Holidays, Crackers and Armored Catfish

Hello and Happy New Year!

Just thinking that since Teresa's mission blog is all wrapped up and tied with a bow, I should get the family blog going again. I did order a 'mission book' to be made with Teresa's blog, so she'd have a kind of 'yearbook' for her mission.

Meanwhile, the last 2 months happened!

Yes, the time actually flew by, and it seems like we squeezed in a lot.

TURKEY DAY. There was Thanksgiving (Angela and friends joined us. No pics, sorry--they had to leave pretty soon after dinner and I forgot to pull out the camera!)

WELCOME HOME. Then, of course, Teresa came home. And there was much rejoicing :)

Max going to his new home!

MAX NEW HOME. I had been looking for a family who might love to have a rabbit! Max is 7 1/2 years old, and now our kids are not really around to enjoy him as much. So, in December we passed him along to the Glasgows, who used to go to church with us. They have 4 kids and live in Connecticut now. Kara and I met our friend 1/2 way, and handed over Max and all his stuff!

bridesmaids had on Hunter boots
(Mandy's new last name is "Hunter")

WEDDING FESTIVITIES. Mid-December, we got to fly to Seattle and celebrate our niece/cousin's wedding. What a fun weekend! She wanted snow, which we had plenty on the ground, and it did even flurry at the end of the weekend.

Playing in the snow on the way
up to Leavenworth

Our whole family got to be there, which was a surprise for me! It was right in the middle of finals for David, so I assumed he was not coming. But he and Frank planned all along, for him to fly up from Provo. We're in the airport to pick up Grammie D and Poppa Dave, and who walks around the corner: David! It was awesome.

Frank & sisters Pam n Dana, and their
parents David n Diane :)

Otherwise, Dana and Andy also flew out for it. A good showing from the East Coast :)

ping pong ball snowballs

CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS. Then a couple of weeks later, of course, Christmas came! Kind of last-minute, Frank looked for tickets to Florida to go visit Grammie D and Poppa Dave. It turns out if you are willing to travel on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day on Spirit Airlines, you can get a pretty good deal to Florida. We would travel on Christmas Eve.

So before that, we decided to celebrate "gift-giving" Christmas on the Saturday before Christmas. Angela came over, and we ate food and opened presents.

People got games as gifts, so we even got to try two of them out! "Red Flags: the game of Terrible Dates," and another one...

hmmm, as teams, you try to get your team to say the word on the card, and the other team gets points if you use THEIR 'forbidden' words to describe your word.

fun word game I can't remember the name of

It was a good day! No snow on the ground at that point, so I used Kathi's idea from forever ago, and put ping-pong balls in everybody's stockings, and we had a snowball fight, of sorts, with ping-pong balls.

Then we flew on Christmas Eve, joining a surprising number of people because I think it was a full flight.

Sunny Florida greeted us, with mostly sunshine! And vegetables. Poppa Dave is an expert gardener, and they have a lot of vegetables at their house.

The BIG ONE: caught by Kara :)

FISHING. The kids like to get in some fishing when we go to Florida, since the Whitesells also have a dock off their backyard, into the canal that leads to Lake Okeechobee. He has fish, turtles, alligators, and birds to watch. Most of the fish they catch are smaller, so they immediately get de-hooked and tossed back in.

resident alligator

armored catfish!!

But THIS time, Kara caught the biggest bream (yep, it's a type of fish, pronounced "Brim") Poppa Dave had ever seen, while they fished! She doesn't love to take them off the hook so Teresa did that part, and actually Frank and Poppa Dave cleaned fish later.

Another first: Teresa tried spear-fishing, since there are huge 'armored catfish' along the bottom of the canal. They are more of a nuisance, as they are NOT good to eat, and they burrow underneath walls, etc.

lots of moss...I think he was
hibernating?

So Poppa Dave catches them, and uses these catfish as the Native Americans used fish: to fertilize the ground in his garden. You wrap the fish in newspaper and bury it. The newspaper somehow speeds up the decay process and in a few months, the newspaper-wrapped fish is gone, and the soil is richer.

Teresa caught one via spear (first try!), and they wrapped it for fertilizing the garden.

PUZZLE TIME. It was also a puzzle week...1000 pieces! Normally I only have patience for a max of 500 pieces. But the kids got it going, and by the end of the week it was done :0

CRACKERS. For Christmas dinner we played music with the holiday crackers (Christmas crackers are a holiday tradition in the UK--our neighbor grew up with them, and I liked the idea! We've had them adorning everyone's plate for the past 2 years.)

Christmas Crackers are short, cardboard tubes wrapped in colorful paper. You and the person next to you pull on either end, and it makes a "crack" or pop noise, and out falls candy, or a paper, or a joke or quote, or all of the above.

This year we had crackers with little musical horns, and we played some music with them! It was a funny end to the meal.

SAND AND SUN. We also had one Beach Day: digging and walking on the beach and soaking up sun, for these Vitamin-D-deprived Massachusetts residents!

We WERE going to go diving but it was too windy. Like, 6-foot waves so they weren't taking boats out that day. Ugh.

BACK TO ROUTINE. Now, Teresa and David are back at BYU; classes started 2 weeks ago. Let the fun begin! (and studying...and time-management...and part-time jobs)

Kara has been juggling 3 part-time jobs the past few months...
*The Local, a restaurant where she hostesses/gets tips for carry-out
*Interim nanny, afternoons for 2 little girls
*Chauffeur, driving a student home from middle school each day

She's hoping to get started soon with an internship with a cyber security company in downtown Boston. I think it will be with the sales/marketing department... or maybe I'm making that part up.

She'll go in this Friday to meet with some key people, and hopefully get more details on timing, and knowing the kind of work and projects she can help with.

There's the summary :) I'm still in denial about winter, although now we have snow AND frigid temps. It's here with a vengeance, whether I deny it or not...(waaaaah, sad face, thumbs down)

Hope your week is starting out well!
Love, Kari