The Van Aken Family: November 2012

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

My dad's birthday is November 29, so we get a second opportunity to celebrate with family a few days after Thanksgiving. This time, we let mom be the hostess. We had a delicious pork roast dinner, with delicatta squash, apple sauce, green beans, and salad.

I was in the kitchen with my dad and sisters and wanted to take a picture of the four of us. Then the little kids saw us taking a picture so they joined in, then the bigger kids, and it ended up being almost a family picture.

Dad and my boys

Opening presents

Corey and her boys made this for Dad. She's always so creative. He loved it!

It says, "My Grandpa is a BIG HUNK. Sometimes we call him SUGAR DADDY and he calls us his SUGAR BABIES. When we go to visit him U-NO you will have MOUNDS of fun and a GOOD & PLENTY time. He likes to pretend he is a JOLLY RANCHER when he works with his bees. If he's lucky he'll get a BIT O'HONEY from them. We love to LOOK for bears with him down the ROCKY ROAD or along 5th AVENUE. When we work with Grandpa it is...

always a PAYDAY. If we scoop up enough TOOTSIE ROLLS we might earn 100 GRAND. Even though Grandpa is getting old and sometimes calls NERDS WHATCHAMACALLIT, he's no DUM DUM, he's a real SMARTIE. He never gets mad at us, he just says, "OH HENRY!" and then "CHUCKLES." So Grandpa, for your birthday we hope you TAKE 5 and enjoy your day. We love you!!"

Group shot!

Jeff, Nate, Brad (standing)

Hyrum, Tif, Ryota, Mom, Dad, Jonah, Jillian, Tad, Mariko (sitting on the couch)

Corey, Landon, Kylie, Ben and Me (sitting on the floor)

Grandpa and "Cake Boss" (Yes, she's also the "Pie Princess!" She's very talented!)

Grandpa loved his cake and was so happy to have us all there to celebrate with him.

I have the best dad. He loves to be with his kids and grandkids. He's always busy helping someone or working on a project, usually with one of his kids or grandkids. He knows how to do just about everything, and if he doesn't he'll figure it out and then teach someone else how to do it. I love you, Dad!

Monday, November 26, 2012

Christmas Tree Hunting

If you've known our family for long, you know that the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we go up to the Olympic mountains to play in the snow and cut our Christmas tree. We love sharing this tradition with our friends, and this year eight families joined us. We had to drive a little higher than years past to get to the snow. Fortunately, we have a 4 x 4 truck and were able to rescue some our mini-van friends who couldn't quite make it up through the snow.

The kids loved sledding. They each had at least one friend who came, so they all had a great time. (Nate didn't come with us this year.)

Hiram and Ben (yes, that's Ben behind the blue hood...)

Kylie and Aubrey...this will be Aubrey's last year joining us, since she's a senior this year. Why do they have to grow up so fast?!

Kennedy and Jillian

Kylie and Jillian next to the first tree we found. Brad was off rescuing the stranded mini-vanners, so the girls and I found and cut this one all by ourselves. I had the brilliant idea to go uphill to find the tree so we would be able to slide it down the hill instead of pulling it up! Unfortunately, I ended up sliding down the hill with the tree.

Jillian enjoying the snow.

Kylie cutting the tree.

Brad joined us right after the tree and I slid down the hill and helped carry it back to the truck.

With our first tree (ended up being the one for Brad's mom). Ben was off sledding.

But he joined us to find the second one.

Brad wanted to go downhill, so we ventured into this valley and found a beautiful tree. It was a little more work pulling it out, but not too bad.

All of us with our 2nd tree, the one we kept.

By this point, some of the families had headed back down, but here's about half of us.

The Waggners, Hooyers, Kollodges, Tatros, and Van Akens

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Thanksgiving

We had 25 people over for Thanksgiving this year! Fourteen adults and eleven kids! I was a little worried we wouldn't have enough seats for everyone, but with some creative table arranging, and the fact that three are babies and three are three-year-olds, we squeezed everyone in! I didn't have enough white table cloths or gold place-mats, and we had to go all the way around the table and through the living room if we wanted to go upstairs, but other than that, it worked great!

There was kind of a "Fourth of July meets Thanksgiving" theme going on, but no one complained.

When Mariann was here visiting, she made these "Wise Family Miniatures" so we could still feel like they were joining us for Thanksgiving. It wasn't quite the same...

Jane and Ashley preparing the salad.

Some of the boys!

Here's the three-year-olds' table (Jane, Gwen and Lafe). We tried to get Landon to join them, but he's not quite three yet...

From the end of the table, left side to right side:

Ashley, Brandon, Ben, Jonah, Tiffny, Matt, Nate, Kylie, Vikki, Alicia (That's baby Ethan in the background in the high chair! Somehow babies Caleb and Nolan didn't get into any of the table pictures.)

Me, Brad, Corey, Jeff w/Landon on his lap, Jillian,

Dad, Hyrum, Kathy

And mom! She took the first two pictures, so I wanted to make sure I got one with her in it!

Jillian made ALL the pies this year! She's our Pie Princess! They were delicious. Apple, Banana Cream (ended up more like Banana Soup, probably because I helped on that one...), Chocolate, and Pumpkin.

Brad cooked two turkeys this year, I did the mashed potatoes (yes, enough for an army!), gravy, and stuffing, and everyone else brought appetizers and/or side dishes...feta & spinach triangles, jalapeno poppers, feta walnut spread with apples and crostini, and bacon wrapped water-chestnuts for the appetizers and brussel sprouts, carrots, roasted yams, green beans, green salad, cranberry salad, and rolls for side dishes! Wow, what a feast! And then the amazing pies for dessert!

After dinner, we played the Game of Things and laughed off all the calories we ate! (I wish!) But we did laugh a lot. And we learned all about Hyrum's kissing adventures in Kindergaren and 1st grade, which made us laugh even more! One of his great lines: "Then we kissed right here (pointing to his lips) and she liked it!"

And probably the best part of the whole night, Dad did all he dishes! Seriously, though, it was a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'm so thankful to have so much family close by, good friends to share with, and it makes me happy to be able to host it at our house.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Visit to BYU-I

Nate and I drove out to Rexburg, Idaho to visit BYU-Idaho this past weekend. I picked him up from school at 1:00 on Thursday and we drove for nine hours to Mountain Home, ID and spent the night. We made it through all the mountain passes without encountering any snow, which made me very happy, but there was dense fog in the Blues and for about half an hour we couldn't see anything more than a few feet in front of us. I'm so grateful it was warm enough that there wasn't any black ice! I'm not a very confident driver in snow and ice and I was a bit worried about the road conditions. We drove four more hours Friday and arrived in Rexburg a little after 12:00, just on time for our visit which was scheduled for 1:00. After checking in to the local Super 8 Motel, we headed up to the school.

As we walked into the Manwaring Center to meet Trevor, Nate's student ambassador, Emma Starnes came running up, yelling, "Nathan!" and gave him a huge hug. Trevor was quite impressed! We chatted with Emma for a few minutes, and then went to the introductory meeting with about 8 other new students, and then on a tour of the campus.

Walking towards the Manwaring Center with two student ambassadors. It looks like they are holding hands, but they're not. The girl said she hadn't even been asked out on a date yet, quite amazing since I've heard that dating is the #1 hobby of BYU-I students.

The John Taylor building. The front part is a beautiful chapel, where we had our introductory meeting. There are eight or nine Stakes of students at BYU-I, so obviously they don't all get to meet in this chapel. Most meet in large classrooms that double as chapels on Sundays.

The BYU-Idaho Center, which looks like a mini Conference Center. It seats 15,000 and is beautiful! They have devotionals here every Tuesday.

Walking down to the lobby of the BYU-Idaho Center.

While on our tour, we ran into Grace Knight, who also gave Nate a hug, though not quite as enthusistically as Emma. Trevor was doubly impressed! The tour was very interesting. We got to see most of the buildings on campus, including some interesting hidden spots like the hydroponic tomato green house, a mini natural history museum with stuffed animals ranging from badgers to hippos, a geology museum, and a tropical plant hot-house. The student ambassadors were both very friendly and helpful.

After the tour, we went to check out the apartment where Nate will be living during Winter semester. It's a converted house, and his apartment is on the back side in the basement of the house below. It's kind of old, very small, and doesn't have much furniture...one couch and no table or chairs. There are two small bedrooms each shared by two guys, a small bathroom, and small kitchen/living room. Nate seemed fine with it, which is good since he's already signed the contract for the semester. He hadn't seen any of his friends' apartments yet, but once he did, he said he would be moving into a different place for Spring. Theirs were much nicer.

I dropped off Nate to hang out with Emma, Grace and Alex Nowjack, then drove around town and up to the temple. It sits on the hill overlooking town, so you can see it from almost everywhere.

The front of the temple

Looking down over campus from the temple

Looking out over the town

I drove around for a while, and once it started getting dark I noticed the temple glowing at the top of the hill, so I went back up to take a few more pictures.

The next day, we picked up Alex and went to see a movie. Afterwards, Nate went to lunch with Emma, and I went back to the hotel.

Then later in the day, I met up with Nate, Emma, and Grace to watch Alex's waterpolo game. It was an exciting match. Alex's team lost by one point in the last few seconds of the game because one of his team-mates got a red card for flipping off the referee, so the other team got a free shot.

I took them out to dinner at Opa! Rexburg Grill (a Greek diner) after the game, and it was so much fun to sit and talk with them about their plans for the future. They're such great kids. Grace wants to study nutrition and food sciences, Emma wants to be a writer, Nate plans to teach history, and Alex hopes to coach swimming and teach English. If Nate and Alex both end up being high school teachers, they could teach American Studies (a combo History/English class) together at Bainbridge High. Kids would say, "I have Van Jack for Am Stud."

Nate is really excited about going to school at BYU-I. He really liked the atmosphere. I did, too. I'm happy I got to see where he will be and get a feel for what he will be doing.

The drive back home on Sunday was long (14 hours!) but relatively uneventful. Nate drove for a few hours, but I'm such a control freak that I felt more comfortable when I was driving. Once again, we didn't run into any snow on the roads, but there was a slushy downpour over Snoqualmie Pass that wasn't very fun driving through. I was glad to get home safely! Now we just have to figure out how to get Nathan there in January...

Yearly "School" Pictures

This year I failed at taking all of my kids' pictures. 1 out of 4, 25%. Fail. Jillian's actual school picture turned out well this year, so we decided to buy it, which gets me off the hook for her, I guess. Kylie is never home, at least in the daylight, so that was my excuse for her. And Nathan refused. So, enjoy these pictures of Ben. I'll add four just to make it feel like you're looking at more than one kid.