with Caulder's new 3D printer (which he now claims was actually for both of them 🤣).

We all got sick and Rand ended up missing 2 weeks of school. He broke out in viral hives, of course, but we helped cure him with the most magical elixer: boba. 

We made lobster. It had eyeballs. Ew.

And we went tubing with the Grace/Washburn gang. 

 

 

Dreamwalk Park

Yaya treated us to a night at Dreamwalk Park. It's a new experience in the Orem mall where you walk through all these crazy places looking for riddles to solve. They had robots, giant mushrooms, ice walls, a big room with a waterfall, dancing plants, and cracks in the walls that looked like lava.

We got to carry around blue lights that showed weird little creatures on the walls. There were tunnels to crawl through, a talking fish named Bob – all sorts of cool stuff!

 

Luminaria

We finally hit up Thanksgiving Point during their Luminaria event. It was so fun! We got hot chocolate and donut holes, walked through the lights, and loved the section with the lanterns and grasses near the LDS exhibit. They also had a new Tree of Life exhibit that was pretty amazing.