December 2019

Here's a look at what we did this December:

Seth is still loving life as a missionary in Kingman, AZ.  He loves being a missionary around Christmas time and sharing the Light of Christ with everyone he meets. He is doing so awesome and we love him!







We started off December with a Gingerbread house making party - we love decorating gingerbread houses!









Other pre Christmas festivities included watching Autumn's amazing dance concert, which both Megan and Devin came home to enjoy, and various ward, Stake and neighborhood parties and caroling festivities - we love everything about Christmas!!



We also took a very short 36 hour trip to Oregon for Grandpa Ririe's memorial service, which was a great time to celebrate him and spend time together with our Ririe family.  Unfortunately, I didn't take a single picture that weekend. :(

The real Christmas fun started after everyone survived finals and we moved on to Christmas break. After welcoming the Bake family here to our house where they would be having Christmas with their family, the 5 of us boarded a flight to Long Beach where we boarded our cruise ship headed to the Mexican Riviera.  We spent the next 7 days having one of the most fun family vacations we have ever taken and enjoying some much needed warmth and sunshine.

The cruise ship was all decked out for Christmas, which was very fun:





On Sunday, our first full day of the cruise, we connected with some fellow members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for a Sunday service, which was really awesome:



After church, we rushed to the gingerbread making competition where we had 15 minutes (out of an original 90 minutes - we were late because we wanted to go to church first) to complete our gingerbread house. We had the funnest and funniest time slapping our house together at lightning speed:






Unfortunately, we didn't have time to let our frosting dry, so this happened...

We spent Monday exploring beautiful Cabo San Lucas where we explored the pier area before going on a boat tour to Land's End and snorkeling at Pelican Arch, both of which were amazing!  We spent the remainder of our day creating and interpreting art on a beautiful beach.



















Tuesday we spent in the jungles around Mazatlan where we took a zip lining tour and also enjoyed the most delicious lunch ever!  Let's just say that tequila cheese is a new family fave and worth traveling to Mazatlan for.

On Christmas day we were in Puerto Vallarta where we enjoyed a day exploring the beautiful downtown area and playing on and enjoying a taco lunch on a gorgeous beach.  Add in being able to talk to Seth and hear about his adventures in Arizona and it was a pretty perfect Christmas day!!















We spent the final two days enjoying some fun activities, some sun and relaxation on the cruise ship


Our annual Christmas morning stair photo in our Christmas jammies




Some of us enjoyed the sun more than others - this is Bryce doing his impression of Emperor Palpatine ;)

So that's our December - see you in 2020!!

November 2019

Here's what happened in our family in November:

I failed to mention in our October blog post that we lost our beloved dad and Grandpa at the very end of October when Bryce's dad passed away.  We miss him terribly, but we are happy to know that he is happy, healthy and whole and that we will see him again.













Seth is still serving in Kingman, Arizona and really loves it there. We are so happy that he is loving life as a missionary and working so hard. We love him!





I went with a group of my quilting friends to Springdale, Utah (the cute little town right outside of Zion National park) to my friend Michelle's house there for a week of sewing, visiting, enjoying spectacular weather and the amazing scenery of that area.  It was such a great week for me and just what I needed to reset.











Megan, Autumn, Grandma Ririe and I all went to my sister Kristi's annual crafting day with all of the girls in our extended family and had a great time creating, laughing and catching up with each other.  Here's a look at the projects we created:



Autumn stayed busy doing school, working, socializing and dancing.  She sure makes life at home fun!





Frankie has been getting in little scuffles when he goes outside with a neighbor cat over territory and this month one of those scuffles escalated to a fight and Frankie ended up having one of his back claws "forcibly amputated" as our vet put it, and his paw was in bad enough shape that he had to have a little surgery to have it fixed and cleaned up.  He has since recovered, but he is now on house arrest, which he doesn't like at all and very vocally lets us know he isn't appreciative of not being able to defend his turf.  He's annoying so it's a good thing we love him.


Passed out post surgery


Back to his spunky self the next day.  He is now bandage free and his paw has healed, though he is missing a toe now.

In big family news, Mitch asked Megan to marry him and they are officially engaged!  They have set a date for May 13, 2020 and we are excited to add Mitch to our family.  He's a good fit for Megan and they are pretty happy. :)










































We had an AWESOME thanksgiving weekend!  Megan, Mitch and Devin all came home for the long weekend and we enjoyed a really good Thanksgiving dinner with our family, my sister Kim and all of her family and my sister Becki and her family.  We had 21 people in all and had so much fun!  Of course, I didn't take any pictures of our Thanksgiving feast except this one of all of the place cards:



I did get a few pics of our other festivities that weekend. First, we enjoyed an awesome video chat with our favorite missionary:





We decorated a little for Christmas, though we didn't put all of our decorations up because we aren't actually going to be home for Christmas this year.


Devin was super excited to have his turn putting the angel on the tree since he hasn't been home for the decorating for the past 2 Christmases



Devin and Autumn enjoyed a snowball fight in the backyard...









We celebrated Crystal's birthday with pizza, games and carrot cake





And we went to visit the Luminaria light display at Thanksgiving Point, one of our most favorite traditions.  This year was especially cold, but the freshly fallen snow was stunning and it was so fun to share with our Holloway cousins.  It was an awesome night!







Tune in next month for our December report...