2015 missed highlights.

We sold our Rav4 and bought a minivan in preparation for Mia.  Lydia's informed us that she misses the red car, but it's been so nice for the girls to be able to climb in and out of the van themselves and not worry about the doors slamming shut on them.  Brittany's dad was great to work with in getting a good deal and we've really enjoyed it so far, especially knowing that we'll likely be enjoying it for years and years to come!  Sorry, no pictures.  Maybe I'll do something about that...sometime...

Uncle Nate coming home right before Lydia's fourth birthday.  We loved being at the airport ready to welcome him home with posters and a big crowd.  It was a bit of a let down to find out that we were waiting for him in the wrong place!  l love that my Jon found him in another building and was working to bring him to where all the rest of us were when we realized with certainty that Uncle Nate wasn't going to descend the escalator like we thought he was.  Despite that hiccup it was so great to reunite with Uncle Nate and catch up with him after two well served years.

4th of July... I sort of dropped the ball on that one.  Lots of fun time with family.  Mia was barely two weeks old at the time.

Lydia gave her first talk in Primary in October.  She was asked to talk about the miracles Jesus did.  We read several scriptures and showed her pictures so that she could decide what she wanted to talk about.  She was fascinated about Him walking on water and was amazed with the story of Him feeding the 5,000, but when she heard the story of Jesus blessing Jairus's daughter she knew that that was what she wanted to talk about.  She mentioned the other miracles Jesus did, but went in to much more detail about Jairus and who he was and how he had so much faith that Jesus could heal his daughter even after he was told that she was dead.  She loved that Jairus's daughter was raised from the dead and then bore her testimony that Jesus still does miracles.  She did an awesome job and we had a good time with girls practicing Lydia's talk in front of a "podium" made from an old car seat box. Both she and Sophie really enjoyed getting up there and preparing for Sunday.

Early November was a rough time for us.  We were pretty much a vomit factory and the most miserably sad case of sad you've ever seen.  It was at the end of the sickness that Jon was out of the office checking things out in "Vanilla" (Manila Utah) when he sent me this:

 

I figured he must be okay if he was able to send the picture, but it was really hard to tell how damaged the truck was, if at all, how he was really doing and when he'd be able to make it back home.  So I talked to him and got the story.  He was driving on wet clay underneath the snow.  He thought that the soil was frozen (which would have made for a better scenario) but as it was Jon started sliding off the road and the truck tires didn't have very good tread so he eventually slid off the road.  After several failed attempts to get back on the road he called the contractor to pull him out.  The contractor's truck wasn't enough to pull Jon free, so the contractor got his backhoe and they were able to get Jon back on the road.  I was so glad he wasn't going to be stuck in Manila for the night and incredibly amazed that his company truck wasn't dinged up after being so close to that huge tree.  My favorite was hearing the girls tell Uncle Isaac (we were at Grandma and Grandpa Blackhurst's at the time) about Dad's work truck going off the road in Vanilla.

Sephora with Aunt Abby.  I mentioned in the Christmas post that this was a dream come true for these girls. Abby obviously had a purpose in going to Sephora beyond introducing her nieces to a rainbow of beautiful makeup, but it became so much more than that when she discovered that I'd never been there myself.  The fact that I didn't know what Sephora was was just too much to handle.  So we quickly remedied that and now look forward to continuing the tradition with Aunt Abby whenever she is in town.

Thanksgiving was wonderful.  We love living so close to family and being able to do Sunday dinners together with both of our parents and love that these girls get to see many of their cousins and several Aunts and Uncles as well.  Dinner was delicious (turkey, stuffing candied yams and pumpkin pie!), but the girls especially loved the turkey craft Grandma Frazier prepared where they made turkeys from Oreos, peanut butter cups, candy corn, swedish fish and all sorts of other tasty treats. They enjoyed putting them together almost as much as they enjoyed eating them. ;)   The cousins got to play Wii Resort and we watched them bowl and sword fight.  I was surprised that Lyds wanted to sword fight at all, but watching Conner coach Lydia was actually really sweet. Also, you can probably see the paper chain hanging from the lights behind us here. I loved the gratitude lesson Grandma and Grandpa Frazier had the Sunday before we'd be getting together for Thanksgiving where they set the slips of paper in front of us and let us all write down things we were thankful for.  Lydia and Sophie had a long list of people and things that they are grateful for in their life.  Their parents and sisters, extended family, the gospel, Jesus, books, toys and much more made the list.  I loved watching Lydia write down the things she was grateful for as we spelled them for her.  She wrote really small and very clearly.  I wish I'd taken a picture of it!  It was nice to see them thinking so hard about what really matters to them and what they really appreciate.

Utah Football games are usually much more a part of our lives than they were this past year. We were in Oregon for the first home game, and then Jon was away at a Leadership Conference for another game.  One of the games was on Halloween and we weren't going to miss trick-or-treating with our girls, so Jon sold those tickets.  There were a few that he went to without me.  He took Grandpa Frazier to one and his best friend Clint to another.  I was a little sad to think that Lydia and Sophie had both been to multiple games with us in the first year of their lives and it looked like Mia wasn't going to make it to even one.  Part of the problem was that the games were all played so late.  Getting a babysitter for Lydia and Sophie was hard to begin with, but add to that a late night and that discouraged us quite a bit.  But at the end of the season Utah was playing Colorado and the game was scheduled to start in the afternoon.  We felt much better about the time and planned to drop Lydia and Sophie off at Grandma and Grandpa Blackhursts and took Mia to the coldest game of the season.  Parents of the year!!  She was a champ and slept through quite a bit of it.  We left before the game ended too, but I'm glad we did it.

  

Jon had this brilliant idea to set Nate up with our Bishop's daughter.  Both of us kind of had her in mind for a blind date with him.  But Jon doesn't just set people up.  Not always anyway.  He made this amazing dating trading card.  And then wrote a letter as if he were Lydia and had Lydia hand it to her Primary teacher, who happened to be Breanna, one Sunday before Thanksgiving.  She was going to school at BYU-I and this would allow for more than one date should they choose to do so.  It sounded like the first date was awesome, but that's about as far as it got.  Still.  Major props to Jon for coming up with such a clever set up.

  We picked up Uncle Nate from Provo after his finals ended.  Who can't go to Provo without stopping at the Creamery?  It was a fun trip.  We got to hear one of Uncle Nate's mission stories when he was separated from his companion and all their luggage.  It was pretty exciting and such a relief to find out that it had a happy ending.  This was during the time that Lydia and Sophie started asking to hear our stories.  I told them mission stories like the cobra and the carabou.  I also told them things I remembered from when I was close to their age.  Show and tell in Kindergarten when I lost Grandma's pretty ring on the playground.  Don't worry, Fallon and I found it in the end.  Jon would tell them surgery stories; his gallbladder, surgery on his jaw and getting a hernia repaired.  After they'd heard all of these, they'd start requesting to hear a specific one.  It was fun to get Uncle Nate in on that action.  I especially loved hearing stories the girls would make up.

Lydia the dog walker.  It's not quite as good as Lydia the dog owner, but I think she'd confess that it's better than nothing.  Jon's Grandma moved here from California a few months ago and brought her dogs with her.  Lydia loves all dogs and talks constantly about wanting a dog of her own.  Her stuffed animals and little tiny puppies are pretty cool, but not quite as good, so she thinks, as the real deal.  So, when the Frazier family gathered at Grandma Duse's for the Christmas party, and we showed up an hour early, Lydia got her chance to see what life with a real dog might be like.  She walked those little dogs for quite a while and, by the look on her face, still thinks dog ownership is the life for her.  I'm glad she has the opportunity to spend some time with animals without actually making one a part of our family.