Christmas Cat

Christmas Eve we went caroling at the Castelle's house.  Tammy wanted to give us all something so she took us out to her warehouse to get some candles.  While she got the candles everyone my family went googoo over all of her rescue cats.  Especially, a little 12 week old kitten that Tammy had literally rescued and brought home with her from her most recent trip to Hawaii.  We went home with candles and a lot of begging for a new kitty.  

When we got home Lily led the other kids in creating a powerpoint presentation about how they would make this work with 2 cats.  Well I guess I'm a sucker but I told them we could go pick up the cat for Christmas.  

They protected the dinning room with bubble wrap and old Amazon bags. and put their plan of kitty introduction into action.

She is an adorable little thing.  We planned on calling her her Nutmeg, but as Emmy said, "It just didn't stick" so the name search began.  Mack vetoed most ideas.

Ditten didn't love the new friend but was very curious.  The kitten on the other hand was begging Ditten to be her friend from the other side of the door.

Ping pong is a bit more difficult but a lot funnier when a kitten lays on the table and chases balls.

After much debate everyone agreed to name the kitten Shai.  The kitten proved to provide us hours of entertainment jumping and catching all cat toys and fake snowballs.  Her jumping skills were truly impressive like Mack's favorite basketball player, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.  So we bought a collar and made it offical.

There may have been some intense fighting over the tent - that was a favorite hang out for Ditten and she wasn't interested in sharing.

Ditten claiming territory ...

Shai making her own statement.

The kids couldn't get enough of this little cutie over Christmas break and Lily wanted to invite over all her friends just to play with Shai.

Once Mack left to go back to school the girls had to send him lots of Shai pics (Ditten ones too.  I think he misses the cats more than us 😉).

One morning I found Shai in this tree - Can you see her?

She also welcomed me home from my morning walk with her first catch.

She got a little to interested in my bath water and took a little bath herself 😂.

We think they have decided to be friends.  They still get crazy every now and then and chase and attack all over the house but it is just in fun...I think.  If only Shai would stop peeing in the bathroom sinks!  What cat does that?

Nutcracker

Nutcracker 2023 - Lily as a soldier

Kate and Emmy as snow

Lily as an angel

Kate and Emmy as flowers

Emily shined as a Spanish Dancer - she even had a little solo entrance.

Kate as ribbon candy showing off some seriously tricky moves and her strength.

Curtain call gave them all a few more minutes on stage.

It was an amazing performance - they spent so much time practicing and there were lots of tears shed over those darn French twists but they are turning into amazing dancers.

Fall Miscellaneous

 Kate kept working at Kraves until they closed in October - fun times with Becca and the other employees but I think she was ready to be done.  Working during school was hard.

We spent conference weekend in Provo with Natali catching a football game with Natali's friend Jessica and watching conference in the hotel room together with Fritz.  It was a great weekend - loved seeing our girl.

On the way home from Utah on Sunday Emmy started having weird pain in her leg.  Monday she showed me some bumps and complained of leg pain.  Tuesday the rash was way worse and she was limping.  It was just too weird so Wednesday I took her to urgent care.  The doctor was shocked and told Emmy that she was the youngest patient she had personally diagnosed with shingles.  I'm so grateful that we went to doc when we did because her pain continued to increase for a few days before the meds kicked in.  Thank goodness for meds!

A week later I was volunteering at Mill Creek Library when they had a fire drill.  During the drill we heard a loud sound - it sounded like a plane taking off continuously.  The kids were quickly sent back into the building were we were placed in lockdown - no leaving the building.  We learned that there was a gas leak less that two miles from the school; there was talk of evacuating.  Kids were crying and starting to get worried.  Parents were showing up at the school to pick up kids because our phones were getting alerts about the leak.  I grabbed Lily and headed home only to learn that we couldn't get to our house because roads were closed so no one could get close to the leak.  About that time Emmy texted asking me to pick her up because all her friends had left.  So we grabbed Emmy and headed to Chick-fil-a.  After a lovely lunch our road opened up and we returned home.  What an adventure.

Spencer and his family came out in October and we had a fun week playing with them and spending time at Grandma's house before they headed south for the winter.

Of course these are the only pictures I took 🤦‍♀️.

While Spencer was here we had an annular eclipse which meant the moon went over the sun but was smaller than the sun so it left a ring around the moon.  We weren't in the ideal path but close enough that we could see it.  Kate came through with two pairs of eclipse glasses that she had saved from 2017 so we were able to watch it.  For a while it was cloudy enough that you could actually look up and see it through the clouds.  Super cool.

Thanksgiving was a solo affair so we invited Jessica to join us. Fritz and his sister, Kim, had come home with Natali so the table was full.  I made 48 rolls at Lily request and they were gone by the time Natali headed home on Saturday.  

On Friday night we went to the Boise Botanical Gardens to see the lights.  We had fun sharing stories about the Old Penitentiary field trip and pretending that the gingerbread men were escaped convicts because they creeped Emmy out.

We had a great weekend playing games, eating good food, watching both kinds of football and just being together.  Our Friday lunch with Wilfords and the accompanying soccer game were pretty epic as well.