A New Year

 2026 is here, ready or not! I love seeing a few basic stats from the past year. It's fascinating to see where I spend my time. This year I had a piano practice app which allowed me to track exactly how many hours I spent playing the piano. It was a lot this year, and I like to think I have improved my piano skills since last January. I spent over 40 hours practicing scales in 2025, so that has to mean some sort of improvement, right?

My 2025 stats:

• Played piano: 275 hours
• 41 hours 40 minutes of scales
• 33 hrs 35 minutes of Czerny 599
• Ran 836.3 miles
• Read 48 books
• Watched 38 K-dramas
• Wrote: 160,500 words on the blog

Journal excerpts seem to be the only way I can manage to keep this blog going, so here are a few more of those:

Thursday, January 1, 2026: Since when does a new year start on a Thursday? Having Christmas and New Year's Day on Thursdays this year has felt strange. It feels like Saturday but it's only Thursday. I guess it's making the break from school feel longer, so that's nice!

Amber, Rose, and I went ice skating on the canal this morning! The ice was barely skate-able. It groaned and cracked a lot and was kind of slushy on top. And there was a steady drizzle of freezing rain while we skated. So not ideal, but we had to try our new ice skates! They are amazing! Sharp skates are so much easier to skate on than dull ones, and the padded insulation in the skates kept our feet nice and warm. We should be able to skate tomorrow morning too before the ice melts. Tomorrow's high is 40° though, so we'll see! 

This afternoon, I made a long list of steps to work on the annual update to my kids' photo binders (where we put pictures, awards, school work, etc. Each kid has a "book of life.") That's my January task. Along with other stuff too, of course, like figuring out how to cook without nightshades (potatoes & tomatoes). I already managed to cook without chili peppers for Jeff, but he has discovered that he's sensitive to all nightshades, so I don't want to poison him! 

During the 2.26 mile run of the swim team's new Year's day challenge today, Jay ran a one second mile PR! 5:02! On the treadmill of all things! 

The rest of the day we relaxed and vegged. It feels extra nice to do that when yucky cold winter weather descends. 

Friday, January 2nd: It was so icy outside this morning that I did not want to climb down steep canal bank to try ice skating. That's a new one: it was too icy to go ice skating! Jeff even canceled swim practice because it was so icy. A day and a night of freezing rain will do that! It warmed up by lunch and everything was wet but not slippery, so it wasn't a lasting ice.

I  rode the elliptical machine for 30 minutes in the barn and then learned how to do the Olympic lift clean and jerk. Since there was no swim practice, we had a family lift session: Jeff taught Jay, Rose, Amber, and me (Jay already knows how to do it, but technique refinement is always useful). I did not particularly like exploding and jumping while holding a 45 lb bar. It was freaky, and I was worried about hurting myself, or perpetuating the injuries that I'm already babying. Thankfully, nothing went wrong and everyone was safe!

Our new bishop, Ryan Kannely, came over and gave Amber her first temple recommend interview today. There is a youth Temple trip tomorrow, and all five of us are going to go into the temple together! 

I spent the entire afternoon working on photo stuff.

The kids' four local cousins came over for a sleepover tonight, so all seven kids are watching a movie and having pizza in the basement right now. 

[I deleted a chunk of this entry for the privacy of our youngest child, who was "visited by Aunt Flow" for the first time, bless her sweet 11 year old self.]

Saturday, January 3rd: Tonight was Amber's first ever temple trip to do baptisms for the dead! She opted to only do confirmations. She got to be a baptism witness for most of the time. Jeff was in the confirmation room the whole time, but I got to watch Jay baptize Rose for 4 of our ancestors while Amber was the witness. It was very sweet. I felt the Spirit wash over me in waves many times while I sat there. It is such a fascinating beautiful experience to feel that love, warmth, rightness, and goodness from the Spirit flood my senses. It's hard to describe how it feels, but it is a real feeling and it wipes away confusion, worries, and fear so effectively.

After we finished in the temple, the youth had Papa John's Pizza at the church building next to the temple. Then we drove back to Sunnyside. We got home around 7:00 p.m.

The pictures uploaded in reverse order:
 

Temple with Amber! I didn't manage to extract Jay and Rose from their friends for a family temple picture, sadly. Next time!

I was weirdly proud of myself for finding a place to store our new ice skates. Our house doesn't have a ton of storage, so this was extra satisfying.

We are working on getting more reliable heat in our barn. The mini split wall unit just can't handle super cold wet conditions without icing over. In the meantime, we plugged in two coil heaters that we inherited with the barn.

Jeff, Jay, Rose, and Amber, all dry-swimming in the barn on the day swim practice was cancelled due to ice.

The side of the canal was a bit slippery to climb down. Amber is at the top left, and Rose is sitting on the stool on the ice.

Ice skating in the freezing rain made me feel cold for the next 72 hours!

Rose, attempting to stand up on her new skates.

Amber took off on her new skates and enjoyed trying to skate like a pro.

My friend Camille saw Amber and me from the canal bridge and took this picture of us skating.

I was trying to make it look like I was holding Amber in my hand.

Skating around the half-submerged frozen tumbleweeds: a winter canal tradition.

My Amber-skating-buddy!

New Year's Eve tradition! Special drinks! Jeff had one too, he just wasn't in the kitchen for this picture.

Another New Year's Eve tradition: fancy cheese and crackers for dinner, along with a few hot dips.

Jay made himself a row of five special drink shots for fun: Squirt soda, orange juice, and cherry grenadine syrup.

Still moving backwards in time...at lunchtime on New Year's Eve, a bunch of Jay's friends came over to cook steaks together. They were so funny and cute. Jay found some discount steaks at Safeway, and one of his friends got a Wagyu steak for Christmas. So they feasted on red meat. We don't have a meat tenderizer mallet, so I gave them the metal Kitchen Aid mixer bowl to pound the steaks with. It worked relatively well, but I was laughing so much watching them. Jay gave helpful advice (learned by experience) to his novice friend-chefs, like "when you take the steak out of the pan, also take the pan off the stove so it doesn't burn."

Happy New Year!

2026