I saw Rogue One. Did you?

It doesn't feel like this week was very eventful. I finished a Christmas present (Megan, don't show Cari!) and mailed off stuff to the Staleys. Me and the girls made Christmas cookies and I delivered them to some friends. I was surprised to find some of them home and got to visit for a while, which was a great way to slow down the afternoon. Mira had her dance recital on Saturday, which she loved. She did way better than I thought she would, too, so that was a pleasant surprise. We wrapped presents one night, I hung out with a friend one night, and Steve played LOTR card game one night.

The highlight of the week, besides Mira's dance recital was going to see Rogue One with Steve Saturday night. It was so well done. I wish I could say I loved it. I liked it. And everything was, like I said, SO well done. But despite that, I can't LOVE it. I'll leave it at that since I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it. Next week is Christmas. Phew! Can you believe it?

Christmas is stressful. Life is good.

Each year, I do a lot of stressing over Christmas shopping. It's a fun Christmas tradition that I'm sure will continue on for years to come. (Unless some of you wonderful people have some advice that will help me stop stressing out.)

That was mostly what I did the past week. I bought a lot of stuff off Amazon, which makes things a little better. And I'm almost done, so that makes me feel a little better, too. Are you done with your shopping?

We did decorate the tree on Monday. We usually do a live tree, but we didn't feel like spending the money this year, so we borrowed Steve's parents' tree. I think it turned out super pretty.

I also attended Emilia's spelling bee. She made it into her all-school bee after winning her class bee. She had the list of 177 words for about 3 1/2 weeks, but failed to tell us about it until two nights before the all-school bee. Despite that, our brainiac took first place in the third grade and 5th overall. We were very proud. I let her choose our dinner that night to celebrate, so we had knoephla and sausage and green beans. (The knoephla was the important part.)

We also had our ward Christmas party this week, so Monday, I took the girls with me to shop for the crafts items we needed. Our ward bought and put together craft kits for kids at the hospital to do when they get bored. Thursday, I had to go help decorate for the party and Friday night was the party itself. It took up a lot of the week, now that I think of it.

Saturday, Elder Oaks, one of the twelve apostles, came to speak in Springville to couples under 40. We qualified because I'm under 40. :) Apparently, he had to be here on church business, so he decided to take some time with us to give advice and counsel on marriage and childrearing. There wasn't anything said that was super revelatory to me, but I did think it was interesting that a theme that came up was the culture of marriage right now. Most of the speakers said something about how people today seem to think that marriage's purpose is to help each individual feel fulfilled. But that's not marriage's purpose. Marriage's purpose is to give us an opportunity to make families, to learn to be selfless like Christ, and to learn to be unified as Christ is unified with the Father. If we go into it thinking it's about self-fulfillment, we're going to want out as soon as things stop going well.

Elder Oaks gave an analogy that I thought was poignant. He said if we are living with a family member that gets sick, we do everything we can to make them better. We never give up on them and we certainly don't take them out back and off them as soon as they become too burdensome. Our marriages should be treated as a living entity that we want to keep alive at all costs. It should be too precious to us to not care for until it gets better.

Now, I've been married three times. So I'm no great example of this. But I can see, now that I've been married to Steve for ten years, that the principle is true. I think this concept is something Steve has understood all along. I credit him for pushing us through the hard times.

After the devotional, we came home and wrapped presents. I could tell, this morning, that we are unusually early on getting our shopping done this year, because Mira would not be convinced that it wasn't Christmas morning (at least, it took a while).

And one last picture. Mira and Cecily were playing in their room the other day, which usually involves a lot of yelling, screaming, and general displeasure on both of their parts. But I didn't hear any of that, so I went to check in and see what they were doing. Mira was reading to Cecily while wearing a pink Santa hat while they both laid on the top bunk. My heart melted.

I turned 38!

I thought this birthday would bother me, because I'm closer to 50 than 25 this year. But I had such a great day, I didn't have time to ponder my oldness (or youngness, depending on your perspective).

Thanks to my awesome parents who offered to watch my kids in the morning, I was able to enjoy some writing time. I ended up at my in-laws in front of their fireplace with a milk steamer and it was a perfect way to start the day. I also got to watch Miracle on 34th Street with the kiddos and go out to dinner at Tucanos and shopping with Steve. Other things I liked about the day: it was sunny, my kids gave me cards, and I got a package wrapped in bubble wrap. Mira yelled at me a number of times to stop popping the bubbles, but I couldn't help myself. :) I was thinking about it that night, and I can positively say that it was the best birthday I've had since I've had children. Thank you to everybody to helped make it that way!

The rest of the week I'll just describe with the pictures.

Cecily has taken to crawling in bed with me while I'm reading my scriptures in the morning. I like having her as a little scripture-reading buddy.

I took the kids to the mall playhouse one day this week. Thursday, I think. While we were at the mall, Emilia and Mira used their chore money to buy reindeer Build-a-Bears. I tried to talk them out of using their money on a seasonal stuffed animal, but in the end, I just bit my tongue and let them buy what they wanted to buy.

Saturday morning, Cecily "made donuts" for everyone. There were flavors like Snowman Sprinkle and Reindeer Frinkle and Cookies and Cream Ice Cream Chocolate.

Mystery was not amused.

I also did a family photo shoot for our neighbors that morning. I was gone for like four hours and it was 20 degrees outside when we left. Good thing I love those neighbors. Saturday afternoon, we took the kids sledding, because I hadn't been out in the cold and snow long enough. Actually, it was because it was perfect sledding weather and I'd seen that morning that the snow up the canyon was deep and smooth. We had a ton of fun. Emilia especially liked going down a hill where someone had built a ramp at the bottom. Heavenly Father was watching out for us at one point. At the bottom of the sledding hill was a small creek. Not even a foot deep. There was a drop off to it that was probably a good 5 - 8 feet depending on the spot, but it was sloped, so if any of us had gone over that edge, we just would have had to throw everyone in the car and hurry home, but we still tried to avoid that at all costs. At one point, after we'd gotten the sled tracks fairly worn in, Cecily decided to go down on her own. She'd gone down a number of times by herself on one of our round sleds and she'd done just fine, but this time, she wanted to take our toboggan-style sled. Steve was at the bottom, having just gone down on our tube. We'd built a wall of snow earlier to stop us from sledding into the river, and it had been tested a number of times, so I sent Cecily down. As I watched, she hit a bump that veered her off in a new direction, and somehow she just kept on going and going and going. And Steve wasn't watching! I yelled, "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" but he didn't even get off the tube until Cecily was a few feet from the drop-off to the river. He wouldn't have caught her. I call it divine intervention (or maybe Cecily heard me being scared and turned to look at me), but she turned her body, just in time to flip the sled to the side and stop. I thought my heart would beat right out of my chest.

The rest is just me documenting my children's adorableness. I can't help myself.