Pre-Christmas Happenings

We had a wonderful holiday season. One of the best ever. We spent lots of quality time as a family and with good friends.

April and I made runs to Hobby Lobby and Aldi. We found these cute gnome pillows at Aldi. So dang cute! I've become obsessed with gnomes.

Jalen had a day off of school and his friend Clark Faulkenburg came over to hang out. The boys made cookies.

They had a lot of fun frosting them.

We had our second annual - with a COVID year in between - baking with the Batchelors party. 

I made little goodie bags for the girls. They had aprons and cookie cutters in them.

The Alsup girls, April, Esther & Bo Courtney, and Yasmin Baltzegar came. We are blessed with great friends.

Baylie, Ava and Alexa

We made gingerbread cookies, peanut clusters (white, chocolate and butterscotch), English toffee, peanut butter cookies w/ Hershey's kisses, and pretzel sticks.

I had the BYU game playing while we cooked.

Bo and Jalen are best buds. Jalen was glad it wasn't all girls.

She is little, but she is mighty.

Taste testing

Silly girls

I am so grateful for these women. They are a blessing: April, Yasmin, me, and Esther.

The next day we had our first of what we hope will be an annual tradition: Batchelor Soup & Singing. It was a lot of fun. People shared their talents and just enjoyed hanging out together. I forgot to take pictures that night. Whoops! Cool invitation though.

At some point, we went and saw the new Spiderman Movie - No Way Home. It was fantastic.

We met up with our friends the Ruppes.

We went for a walk somewhere in there. 

And we went downtown for the City of Columbia light show. It wasn't nearly as good as Saluda Shoals, but we got in for free because it was part of a package deal with our fair tickets.

One of our favorite traditions is Lights on at the Zoo. It was another great year for that. We noticed last year that they had added additional lights.

We enjoyed every minute of it all.

Lindsay Sterling

I treated the kids to a fun surprise and took them to a Lindsay Sterling concert. It was amazing! I wasn't sure what to expect, but she put on quite a show. It was like a mixture between a violin concert, a dance recital, and Cirque du Soleil.

The videos don't even do it justice.

The entire show was fantastic.

Gingerbread Houses - A Journey

 For the past several years, we have attempted to make gingerbread houses. It is usually a disaster and they usually cave in. This year we decided to try a new recipe that is firmer.

On Thursday, I got a call that the power was out at the middle school and they were closing. I went and got Baylie. Before long, Ava and Alexa Alsup joined us. I decided to have the girls make the houses. I should have supervised more. I told them to double the recipe, not realizing that it called for 12 cups of flour, which is way too much for my Kitchen Aid. When I walked in the kitchen, it was a bit of a disaster.

The girls tried to roll it out, but it was too try and hard as a rock.

It crumbled.

I had to throw it all away. I made a fresh batch and it turned out much better.

I love the way my house smells after making the houses. It smells good for a couple of days.

Following typical fashion, one of the houses crumbled.

I put it back together and did some roof repair. We hoped for the best.

The houses were much larger than in previous years.

We had invited the missionaries for dinner and we gave them a house to decorate.

We had our house as well.

The missionaries house was amazing!

And ours turned out pretty good too.

It was our best house ever.

We all dressed up for the ward party. We looked fabulous.