New Year's Eve

The original plan was that Mom Blood and Stephen's family would be driving back to WV before New Year's Eve. Mom had to be back at work on Monday and didn't want to drive home tired. Since Stephen's family wouldn't all fit in one car, they would both drive back together. Somehow that plan got changed and we ended up keeping Mom a day or two extra, and keeping Stephen's family until New Year's! I'm sure it was our warm, cozy home that changed their minds. 

I found a Peruvian restaurant in Aberdeen that I wanted to try. What better time than when we had a native Peruvian with us? Claudia went with me and told me all the things to buy (and then ended paying for it all because she's rotten). We got enough to feed everyone some delicious Peruvian food for lunch:

And it was SO delicious.

Minus the Inca Cola, which still just tastes like bubble gum.

Our ward also planned a New Year's Eve hike by the Susquehanna, so off we went!

I think our posse of Bloods doubled the attendees on said hike. 

The tweenage cousins looking stylish.

Some of us were zero percent interested in hiking and 100% interested in trying to fall into the water. Thankfully he was easily distracted with some selfies:

Notice my hand keeping him from jumping while I snap a picture?

Pausing during their 'hike.' 

There is no hiking here. Just walking through trees.

Stephen let me pick the New Year's Eve game.

I picked Acquire.

It was a super fun, lighthearted game.

Absolutely no one regretted choosing to play.

Especially not Claudia:

In case you're wondering, Jon was NOT playing.

Jon was going to bed.

Except he kept not going to bed because he was too invested in the game.

I let the kids (besides Elijah) choose if they wanted to stay up until midnight. Aaron made it until 10:30. Elise made it until 11:45. I tried to persuade her that she could make it another 15 minutes, but she was done. Catherine and Seth both made it until midnight. In fact, I don't even know what time Seth went to bed. He was trying to keep the same hours as Jacob and Joanna.

Watching the ball drop on Claudia's phone:

Happy 2022!

We had to say goodbye to Stephen's family the next day. We always start talking about moving to Arizona after spending time with them. We got to keep the twins a bit longer (and then an extra day because their flights were unexpectedly cancelled). I really, truly loved having everyone here for Christmas. The Bloods are an awesome family and I'm grateful I got to be adopted into it. 

Post-Christmas Adventures

We got to keep everyone around after Christmas for a few days. Elizabeth was the first to head back (on the 27th) but everyone else stuck around for a bit longer!  

Claudia and I often joke about swapping kids. Her mom wants a blue-eyed grandbaby and my mom has always loved the dark eyes and hair of Latinos. So if we swap, everyone is happy! Claudia did an excellent job charming Elijah. He was ready to go back to Arizona and be her gringo. Unfortunately none of her kids were willing to stay with me, so his dreams of Arizona life were shattered.

Tia Claudia and her gringo baby

I feel like every time people come to visit we take them to the same places. We already did Annie's Playground and it was too muddy for Kilgore Falls, so off to the Havre de Grace boardwalk we went!

A pack of wild Blood cousins on the boardwalk

A different pack of wild Blood cousins.

Also one of the few pictures I have of Elizabeth's girls!

We LOVED getting to know them better and my girls miss them already.

I guess I have to claim all of these ones.

Although if anyone is interested in an always-glaring preteen, I have one to offer!

We like to tell people how Jacob eats cucumbers like they're bananas.

And now I have photographic evidence. 

Catherine and Brianna spent hours using Aaron's new dry erase markers from Santa.

This was Pretty Town and Ugly Town.

And this was a comic strip about boyfriends/girlfriends.

Either Catherine has a romantic side she's been hiding really well,

or Brianna had a LARGE influence over the subject matter.

We 100% knew that getting all of the Blood family together from literally across the entire country (from Daniel's family in New York to James in Alaska) would mean sharing illnesses. Our goal was just to not bring Covid to the party. But, of course, by this point omicron was already burning through the country. So we got to play a fun game: is it just a nasty cold, or the flu, or Covid? Some kids have gastrointestinal issues with Covid. Was Aaron's midnight puke fest Covid? Or Hazel's sniffles? Or Daniel's cold? 

Right around Christmas most of us were just feeling kind of blah. Tired, stuffy noses, chills. But no one had lost any taste or smell, so we figured we were fine. Until we read that those symptoms are less common with omicron. It was time for a Covid test. 

Jon 'borrowed' a couple of home rapid tests from his friend Franz. After some deliberation, it was decided that Jon and Kade would be the lucky nostril-swabbing winners. Kade's was negative. Jon's was positive. IMMEDIATELY and VIBRANTLY positive. But we'd all been in the same house, eating the same food, and with all the same symptoms.  So...did we have Covid or not?

Since my case seemed to have started later and still be ongoing, I decided to go get tested. James came with me. I was excited because there was no line and the parking lot was empty. Turns out that was because they closed early due to a huge influx of people needed Covid tests. No problem. I decided to come back the next morning and try again. 

I got there just as it opened and look what I found:

People had been there since 6 am (it opened at 8).

It took 90 minutes to get inside. 

I arrived at 8 am and was finally seen around 2 pm. 

Absolutely nutso. 

But negative for Covid and flu, so...win?

Also, this was how I spent our anniversary.

Happy 16th to us...

I still didn't entirely trust my results and I was worried about the girls getting sent home from school with runny noses. So I preemptively took Elise in for a Covid test just to be sure. Hers was also negative, as was her PCR. By this point we just assumed Jon's was a fluke somehow. But then, about two weeks after Christmas, his Covid Toes made an appearance again. So now I'm more inclined to think that we did all get it, especially since I had really weird vertigo for a few weeks after Christmas that has now gone away. In a way it's almost a relief--now we can be done with worrying. Until the next variant, anyway. 

But don't worry: Stephen and Jacob were still feeling well enough to keep Seth in line:

Seth loves having all his uncles around.

Jon is still anti-DC thanks to their predatory speed cameras, so we were lame hosts and just let everyone else drive to DC to be tourists. We did let them borrow our van. And two of our kids. We're generous like that.  Elise and Catherine got to enjoy the National Zoo with their cousins!

Apparently there are dinosaurs at the National Zoo.

And the real reason you go to the National Zoo: pandas!

Brianna LIVES for pandas.

Three little monkeys

Proof that Catherine was actually there.

She and Brianna were great buddies, skipping through the zoo together.

Yes, actually skipping. Claudia has video.

We may not drive you to DC, but we will burn stuff in the backyard!

Which also happens to be Aaron's most favorite activity. 

So see? We're not totally lame hosts!

Christmas

 To absolutely no one's surprise, these two were the first ones up:

"The light! It burns us!"

Elise followed soon after:

Then Catherine, which was kind of a surprise.

Catherine's been sleeping in a lot recently. 

Eventually there was quite the Christmas morning party:

The teenager missed all the fun and rolled out of bed after everyone else:

Seth's favorite Santa gift:

Unfortunately, I'm not sure a sticker is enough to stop the murder-hoboing.

But I'm not the DM anymore, so not my problem!

Some of us just couldn't make it through Christmas without a nap:

You can see Elijah's gift to Jon if you look carefully at the couch area under his bum.

Wearing his new hat from Grandpa Scott.

I didn't take many pictures, but it was so nice to have a house full for Christmas!

Way more fun than the small Christmas we were imagining for this year.

Christmas Eve

This year we got to have Elizabeth's family, Stephen's family, Mom and the twins here for Christmas (and Timmy, who we are lucky enough to get year-round). Mom and Stephen's family stayed at our house and Elizabeth and the twins stayed at Timmy's. It seemed to work out pretty well, other than Claudia almost freezing to death because Jon keeps our house so cool. 

Mostly we just enjoyed hanging out together, but we did try to get everyone outside when the weather was decent. Our Christmas Eve adventure was to Annie's Playground, where the kids had a great time playing a huge variation of hide and seek. 

Catherine wearing my sunglasses and looking like an incognito celeb.

Elise, Eowyn, and Tata (with some help from Joanna) on the monkey bars.

Then it was back to our house for some holiday movie watching!

Just kidding--they found Encanto on Disney+. 

Poor Elizabeth had a round of sick little girls, so she asked if we could do dinner and Nativity a bit earlier than usual so they could get back to Timmy's house and get everyone in bed. 

We had a much larger cast than usual, so we had to make up some additional roles. There were several little girls who all wanted to be Mary. Tata eventually won (well, Eowyn won the number guessing competition, but Tata cried the best and Eowyn relented). All the other potential Marys picked out beautiful princess dresses and became angels. 

I'm still not sure how it happened, but the shepherds all ended up with giant swords and axes as staffs and the wise men all had various Nerf guns to give to Baby Jesus. This led to two rather unfortunately hilarious events:

#1: Elijah got ahold of one of the guns and happily ran through the flock of sheep, shooting them all at point blank range with very vigorous sound effects.

#2: Catherine (a shepherd) ended up with a gun somehow and pulled the trigger since she thought it wasn't empty. PLOT TWIST: It was not empty. It had exactly one round of ammo, which happened to hit little Hannah (one of the princess/angel crew) right in the face. She burst into tears and Catherine was close to bursting into tears herself. The rest of us were crying for very different reasons. 

So not our most reverent production, but possibly the most memorable! 

After that my family headed upstairs to open Christmas pajamas and gifts from Grandma Cathy. I only had to threated Catherine several times and take 20 shots in order to get this shot:

Elijah's book from Grandma had a bulldozer in it.

Nothing in life matters more than bulldozers.

Not even Christmas Eve Star Wars pajama pictures.

Catherine in her adorable Baby Yoda onesie/jammies:

Claudia and I had a fun stocking-stuffing party in my bedroom after all the littles went to bed. Thank you Dollar Tree for having awesome things like unicorn and shark stockings. Santa may have brought Elijah an upgraded stocking for Christmas because, shark stockings:

Then it was off to bed so Santa could come!

Kalahari

Earlier in the fall we decided we wanted to do Kalahari waterpark with the kids again this winter. We missed out on so much because of Covid, and we wanted to do something fun as our gift to them since they don't need more stuff in their lives. We also invited Knoxes and Uhligs because it's always better with friends! Because of school and prices, we opted to go Dec. 22-23. Since our Christmas plans were just staying home, we figured it would be fun to go and then come back for Christmas. 

Well, the funeral kind of shifted all of our plans. Suddenly a whole bunch of Bloods were coming to our house (and Timmy's) for Christmas, which I was SO excited about! But we already had these Kalahari tickets and weren't sure what to do. Just leave everyone here while we went? Instead we opened the invitation up to everyone and were so excited when it worked out! The Uhligs ended up not being able to come, so it was the Knoxes and a whole bunch of Bloods. 

What made it extra fun was Elise puking ALL over the back of the van about 40 minutes into our drive up. We stopped to clean it up as best we could, and then debated what to do (and so did Stephen and Claudia since Brianna was in the back right by Elise).  We figured by that point everyone had already been exposed since I fed them all dinner the night before, so we kept with the plan. And, thankfully, no one else got sick!

Because we have 7 people in our family, we no longer fit into one room. Neither do the Knoxes, so we bought three rooms and split them between us. Aaron and Seth got to share a room with the Knox boys, which made them all feel really cool (especially since none of the grownups had a key to their room). 

The boys lounging in bed watching cartoons

The girls and Paul doing the same.

We usually get Paul in the mornings since most of the other Knoxes sleep in late. 

I took zero pictures inside the park.

Thankfully Claudia snapped a couple of me pushing Elijah in the swing!

He did NOT want to leave this swing!

Visiting a water park when you have small children is really not super fun for the adults. I spent most of my time in the small kid areas or carefully navigating my way around the lazy river with sleeping Elijah on my lap. But thankfully there were a couple of times I managed to pass Elijah off to Jon or Uncle Aaron so I could enjoy some of the actually fun stuff.  The best part was when Ashley and I managed to coordinate our child-free time and ran off together to the slides. I had a goal to do all the scary slides in the park, but I psyched myself out when I saw them up close. Thankfully Ashley was there for some positive peer pressure. And, as it turned out, the super scary rides were actually TONS of fun! I didn't actually make my goal of going on all the slides because of various children needing attention, but I did go on the two that scared me most, so I'm calling it a win. Thanks for being my buddy, Ashley!

And, because Bloods are Bloods, we all opted to eat sub sandwiches from Walmart in the common area rather than dealing with fast food on the drive home. I loved seeing everyone together and watching the cousins all running around together in various combinations. It was such a fun adventure together. 

We literally took over the entire common area. 

I still feel a little guilty that we ended up kind of ditching the Knoxes, but they don't really have small people anymore and got to enjoy riding the rides the entire time! I'm sure we'll get a chance to do it again in a year or two. 

Grandpa's Funeral

When we visited last May, Dad Blood wasn't doing great. He spent most of his time napping on the couch and would be disoriented occasionally. Mom was hopeful that more/different medication would help him get more sleep and reverse some of this. But starting in October or November her conversations shifted. Soon she was telling us she would be surprised if Dad made it to Thanksgiving. Her sweet neighbor Kathy was helping care for Dad while Mom was at school. She was also sure he wouldn't be around much longer. He was barely eating and out of it most of the time. 

But Dad made it to Thanksgiving. And then to December. Everyone who saw him was sure he had only a few days left, but he just kept hanging on. Mom took off work because she wanted to be with him. She even started sleeping downstairs in a bed by him so she could hear his breathing at night. But he still held on. We were all upset and confused--his body was shutting down. He hadn't had anything to eat or drink for weeks. Why was he still here? He even got a blessing telling him he could go home, that Sara would be taken care of. Finally, we ended up fasting and praying that he would pass soon and be free from pain and confusion. Early Sunday morning (December 5th) we got a text from Mom saying that he was gone. It was a very bittersweet feeling. So much relief that he was free from pain and reunited with his parents and siblings who have passed. But so much loss. So many big moments in the future where we'll feel his loss, plus all the little moments when you just want to ask Dad a question but can't. 

Kathy told us that Dad spent a lot of his time worrying about all the kids. In his head they were all much younger--Jon was back in middle school. We think maybe that's the reason he held on so long. How could he leave Sara with all these little kids to care for? 

Because of the holidays and Christmas plans, Mom decided to postpone the funeral until December 17th. Right around this time we got a letter from the girls' school saying there was a schoolwide Covid outbreak. I panicked a bit. If we got Covid, we would have to miss the funeral. Thankfully the school nurse was very understanding and let the girls stay home on 'quarantine' for two weeks before we left. They missed so much school in December... But at least we headed to WV illness-free! Or so we thought...(dun, dun, DUN!).

In case anyone was wondering,

driving with a toddler is still super, super fun.

After Dad passed, we had lots of sweet friends and family offering their condolences. Jon and I always felt a little awkward because for us it wasn't that sad. He had been sick for so long. We had prayed for him to go home and were happy he was at peace. Plus, the funeral was going to be a huge family reunion that we were all looking forward to!

Timmy, the favorite of all the nieces and nephews.

I still love that these former enemies are now besties!

Elise and Tauriel:

A giant collection of girl cousins hanging out in our bedroom full of mattresses:

My favorite development from this funeral reunion was seeing Catherine bond with the older girl cousins who she hasn't really interacted with much (other than Brianna). Rebekah was the ringleader and she had Catherine, Brianna and Avery all fully invested in this story they all wrote together. It was a Parent Trap-esque story about separated twins, one of whom was super pretty and popular, the other being a loser with "no bosoms" (my favorite line).  

Working hard on "Izzy and Bella"

But, naturally, most of the time was spent on screens:

How many Blood cousins can we fit on two couches?

Elijah getting some loves from Aunt Joanna

The viewing was Friday evening. My kids opted to stay home and play with cousins, which was fine. We did bring Elijah since we didn't want to pawn him off on anyone else. He spent the whole time running through the hallways while I followed after him. I didn't really know anyone there anyway, so I let Jonny do all the talking.

I did get a chance to look at all the beautiful flowers between bouts of toddler chasing. I found these beautiful roses from our friends the Knoxes and Uhligs. They had no idea that roses were Dad's favorite, or that pink roses especially reminded him of his mom's roses. It was a sweet little tender mercy. 

I love this picture of Jonny playing guys with Ethan:

What do you do when you're all ready for the funeral but it's not quite time to go?

Cousin train!

What about when you're at the church but still there a bit early?

Cousin pew gymnastic routines!

There was another viewing just before the funeral. A few of my kids wanted to see Grandpa and say goodbye, but a couple were uncomfortable and kind of glanced at the casket instead. It's their first real experience with death and it's always kind of uncomfortable and confusing when you're little. 

Before the funeral, Mom asked all the family to come into the room with the casket and gather for family prayer. She asked Jonny to say the prayer and it was a tender, beautiful prayer. Dad left a great legacy and I'm blessed to have gotten to be part of his family. 

The Bloods, including Brad & Barbara and Fred & Aleta

Just Mark & Sara's family 

(missing Samantha & Aiden, plus Andrew and Eli)

The funeral service was a beautiful tribute to Dad and to the hope we have of the resurrection and of being together again one day.  Mary gave the eulogy and it was a perfect glimpse of who Dad was. Mom asked Wendy to sing and she picked a beautiful hymn called "Softly and Tenderly." The line that stood out to me was this: "Ye who are weary, come home." Dad was so weary, and I'm so glad he's home. The grandkids all sang "Families Can Be Together Forever" and some of the older girls struggled to make it through without crying. Jocelyn is the oldest at 15. They will all miss having their grandpa there to watch them grow. 

Because Mom isn't sure where she's going to end up living when she retires, she opted to have Dad's casket placed in the mausoleum instead of buried. It was definitely a different experience for me. 

The sons carrying the casket into the mausoleum:

Daniel dedicated the grave, then we all headed back to the church for an incredibly generous lunch provided by the ward. There were so many leftovers that Mom was stressing out about who was going to eat it all before we all headed back home. 

Then it was--you guessed it!--time for more screens with cousins.

There's just not that much to do in West Virginia when it's cold and rainy.

We were all planning to attend church together the next day, and then spend the rest of the day helping Mom clear out some things from the closet. Unfortunately, in the middle of the night Aaron sat up in bed and vomited. Know what's really fun? Trying to clean up vomit in the middle of the night, with all the rooms full of sleeping people, in a house that's not yours, and with no cleaning supplies. Mom kept all the cleaning supplies in her room. When Jon knocked on her door and asked for Lysol wipes, she handed him a single wipe and went back to bed. So we used a thing of hand sanitizer and some paper towels to clean up. 

The next morning we packed up and headed up in a (probably vain) attempt to keep the germs from spreading. We didn't get to say goodbye to several people, which made us sad. But we did make it home without anyone throwing up in the car! And lucky for us, the adventures with the Bloods weren't over yet...