Christmas in the Desert

This year we spent Christmas in St. George!  We drove to Grammy and Grampy's house in St. George with our family and Jen F.  On Wednesday morning Jono, Bud and I drove to Las Vegas to watch the Utes take on Boise State.  We shopped all afternoon in the rain and then went to the stadium.  It stopped raining by game time and the atmosphere was electric!  In typical Vegas style there were showgirls, fighter planes (so close and loud I had to cover my ears), Elvis impersonators and fireworks to start the game.  Boyz II Men sang the National Anthem.  We were on our feet cheering the whole game.  Unfortunately, we lost the game, but we had a great time!

The temperature in St. George was in the high 50's and mostly sunny so spent a lot of time outdoors.  The kids played soccer and Rosie pushed Coleman around the block in a stroller. The kids went swimming 3 different times at the indoor pool, and they all jumped in the freezing outdoor pool--crazy!  We also played lots of board games.  

Our favorite activity was fishing!  We went two different days and caught lots of fish.  The fish were white fish (one was an albino) or trout, and we were able to put them back in the water without too much stress to their little bodies.  I'm sure Bud stunned one fish when he was throwing it back and the fish wiggled and it hit the concrete before sliding in the water! Everyone but Coleman learned to put on the fish eggs (potskies as Grampy calls them) or the powerbait.  The bait was so stinky!  The men next to us caught five times as many fish as we did using their fly rods, so we will have to bring Jono's rod with us next visit.  We loved fishing!

The golf course was calling Jono's name so we spent several hours hitting buckets of balls and putting on the practice green!  The kids hit some good shots and hit some bad shots.  They haven't golfed in four months.  On the green, Jono gave the kids incentive to sink a putt by placing money in the hole.  Bud sunk a 15 footer for a $10 bill, but lost it playing 10 times or nothing.  Jono gave Coleman an exclusive putt for $100, and at only 2 feet away, Coleman made it.  Look at the excited look on his face as Jono hands him $100.  That kid loves money! It went right back in Jono's wallet for safe keeping.  Later, Jono played 9 holes and I drove around in the cart with him.

Last year we never went to the mall to sit on Santa's lap, so we really wanted to go this year. We didn't have to wait at all for our turn and they let me take as many pictures as I wanted with my own camera, both of which are unheard of in SLC.  Coleman asked for a shaving kit, Rosie wanted skinny jeans and Bud asked for legos.

We walked all around the Temple grounds at the St. George Temple the night before Christmas Eve.  It was so beautiful and we enjoyed the lights and mild weather.  We watched a movie in the visitor center and listened to carolers.  It was such a nice evening!

On Christmas Eve we ate a delicious lamb dinner and made brownies for Santa Claus.  The elves brought the kids a gift to open early; pillow pets!  Rosie promptly burst into tears when she opened hers and saw a unicorn.  Her soft-hearted daddy rushed over to Walmart 30 minutes before closing and switched it for a ladybug.  Bud got a dog, Coleman got a penguin and Jen F. got a bee.  They all went to bed early, snuggling their pillow pets to wait for Santa to come.

Santa had no problem finding us in St. George and he arranged all the presents around a medium-sized fake fica tree.  (There was actually one small mix-up, Santa delivered one of Bud's presents to our home in SLC, but Bud got a handwritten letter from Santa apologizing for the mistake!)  The kids got everything on their wish lists and more and were very happy.  It was a wonderful Christmas morning! 

We ate our traditional breakfast potatoes, scrambled eggs and grapefruit.  The kids played with their toys and we fished in the afternoon.  We loved spending Christmas in the desert! We spent time talking with Grammy and Grampy on the phone and are so excited that they will be home for Christmas next year.

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Glad Tidings of Christmas

We love Christmastime!  

These are some of the many activities we did this wonderful season:

This is Jono getting a massage from Coleman and Rosie danced at the Festival of Trees

We bought an extra tall tree and needed to bring a giant ladder in the house to decorate the tree.  We had to use Coleman's grabber to put the angel on top.  Jono was the only one brave enough in our family to climb to the top of the ladder, each of the kids tried and got too scared. I had to open the front door and step onto the porch to take a picture of the tree!

We had the Oettli family over for delicious Honeybaked ham sandwiches.
Bud, Rosie and Coleman loved playing with their cousin Connor!

The Summerhays siblings went to dinner (thanks for paying Grammy and Grampy) then back to our house with all the cousins to open presents from Grammy and Grampy.  The cousins loved the Amish toys and then performed "A Charlie Brown Christmas" for us.  We watched home movies then played a fun game.

Coleman was so excited to sing with the other kindergarteners in the school sing-along.  He told us excitedly, "It's my first performance!  I get to stand on the stairs!"  I went to the school one hour early to get a front row seat.

We ate lots of delicious food this month.  My favorite was Jono serving us prime rib and homemade apple pie for Sunday dinner.  Yummm!

Laura, Sara and I drove to American Fork to visit with our almost 93 year old grandma.  She still has "all her marbles" she told us proudly and she loved seeing some of her great-grand children.  She is amazing!

We served Jono's famous chili to our good friend John and Rosie ate our gingerbread house for dessert.

We then jumped in the car and headed south for Christmas in the desert.
That post is coming soon....

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Merry Christmas

 Rosie wrote this letter to Santa:


Dear Santa Claus,


     My brother and I have been wondereing if you are real.  So please write a letter back with anwers.  And please sign at the bottem.  First off, are all your reindeer males?  If you have some females, tell me.  Seocond, are you married, do you have any kids, how many kids do you have?  Now we go to thrid and forth.  How many elfs do you have?  Do elfs have names?  Those were alot of questions for third.  Forth, do any other kind of creatures that help you besides elfs.  Last but not least, are you real?  Remember, please write back.
                                       
                                            From, 
                                                Kristen Rosie Oettli
                                                daughter of Jono Oettli                                                                                   
                                                and Jenn Summerhays


X______________________
please sign here






Isn't that adorable?  Merry Christmas, Love the Oettli Family                  

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Happy Thanksgiving & Go Utes

We had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with the Cook family and Jonny and Haley.  Even though our numbers were few, it was very fun.  We are blessed to have such a wonderful family!  The rest of the weekend proved to be very exciting (and a little lucky).  Congratulations to the Jazz and the  Utes!

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At the Basketball Games

Can you believe basketball season is here?  We are in the "busy" months of Utah sports, the thick of football and at the start of basketball.  The last two weekends Jono has been out of town (one week for business in Seattle, the next playing golf at fabulous So. Cal courses and cheering the Utes on to victory against SDS), so I took the kids to two home games.  Bud was camping for the first game (brrrrr), so it was just Rosie, Coleman and me.  They had fun sitting on the front row, something usually only Bud gets to do.  They goofed around with Swoop and Coleman caught a ball from the cheerleaders.  Coleman also got on the ground and stretched along with the players before the game and before the start of the second half.  

The next week Bud and Rosie sat in the floor seats and Coleman and I sat in the stands.  Bud and Rosie were nervous to sit there alone and didn't say a word or move at all the first half.  They loosened up by the second half and were smiling and cheering.  I really missed Jono, however, when I had to drive home in a blizzard!  Go Utes!

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Reflections

Bud and Rosie always look forward to entering the Reflections contest, and this year Coleman could enter also!  The theme was "Together We Can" and they each made a 3-D creation out of clay.  Rosie's title was "Together We Can Adore Little Things" and she molded lots of cute creatures and put them on a glittery board.  Bud spent hours and hours creating a clay zoo with penguins, monkeys, elephants, alligators and giraffes.  Coleman's theme was fishing and he made a lake with him fishing, a flying and swimming snake, and a forest with one tree and lots of rocks.  They all turned out great!      

Unfortunately, not everyone in our family won; (they are all winners in my eyes), Bud and Coleman won, but Rosie didn't win.  Even more unfortunate, is that Rosie also didn't win last year but Bud did.  (Remember last year she made her own trophy out of paper and had me take her picture.)  She handled it as well as could be expected, and after a twenty minute crying session, she told me she wanted a trophy for her birthday to make her feel better.  Here are the pictures:

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Halloween

Happy Halloween 2010!  The kids decided months ago to dress-up for Halloween as an Oettli team of U of U athletes.  Bud got his authentic baseball uniform at the U Fanfest.  He has been a football player for five years, so this is a big change for him!  Rosie is a cheerleader.  She wanted to wear a red wig, but we could only find crazy red wigs, not cute red wigs.  She settled for red streaks in her hair.  In the weeks leading up to Halloween, when she told other kids at school she was going to be a cheerleader, they asked, "Dead or alive?"  We're glad she is alive!  Coleman had to be talked out of being Mario to fit in with the others.  He wore Bud's old football uniform, for the second year in a row.  

We loved carving pumpkins this year, as always.  Coleman chose to have Jono carve a scary face in his pumpkin, he made a scary face for Jono to use as an example.  Rosie wanted a purse, and I think Jono did a fabulous job.  It was held together with toothpicks, but it only lasted until the next day after school when Coleman came home and unexplainably kicked it.  Bud had his usual U pumpkin.  Jen F. went the tradition route and carved herself the classic jack '0 lantern.  I baked pumpkin seeds and mopped the kitchen floor.

The kids' had their school Halloween parade and party on the Thursday before Halloween.  I don't have any pictures because I used my camcorder instead.  This was Coleman's first year to be in the parade and he loved it!  He was also very excited because the afternoon kindergarten went in the morning that day and he got to ride the morning bus with the big kids.  I did as much preparation the night before in anticipation of getting all the kids out the door in costumes by 8:30 am.  Our disaster was Rosie's hair.  She wanted it crimped, so I borrowed Haley's crimper.  We didn't try it out until that morning and Rosie's hair looked like Bozo the Clown when we finished.  We had to get it wet and blow dry it straight.  Bud helped me by getting Coleman dressed in his costume.  It was crazy!

At school, Rosie performed with the school choir.  I was able to record the whole program without Coleman bumping my arm every 5 seconds like in years past, because he's now in class!  Then the parade started and the kids looked so great!  After, I helped with Bud's last Halloween party in elementary school.  (The 6th graders were still happy to make witches brew for the third time!)

There wasn't school on Friday, so we had a Halloween party with our cousins.  It was so fun to see everyone in their costumes!  We ate pizza, chili, french bread, apples and sweet rolls.  The kids played outside for a long time and bobbed for apples.  Inside they wrapped each other like mummies and frosted cookies.  They kids entertained themselves so well that the adults actually had lots of time to chat!

Saturday we watched football and the weather hoping it would stop raining so the kids could go trick-or-treating.  Luckily, the rain did stop and Jen F. took the kids out.  They were gone for a long time!  While they were gone, we got so many trick-or-treaters that I was worried we would run out of candy.  When the kids returned, we dumped the candy they didn't like in the bucket to give away.  Don't worry, there was plenty of candy left for us to eat!

Happy Halloween!

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Look What the Storm Blew Down

Two nights ago the wind was blowing harder than I can ever remember.  We assured the kids we were safe in a strong house, and to enjoy the sounds of the wind as they fell asleep.  Unfortunately, we woke up to a horrible mess; the giant flowering cherry tree in the front yard had blown over!  It was such a beautiful tree, we are so sad to lose it.  A tree service is coming in a few days to clean up the mess and haul it away.  The only bright spot is that all the neighborhood kids are having a great time playing on the fallen tree!

This is far less damage than Rosie did to the house recently when she kicked a hole in our bedroom door trying to get to Bud and Coleman, who were running away from her.  Jono had the hole patched up and painted before I could snap a picture!

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Road Trip to WY

We drove to Wyoming this year for UEA to watch the undefeated Utes take on the Cowboys. The kids were so excited to go, they love to travel!  Rosie said in her prayer before we backed out of the driveway, "Please bless us with safety as we drive and please bless that we will have enough lots and lots of money so we can stay in a Hotel  and not a Motel."  (Jono and I burst out laughing, can you imagine a nine year old saying that!)  We made a stop on the five hour drive to Laramie at the original Little America Hotel, in the town Little America, WY, to eat lunch.  It had the same yummy food as the one in downtown SLC, and we were all happy to eat here.

Rosie's prayer was answered, we arrived in safety at our destination and stayed at a nice hotel.  The kids swam before our drive to "downtown" Laramie.  I am just kidding, of course, this is a small, very small town.  I thought it was just darling, however.  Bud told me towns are not "darling" but this town is darling.  It has very old brick buildings and every store has a cowboy reference.  We loved it!

The next day, we ate our complimentary breakfast in the lounge.  Weeks ago, when we were checking out hotels on the internet, Bud and Rosie requested a hotel with a waffle maker. Our breakfast room had two waffle makers and the kids loved making and eating their own waffles.  (They really were delicious!).  After breakfast the kids went swimming again and then we went bowling.

Bowling got a little competitive, especially when Rosie was ahead of Bud, or when Bud was (briefly) ahead of Jono.  The first games scores were Jono 130, Bud and Rosie 99, and Coleman a respectable 84.  (I just took pictures, if you are wondering what my score was; although I'm sure I could have beat Jono!)

After lunch we went to the stadium and crashed the Pokes tail gating party.  We were the only red in a sea of brown and yellow.  We met the mascot pony Cowboy Joe and the kids threw, kicked and caught footballs.  Coleman got a giant "Go Pokes" yellow finger that he held up proudly for the first quarter.

Utah had a great turnout for the game.  We sat behind members of the Muss, who stood the entire game, even though they were on the first row of the upper deck! We had to move back several rows in order to see over them.  At kick-off the weather was warm and beautiful but by halftime it was cold and we put on our jackets.  Our football team is very good this year and Wyoming hadn't scored in several games, so the game was very lopsided.  That didn't stop us from cheering and enjoying the game.  (Except Coleman who lay on the ground under our feet with his head on his yellow finger and played DS games for the final 3 quarters).  Wyoming did score a TD on us, and I admit that I clapped for them.  Jono was not so gracious, he mumbled, "I wanted to shut them out."

The best picture of trip was when we met Cowboy Ken at halftime, after watching him parade up and down the sidelines.  He wears a barrel, a hat, a necklace, boots and that's all! We had a fabulous time in Wyoming!    

The next day we packed up, ate our waffles and made one last Wyoming stop before driving into Utah.  We are inviting you right now to our New Year's Eve celebration!

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