holiday Archives - iWatson Blog

Merry Christmas

Christmas is officially over, and it’s been a good one! Of course, we were spoiled by everyone. Here is a recap of the week events.

Christmas Eve

Jacob and I wanted to go swimming with my boss. My boss usually goes swimming Christmas Eve with his family and We’ve also gone. The Lehi swimming pool is only open until 12p, so we had to hurry. It is like herding turtles when it comes time to get Jacob moving, so we didn’t arrive until 10am. We found out that my boss had to go into work, so we didn’t get to see them. Jacob and I had a lot of fun swimming though. We got dressed and headed out.

My mother and father are buried in the same city, so we decided to go visit their grave site. I don’t go there very often, and it would be embarrassing to count how long it has been. We have a family friend who goes and keeps it nice and pretty!

After the cemetery, we ended up going to visit Lehi Roller Mills and then home to get ready for dinner with Grandma, Aunts, and a Friend. We had a great ham dinner and opened PJs! One of the neighbors passed out Sky Lanterns to the neighborhood and instructed everyone to go out and light them at 8pm. It was super awesome! I’ve seen them in YouTube videos and pictures, but never in person! It was super cool to see and there were a TON going up around us! They went up and eventually disappeared. I did see one falling to the ground after it has burned out. I’m curious what the aftermath looked like after. Good thing they were biodegradable.

We spent the night wrapping gifts to each other and then trying to get to bed. Jacob doesn’t get up super early, so that is a relief. He once slept until 10am, but he only lasted until 8:30a.

Christmas Morning

Aunt J went and picked up Grandma T and they came over here to have breakfast and open presents. We had a blast opening gifts. Jacob totally got spoiled! We already had a ton of legos in our house, and we have a ton more now. He loves putting them together and I get to help every so often.

I received a Ring Doorbell and I can’t wait to install it! I’m a little scared to install it. Having a camera on the front door will be interesting. Watching the boy in the summer will be interesting. I find my tools out in the front yard at time. Considering where we live, It may be overkill.

After opening presents, we went over to Grandma T’s house for presents and then back to our house. We were instructed by Jacob that we weren’t going to leave the house until the next day. He played..played.. and played with his toys some more. I ended up working a bunch.

Day after Christmas (Thursday)

One of my goals this break was to clean my office. It has always been a dumping grounds for stuff. When the house is cleaned, and something needs to be “hidden” it goes in there. I spent a lot of time cleaning the room, which it still isn’t done, but I’ve made a good dent. My time is usually spent on our kitchen table with my laptop. This allows me to spend more time with my wife while she is watching TV. A room where I can get work done where it is quite would be nice. We headed up to Great Grandma’s (Jacobs) to visit with family. Very cool family with a lot laughs!

Saturday….Dentist..

Jacob HATES the dentist and had to have a tooth pulled and a few cavities filled. We had to be to the Dentist at 8:15am. I woke up at 7:50a (I was the first one up), so we had to get Jacob up, ready and off to the dentist. We have a 15-minute drive to the dentist. I don’t think I drove too fast, but we made it there by 8:20a. The place was a total disorganized and we had a hard time checking in and then had to wait until 10am before they could get him back. It went well, but he ended up biting his lip a ton after surgery and it was bleeding pretty good. His lip is super swollen now and looks bad. The dentist instructed us to keep him from walking and keep a good eye on him. It was hard to keep him from walking for 2 hours. Jacob was on the move after about 3 and that is as good as we could do! He was fine and there were no incidents other than the bloody lip!

Sunday

Pretty relaxing day today, so nothing to exciting to report. Church was pretty good. Our neighbor gave a talk. It was great to hear from him (and the others). Jacob switches classes next week (New Year.. New Class) He had some awesome teachers, and he is sad to be loosing his teachers. I’m hoping he is a good kid during class. We finished off the night with some games. We had a great night until we had to put the boy to bed. I’m hoping we aren’t the only ones who have a rough time getting their kid(s) to bed.

I hope everyone has a great New Years Celebration this week. Keep safe out there and if you drink remember not to drive! You have options with Lyft and Uber.

Christmas Month

I am going to do another blog post this week.

Having the holidays over is going to be awesome! There are a lot of festive activities and parties, but it is one right after another! The weekends are usually crammed packed, so you don’t have much down time. Sunday after church are usually my favorite times. We are chilled around here and take it easy.

I have loved every event that we have attended and done this month. Earlier this month, we attended a Christmas Party with my family. Getting together with this side of the family, usually only happens once a year. My family means the world to me and I wish that I saw them more! As I’ve mentioned, my father passed away several years ago (30 years now). We have since found out that he had a daughter before he got married to my mom. It is a crazy DNA story that I will have to expound on sometime. She fits right in with our family. There are a lot of resemblances with her and my family that are spooky. Each get together, we learn more and more about her. So much fun!

This weekend, we were able to meet with Jacob’s birth grandma, J. She lives in North Carolina, so we don’t get to see her very much. She is divorced and has two adult kids that keep her busy! Jacob’s birthmother has made some decisions in her life that aren’t the best. It’s rough to see her go through this troubled time. We have so much love for her and the decision she made to place with us. We just don’t love her decisions she is making now.

We told Grandma J to meet us at Leatherby’s, so we could have food and desert, if she had eaten, since it was going to be late. We show up and see a sign that says, “We are temporarily closed for remodeling….” There was no mention of this online. I look it up now and it still says it’s open! Am I the only one who relies way too much on the internet to tell me what is going on? We ended up going a block or two over to “Crown Burger”. You can’t go wrong with burgers, can you? We had a great visit with J.

Before the meeting with J, we had family photos taken. I was dreading it, but it wasn’t as bad as I though it was going to be. I’m not much of a suit person, but it went better than I thought.

We went through the Christmas In Color display this week in South Jordan, UT. It is a big parking lot filled with Christmas lights synced to music and it is amazing! It is a pretty fun thing to do as a family. Jacob enjoys it. Hopefully the biggest of scrooges can come through with a little Christmas spirit or a song or two stuck in your head. This year, they added vertical lights have this 3D effect to them.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas this year. I hope you don’t get caught up in the whole retail nightmare of Christmas.

Thanksgiving Weekend

One shot I took at Temple Square. The snow made it look epic!

Thanksgiving weekend is coming to a close. It is Sunday night and in 12 hours, I have to be back to work! I’m not super excited to go back. Another vacation day could come my way, and I wouldn’t care. 🙂 We had a great time. Here is how it was spent….

Wednesday, 11/27/2019, I took a vacation day to spend the day with my boy at home. We hung out in the morning and then about 1pm, he headed upstairs to play. I ended up watching a movie or two and checked on him. He would yell “Go downstairs”, so I obliged. So much for hanging out with him. Later that day, he ha a friend over and they had a bit of a tiff. We went out for desert to intervene (@ Purple Turtle) — All in all it was a great night.

Thursday, 11/28/2019, Thanksgiving was pretty crazy. We met up with Carla, Mother-in-law, and Jessica (Sister-in-law) at The Big Bear Diner. We had a great meal! They ha a modified menu, so it was pretty small. Due to my Menieres disease, I had to avoid the turkey. A big fat burger was what I had (see image). The others had the Turkey dinner. After dinner, we went to see Frozen II, which was SO good! We loved it. My boy even sat through the movie and he was super quiet! Amazing! When the movie was over, I went Black Friday shopping with a friend. We had a great time battling the crowds! It was awesome spending time with the in-laws and with my friend Bill. I even met Glen Stucki at Walmart while shopping. He is a cool guy, you should check him out! Celebrity!

Black Bear Diner Thanksgiving Dinner – Burger – It had a little problem with the meat.

Black Bear Diner Thanksgiving Dinner – Turkey

Friday, 11/29/2019, was a little unplanned. Our friends talked us into driving up to SLC to have a little stay-cation with them! We packed clothes for 1 day if we decided to stay over night. Unfortunately, when we decided to head up, a storm was moving through, so the drive up was a bit crazy! I hate driving in snow, so I was freaking out a bit! We made it though and went to a place called Dave and Busters for some food and games. We checked into a hotel and then took Trax up to Temple Square to view the lights. If you haven’t been, I’d suggest going to view the lights if you do it during Christmas. It’s a beautiful place all year around, but the lights during Christmas are pretty epic!

Saturday, 11/30/2019, We slept in until 9:30a and then decided to go swimming before we checked out of the hotel. About 11:05am, I got a text that said “KSL NEWSRADIO: NB Lanes of I-15 blocked at Lehi. First responders may need to close SB lanes as well for hazmat response. ….“. My friend had also sent an image and another warning (see image). It was insane. So 9 hours late they would re-open the freeway, but it was super crazy! We decided to just have fun instead of going back home, so we went swimming for about 5 hours. For dinner, we ate at our favorite place, Charlie Chow’s, and then went Ice Skating (our boy did, not us). We had a great time, but it was a bit of a crazy day!

Sunday, 12/1/2019, We cleaned up the basement and setup the tree and decorations. It was a pretty relaxing day! The boys schedule was all jacked up from the stay-cation. It wasn’t your typical relaxing day, because of all the cleaning we did. We had fun though. As we brought out the ornaments we were telling stories about how they came to be. When my wife showed Jacob the ornament we bought when we found out we were going to be his parents, he came over an gave us both hugs! It was pretty precious! There were many hugs after that. I’m a grinch, but that warmed my heart! It was pretty cool!

I hope you all had a great weekend! I only touched the surface of what we did. We have some great friends we spent the last 3 days with. It was awesome! I’m thankful for friends and family!

Where are you from?

We are owners of a timeshare. Yes, I was a sucker once, or I still am, but I bought into the dream of owning points into a timeshare where I could vacation all I wanted. I could “even sell the points to family and friends to make back my dues”. It’s a bunch of crap they tried to feed us so we would buy into their property. Now it is 19 years later, and they are still trying to find ways to make you spend more money. Timeshares are a bunch of crap, but there are some cool benefits from using them and going on vacation.

Strangers are one of them. There are many opportunities in life where you can talk to complete strangers, but there is nothing better than sitting in the hot tub with complete strangers and striking up a conversation. It seems like no one is phased by you asking “so where are you from?” It is a pretty simple question. We’ve spent the last 5 days here and have met some pretty awesome people in the hot tub. We all come from completely different backgrounds. We’ve met people from all walks of life: A Plumber, A Oil Field Worker, A Single Mom with 4 kids, and Even a Marine just getting out of boot camp. It’s been pretty awesome. Some of these people you would never imagine meeting.

It’s pretty fun playing the getting to know you games with complete strangers. We usually sit in the hot tub until the security guard comes and kicks us out at 10pm. We usually say our good byes “It was nice meeting you”, “Have a great trip”. Some of them we have talked to a couple of times. We never share Facebook links or Instagram names. We may never see them again. It would be fun to keep in touch. With Facebook, you can at least see their feed and be like “Hey, I know these guys from Tuscan, Arizona.”, or “There is that crazy guy from California that likes to grow stuff in his back yard.” The 30+ minutes you spent connecting with a complete stranger was well worth it and it has meaning, to me at least. I enjoy those times.

It reminds me of a time over the summer, where we were staying in Park City, Utah. I went for a walk to check out the homes up there. Some other random stranger was taking a walk, he was a resident up there, and we crossed paths. He ended up inviting me to go for a walk with him. He had a daily route he took, so I walked it with him. He told me about his failed marriage and his crazy ex-wife. He talked about his kids and his plans to sell his house in Park City and move to some ski town in Idaho. It was pretty interesting. Real cool guy. I’ll never see him again, but it was an awesome experience.

I say take time to talk to random strangers. Get to know those around you. Everyone has a story to tell. It doesn’t take much to sit back and listen and ask questions.