Christmas 2015

We had a great Christmas season this year. It started out with my annual harp ensemble performance at the Children's Hospital.  We had a great turn out of patients, parents, and hospital workers, and it was a delight to be able to play for them and bring them some holiday cheer.

Justin got an early Christmas present this year when we discovered that our 1999 Toyota 4Runner was beginning to have transmission problems.  We sadly sold our 4Runner and bought a new crossover, a 2016 Subaru Crosstrek.  It is a really fun, zippy little car to drive, yet it still has all-wheel drive and does great in the snow, but with much better gas mileage than the 4Runner.  We've had so many memories with the 4Runner, from our very first date, to bringing home all our babies from the hospital, so it was sad to see it go, but this new car has been pretty fun. (This picture was taken on December 23rd, the day after we bought it--notice how green our grass is!!)

The snow came the next day on Christmas Eve, and Justin had a grand time snow blowing all the neighbors' driveways.  I think he did about 7 total.  Molly and Lexie even went out to help too! They were excited about having a white Christmas!

Lexie Turns 8!

Lexie turned 8 years old and was baptized as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  She had a great birthday (celebrating with Grandpa since they share a birthday) and a beautiful baptismal service! Even though Justin's face was still numb from having jaw surgery three weeks before, we were grateful that he was feeling ok enough to be able to baptize and confirm Lexie.

Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving early this year since Justin is scheduled for his jaw re-alignment surgery a week before Thanksgiving.  He will have his jaw immobilized and not be able to chew anything for 6 weeks.  My parents came to visit so they could help out with the kids while I'm helping Justin at the hospital for a couple days, so we celebrated Thanksgiving early while they were here.

Halloween

Molly wanted to be Princess Leia this year, so we managed to find an old sheet to make her dress out of--roughly cut and experimentally made without a pattern.  Molly even helped with the sewing.  Justin said she couldn't go without a blaster, so he happily made one for her. She got a lot of comments about her costume (and her hair) while out trick-or-treating.

Lexie wanted to be a black kitty.  She made a cute cat and had a lot of fun.

Other Fall Happenings

 Here's a collection of pictures from other happenings the past few months.

Our family was invited to be the guest Wish Family at this year's Make-a-Wish board members dinner.  They treated us to a fancy dinner and Justin got to talk to the group about Annie's diagnosis and her wish trip to Disney World.  We met some great people, and they enjoyed meeting Annie and looking at her trip scrapbook.

Before the Make-a-Wish dinner.

Molly and I enjoy creating new hair styles for her.  It's fun to try to re-create styles we find online, and Molly has the most perfect, thick, long hair! This style didn't turn out at all like what we were planning or expecting, but we thought it looked pretty cool.

Molly had a project at school to build a car that was powered by a balloon.  It had to meet certain requirements. She designed it all herself, and then Dad helped her figure out how to reduce friction on the wheels and make it go faster and farther.  Molly did end up winning a prize for her car.

Lexie was awarded Student of the Month and it was fun to hear from her teacher all the ways she is helpful in the classroom.

And more recently, we attended the Holland Performing Arts Festival.  They had a lot of fun crafts for kids, including these sculptures to create.  They had a ton of live music and bands, and we even got a tour of the Arts Center.

The highlight of the festival was watching Bandaloop perform on the outside wall of the Arts Center.  Bandaloop is a vertical dance team from California.  They do some really cool dancing on the sides of buildings and mountains.  Their videos online are really cool because they move as if the wall is the ground, but with gravity acting in a different direction, and having ropes suspend them, they can do some really cool things.

Harpening 2015 Harp Concert

I had a fabulous time performing with 22 other harpists for "Harpening 2015".  I've spent a lot of time the last 6 months learning my music and attending small rehearsals, so it was satisfying to finally have the whole group together finally.  We even had a little harp "petting zoo" where I was able to talk to guests about the different types of harps and help them even play them.  Here are some highlights from the day.

All of us on stage and ready to perform.

We were lucky to have such a beautiful place to play! (Many more people showed up by the time the concert started.)

Vala's Pumpkin Patch

After living in Omaha for nearly 7 years now, we figured it was time we took our family to the popular pumpkin patch attraction here called Vala's.  We'd heard so much about it, but knew that it was not an accessible place that Annie could enjoy.  Fortunately, we have a great respite provider right now who was willing to spend the day with Annie at home while we took Molly and Lexie to Vala's. And Make-a-Wish was even kind enough to provide us with discount tickets!

The corn maze this year at Vala's--it wasn't very big, but perfect to do with the kids in just 15 minutes.

In the corn maze

We took a hayride out to the pumpkin fields where guests can pick their own pumpkins to purchase.  The pumpkins extend over several of the rolling hills behind us.  (I-80 is right above Molly's head.) It was impressive to see so many pumpkins!

The girls loved the obstacle course! They had fun pretending they were on American Ninja Warrior!

We spent a lot of time riding the various pedal carts too.  We rode this 4 person cart as a family, but then Lexie wanted to help pedal it just with me.  I discovered a little too late that her feet couldn't really fully reach the pedals, so it made for a great workout to get around the trail.

Justin and Molly really liked these smaller pedal cars.

Vala's had a lot of wood cutouts for you to take pictures of with your kids sticking their faces through the face holes.  I'm not a big fan of them, but this picture opportunity was so creative, we just couldn't resist. :)

Memphis Lake Campout

 We went on our annual Memphis Lake State Park campout with friends.  It was gorgeous weather, except for the rather freezing temperatures overnight.  But we had a great time kayaking and hanging out around the campfire making s'mores.

Eye Surgery... Again!

Lexie had eye surgery to remove two chalazions--one on the upper and lower lids of her right eye.  Last year she had two other surgeries for chalazions on her left eye.  She did really great, and although she loves getting the stuffed animals in the recovery room, we hope that this is her last eye surgery!

Two chalazions on Lexie's right eye

Oldroyd Family Reunion in Branson

My parents, three siblings, and their families all met up in Branson for our Oldroyd Family Reunion a couple weeks ago. There was so much to do and every day was full of activities, but here are just some highlights from our trip.

But first, my sister stopped at our house on their way out to Branson. Here's a little of what we did while they were in town.

We went to the Joslyn Art Museum that has a great play area for kids.

At the Joslyn Art Museum

Then we went to the Kaneko Play exhibit.  Kaneko is an art studio and they had this temporary exhibit called "Play" which provided all sorts of fun and unique toys and activities for kids to do.

At Kaneko Play.  The second floor of the exhibit was closed, so we were disappointed to not get to see the supposedly "cooler" stuff up there.

Then we headed across the river to the Union Pacific Railroad Museum.

Then we stopped at the Kanesville Tabernacle in Council Bluffs. 

My sister and her family were excited to walk up to the tabernacle and see the BYU box of prizes.  I knew nothing about this, but apparently BYU had hidden one box in each state.  They give out clues about its location and the first person to find it wins prizes contained in the box.  Someone else at the tabernacle found the box and claimed the prizes, but since my sister's family missed it by just seconds, they got T-shirts as runner-up prizes.  They were pretty excited! (We don't know the other runners-up on the left side of the picture. They were cheering "Go Cougs" for a video that was posted on BYU's social media.)

Then we traveled down to Branson together and met up with the rest of our family there.

All 25 of us

This is the rental house we stayed in.  It worked really well for our large family and was even wheelchair accessible.  However, what the owner didn't tell us was how STEEP the road in front of it was! This picture doesn't adequately show just how steep this hill is.  It was too steep for us to push Annie on, so we drove our van ride up next to the pathway to the door and opened Annie's ramp right onto the bridge.  But the house worked great and the Ozarks were beautiful!

We all gathered for Family Home Evening Monday night and had a good time.

Then we celebrated my mom's birthday.

The next day we went to Silver Dollar City Amusement park which had some pretty serious roller coasters and thrill rides.

Unfortunately, there was only one ride that was accessible for Annie to go on... the train ride around the park.  Our family nearly filled one whole train car!

Lexie was too small to go on some of the big roller coasters, but she was good at pretending!

They had a classic log-flume ride.  I'm glad it was my last ride of the day because I've never gotten more wet on any ride than this one. And somehow I was the only one that got soaked.

Annie had a good time checking everything out at the park and hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa.

The next day we went to the Rick Thomas Magic Show.  It was absolutely incredible and blew us all away.  Our family is still talking about some of the acts and how they could have possibly been done.  Our minds are still stumped!

Later that night we all went to the SIX show.  It's an acapella group of 6 brothers (who are all Mormon). It was highly entertaining--a great show and fun music.  Even the kids were dancing in the aisles during intermission.

The kids all ready for the show to start.

The next day we went to White Water water park. I don't have many pictures because it's hard to carry around a camera at a water park.  But we had a fantastic time and went on some really great slides. 

Annie hung out in the shade with Grandma and Grandpa for most of the day, but looked adorable doing so. Annie lounged in a tube around the lazy river later in the afternoon, but she got a little cold after a while.

On our last full day in Branson, we went to College of the Ozarks to see Eward's Mill and some other sites there.

Lexie and Grandma playing checkers at Edward's Mill.

The rental house had a pool up the street that we went to several times during the week.

The kids also had a great time playing around the house together. These girls are all so adorable and had a lot of fun together.

Our ticket package at Silver Dollar City included matching T-shirts for all of us, so we had to get a picture with us all in them.

We all had to drive through Kansas City as each of us headed to our various homes across the country, so we all made one last stop together at the Liberty Jail.

Liberty Jail

We made it back home, and my sister's family stayed with us for a couple more days before continuing on their way.  We all had a great time and it was so much fun to all be together, doing some really fun activities, playing games, laughing, and having a good time. 

About a week later, just our little family headed back to Kaneko Play to see the part of the exhibit that was closed when we went there earlier.  We had high expectations since we'd heard that there was really cool stuff there.  However, most of the exhibit had closed.  There was a huge Minecraft video game simulator thingy (I'm not sure) that was closed.  They also had gotten rid of their huge kinetic sandbox which we were most looking forward to--it's beach-like sand that can be molded like play-doh, but then "melts" back into sand again.  But there were a few other things we still had fun with.

There were air rockets that we had a lot of fun with.

Lexie had to jump with all her weight to shoot the rockets.

Justin also found a toy he had some fun with.