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.