A New Year

Wednesday everyone returned from Oceanside. We got some crackers and had fun pulling them as well as letting the kids do some poppers. 

Leo even got in to the spirit of things for his first New Year's Eve.

We put the kids to bed and Johann and I watched It's a Wonderful Life. Can you believe I had never watched the entire movie? It's great! Maybe that will be our NYE tradition. 
With that, 2014 was over a gone. I'd say overall it was a good year, Johann started his much closer job, we had Leo and got to have a nice vacation together in nature. We feel blessed!

As for 2015, we went New Year's Day to Lake Gregory to enjoy a bit of snow with Johann's cousins and dad in the early afternoon.

Thea threw snowballs by coming and patting them into you.

It was so beautiful by the lake.

Thea finally warmed up to Leo and Rosana, I guess that he was willing to toss her up and down helped.

Back at the Simonds' house the kids played together and we had dinner. Thea isn't a big fan of tons of people being around and she snuck off at one point to watch Mickey Mouse in a back room. Poor Lisset started crying saying,  "she's all alone and we are playing so good with Henry and we were with her too, she'll be so sad and lonely." Rosana had to explain to her that she was happy and fine being alone but Lisset took a while to buy it. They are such kind playmates to the kids.

Since then we've just been home, we went out to lunch together with my mom and the kids and have done stuff around here. I'm hopeful about 2015. I'm hoping I can do everything I need to to have a good year and do what God needs me and our little family to do and that I can drop the less important things and work harder on the things that will bless us throughout our lives.

But I am sad to see how much older this little man is becoming and will become in 2015...

Happy New Year!

Post Christmas Happenings

Saturday after Christmas we met up with Johann's parents, brother and our nephew at the Hesperia zoo. The tour guide was great and we learned some interesting things about the animals there. 

For instance, this beat has a thing for Hostess Twinkies. When Hostess went out of business they fed him imitation ones and he could tell the difference and refused them. When they went back in business, they bought several case loads to avoid the same problem later on, haha.

This tiger was amazingly beautiful.

They had some porcupine quills for the kids to handle and check out.

There was also a monkey at the end that did some tricks for everyone and the kids loved it clapping and getting into a package of fruit snacks. When it was over I asked Apollo what his favorite was and he said the monkey. His dad then said, "what about the tiger, Apollo, you liked that too, huh," to which he responded, "and monkey," haha. Boys and monkeys. It was Henry's favorite too. Thea said her favorite was the deer.

Afterwards we went and had some Thai food. Thea and Apollo love each other and it's so cute to see them give hugs goodbye.

The Sunday after Christmas there was a missionary fireside for all the missionaries who were going home that Monday. One of the sisters in our ward that Johann works with was going home and we went to see her off, as did a foyer full of other people from her previous wards! She was a great missionary and we are glad we got to have her in our ward! 

Also there was her first ward mission leader so we got a picture with the first and last ward mission leader.

There was also an Elder we had had in our ward about 6 months back. He was more smiley and chatty then we had ever known him to be. I think he was definitely ready to head home.

Monday we were suppose to go to Oceanside but with the bad weather there and not being sure what else we could do with the kids we opted to stay home. One of the things we knew the kids would be sad about it getting to watch tv in bed at the hotel so Johann put Henry's mattress in the tv room and we got the kids some snacks and let them lay on the bed and watch a movie together. They loved it. 

The next day Johann's cousin, his wife and two daughters who just arrived from Uruguay came with us to Medieval Times along with his mom and dad.
Leo was adorable in his little paper crown.

Lisset, Rosana and Sophia with Leo.

Checking out the wares.

Leo y Leo.

Seated and ready for the games to begin and cheer on the green knight. Thea also wins for best face.

They were both riveted. Henry by the knights and Thea by the horses.

Rosana caught a rose kissed then thrown by the green knight and it was hilarious to look over and see her cheering and Leo shaking his head, 'no.'

Henry was also thrilled about the whole eating a chicken leg with his hands deal.

On the way home a storm rolled through and the kids got to see snow coming down, pretty exciting for the desert people.

 And with that we were home and ready for New Year's Eve the next day.

Christmas Time

The Sunday before Christmas we got the kids all dressed in their Christmas duds and attempted to take a decent picture. 

We got some not so decent pictures...

And a couple more decent-ish ones.

Since Johann was home he decided it was time to get Henry to finally ride a bike. Henry was very much against it and refused to even try. We kept trying to explain to him why it was a good idea to ride one but the thing that finally got him was explaining he might have to ride a bike on his mission. "But why can't I walk or have a car?!" Once we convinced him it is entirely possible he went for it and after 30 minutes one day and 10 a day later he was off and loved it. 

Thea joined in on her tricycle.

While all the cars were moved from the driveway we lowered the basketball hoop and played.

 Turns out Henry seems to like basketball. Maybe we'll try that with him later.


One morning we treated ourselves to breakfast with the kids where I use to go when I was little. It's not as good as I remember it, but maybe my taste buds developed a bit since then. The kids really liked it nonetheless.

The morning before my two brothers and sister-in-law got here my mom was putting together the chicken taquitos and made chicken noodle soup with the left over stock and it was the.best. chicken noodle soup-EVER. I ate it for breakfast and lunch.

That night once everyone got into town we had some Nicks Pizza and watched Home Alone. 

Henry set a trap for anyone who might want to burgle the house that night...

He also tied flies with Uncle Hamp before heading to bed. 

Christmas Eve morning we held our first annual Goodwin family gingerbread house decorating competition. Thea was pretty stoked to see all the candy out on the table.

Thea, Johann and I teamed up, Hamp and Henry teamed up and everyone else had their own. Johann mostly ate the candy (he did help open some for me), Thea helped on the roof then went the way of her daddy.

These were the five options voted on by our fb friends without who made which:

This was the winner made my me, Thea and (kind of) Johann ;-)

Late afternoon we had our delicious mexican dinner and empanada's provided by a woman from Paraguay in our ward. My younger brother went there on his mission and when she talked to him (he picked them  up from her) she also had him come back and get more Paraguayan food she made for him. He was preeetty happy.

After dinner, we did our first reading of Luke 2 and Nativity 'play' planned and carried out by Henry and Aunt Annie. It was nice and I hope we can do it again some time.

We cleaned up then Grammy passed out Christmas PJs.

Leo tried to open them with his mouth.

Henry got a little tired and grumpy so Thea helped me make the cookies for Santa.

Henry later came out of his room and helped get the carrots and cookies arranged on the plate and wrote a note for Santa.

Then the kiddies went to bed and Santa came.

Uncle Hamp's fire was a little to fierce and Santa was afraid the candies would melt so he put the stockings down. Thanks, Santa, thanks.

Christmas morning the kids got up at a fairly decent time, (6:30ish) and were excited to see Santa had come.

Leo kept sleeping and I was afraid he would miss his first Christmas, but thankfully he woke up just in time! 

and commenced to try and eat his way into each present we handed him. He was way more into Christmas and the presents than Henry or Thea during their first Christmas, he reached out for every gift and tried to play with everything we helped him open. It was so fun to watch.

Aaron prides himself on getting Henry some type of weapon every Christmas (usual foam swords) but Henry told him he didn't want anymore. Aaron pretended he did get him a sword but it was actually a shovel, something Henry is actually really excited about for all his outside projects. He did get him this awesome and hilarious contraption-the bugzooka, to suck up bugs and check 'em out.

Thea had a much harder time with opening gifts, she got a little overwhelmed and eventually asked if she could just go watch a show in her room, haha.

Then we got all dressed and ready to head to Grandpa and Abuela's for the rest of the day.

Thea loved her doggy sweater and the light up mini mouse shoes Henry picked out for her. Henry picked for Thea, Thea for Leo and Leo for Henry. It was fun to do that this year too.

Present opening with uncle Kaleb and cousin Apollo.

Johann and Henry thought it would be funny to get me these finger puppet/magnets, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoyevsky. The present said it was from, "The three merry men."

Cousin Jackson brought them some suckers.

And Aunt Anne and Thea were coordinated.

Johann's cousin fried two turkeys, one regular and one with cajun seasoning and Johann's mom made a ham. We had a lot of people there but it was still a lot of food! We had fun visiting with everyone and enjoyed all the yummy food. It was a very Merry Christmas day!