December 2022

December is always a busy month. Even though I pose on social media pretty regularly I still think its fun to send out Christmas cards. I enjoys getting cards from other people and going through pictures throughout the year to see the memories from the past. 

While Jeff was gone one of the nights I was invited to a birthday party for a woman in the ward and it was an 80's Murder Mystery party. I put on my pastel pink sweater and tried to do my bangs up higher than normal. It ended up being a lot of fun. Some people got really into it and did a great job. 

While I was at work and getting ready for Christmas Jeff and Joel were having a great time traveling. there was a lot of time spent in Bali but they also got to go to see Komodo dragons, do some snorkeling and lots of sight seeing. 

I was pretty good for about a week of Jeff being gone but after that it got pretty lonely at the house. One of my boredom busters was to modge podge material to make custom Christmas shoes. 

Once the boys were back one of the weekends we went to a Kroq christmas concert. Jeff is pretty much done with concerts for awhile. There is a lot of driving, crowds and late nights, ha ha ha. I guess I'll give him a break from concerts for awhile. 

Jeff and I got to go to a couples Christmas party at the Davis's house and exchange white elephant gifts. There was a lot of people there and the gifts that were floating around were definitely not all that same dollar amount range ha ha. Some things were very nice and others were a can of nuts. 

Once the kids were in town we had fun doing out annual Hovey white elephant gift exchange. Its always fun to see what you are going to get. 

One of the nights we got to go out to dinner with the Beaulieus. Jacob had just got into town and Dale and Elsa and Jolene met up with us as well.

Conute and Ashley were only in town for Christmas for a short amount of time. One of the days they were invited to Jolene's to meet her boyfriend Malik and to do an ugly sweater competition for a cousin only get-together. 

Christmas Eve the Taylor's were with her family so we had to wait until Christmas Day to see them. The rest of us got our Christmas Jammies (picked out by Ashley when she was down for Grandma's funeral)

We had a nice evening playing games and hanging out together. 

Christmas day were all together and Rhea was able to join us as well. Maddie was happy to get into her stocking as usually but she was more subdued this year. We can tell she's getting older and slowing down. 

The weather was nice so we were able to enjoy outside and inside on Christmas day. Once of the benefits of living in southern California. 

On this night we had a nice dinner at the Taylor's place where they hosted us. Dinner was yummy and we enjoyed their place and they were great hosts. 

 

November 2022

 In November we ended up doing the girls weekend without the guest of honor or Cindy or Shawna who canceled on us. Since we already had the air b and b and couldn't cancel and I already took 2 days off of work Sharla and I invited Carole and Virginia and made the best of it. We went on some hikes and found a fun steamed bun place. Sharla and Carole preferred to stay in so I went with Virginia and we did some hiking/exploring and ate out at a nice place. 

November was an interesting month. Jeff's mom passed away unexpectedly and so we had an impromptu visit from family to attend the funeral and we were able to make the best of the situation. 

Jeff's mom's health has not been the best for awhile. Jeff was actually at his work convention which happened to be in Palm Springs. When the family realized she wouldn't make it through the night Jeff left early and drove out to her house to be with he. He was able to get a couple of his siblings to come and be with her as well and they all were able to say their goodbyes on the phone if they couldn't make it there in person. 

Ashley and Conute and Jacob had flights coming in on the same day, same airport but different times. I had planned to drive back home and then back out to Long Beach when his flight was going to come in but we ended up doing errands, going to In-N-Out and then having too much traffic to drive back to Riverside so we enjoyed walking on the beach and watching the sunset instead and then picked up Jacob. 

The next couple of days we worked on putting together funeral plans. While Cheri wrote the obituary I made jewelry with Cheri's girls. We were able to find a lot of fun pictures of Sharon and especially towards the end you wouldn't find a picture without her dog!

The funeral turned out great and a lot of family came from far and wide to be able to be there. The grandkids sang, Cheri did a great job with the Eulogy, I was able to help with the program and picture display and we had Olive Garden cater the lunch since it was her favorite. 

My family came and celebrated Sharon as well since she felt like part of the family. 

Since it would be hard for much of the family to come to Riverside 2 times in November we considered this our big family Thanksgiving. 

Thanksgiving was smaller than normal and we didn't have any of our children with us. The Taylor's were with her family this year and the other two couldn't take the time off of work since they already took time for the funeral. We were able to enjoy the family that came though and it gave us more time to visit individually. 

The Zooks and Oleson's stayed at the house and the day after Thanksgiving. Jeff and Joel were flying out that day for a 10 day trip to Bali and surrounding areas. Jeff was tagging along as Joel was working to check off more of the countries that he was trying to see before he turns 50.

While he was getting ready the rest of us went to the Festival of the Trees in downtown Riverside. They had a lot of interesting trees and we were able to buy some fun stuff from the vendors and the kids were able to sit on Santa's lap. 

Jeff and Joel left and then I had my family help me get the Christmas stuff out and we decorated. It was fun to have the kids excited about the Christmas decorations. Nobody has helped me decorate in years. Paisley and Ian fought over who would get to put the tree topper on. 

That night we went and looked at the lights that we could find in the area. We went to some of the spots that we found online that was supposed to have lights but it was a little early in the season so we didn't see any at those spots but we found other ones. 

That night before the kids went to be we had hot chocolate and games. It was the perfect way to start off the holiday season.