Almost Christmas

I turned 41 two weeks ago. So that's a thing, I suppose. I didn't take a single picture. Haha!

I've been doing Christmas shopping, decorating the house, putting up lights, decorating a Christmas tree, etc. Giving cute babies a bath. ;)

Feeding babies and cleaning up after them. I do a lot of that.

I wanted some fresh greens to decorate my porch with and the Christmas tree lot gave me all their trimmings, so after decorating the porch, I also made two wreaths--one for me and one for my mom, and 4 table centerpieces to give to friends/the sisters I minister to.

Emilia had her second sleepover with friends on Friday night. That was a production. I had to go pick up one of them from school in Springville. Then I needed to make sure they had a snack. We were going to make spritz cookies and managed to get the dough made and colored and then the cookie press broke after one pan of cookies. Then I had to make dinner, and Steve took them for ice cream (Emilia earned it by cleaning all the bathrooms in the house by herself) while I stayed home with Jules. Then I had to get the younger two girls in bed, get air mattresses put up, and make sure htey all went to bed at a decent hour. For being 11 year-olds, they took a lot more work than I was expecting! I was exhausted by the end of the night.

My mom had us over for a birthday dinner for me and Jules last night. She went above and beyond and made two pans of gluten free strudla *and* gluten free brownies. I was in heaven.

Now I'm sitting in front of a fire on a cold, windy afternoon (this seems to be a pattern) and I'm feeling sleepy. Merry Christmas everyone!

Content

We spoke in church about a month after we moved in. I only ended up having about 4 minutes to speak before the meeting was supposed to end, so my talk got cut extremely short. I don't think I made much sense, but I think the feeling I was trying to get across worked. One of the things I mentioned in my talk was that I was in choir in junior high and high school. So as soon as sacrament meeting got out, the choir director for the ward hurried up and invited me to come sing in choir. I told her that Steve sang, too, because usually choirs are in desperate need of guys. Oddly, this one is not. There are WAY more men that come regularly to choir than women. And this choir director actually cares about the job and gets real choral arrangements and has us use good diction and posture and tells us where to take breaths and stuff. It's been so fun. And it made me think today. I started going to choir because she made me feel like I was needed. But it's been more of a blessing to me to be able to use that talent again and to have this way of feeling connected to the ward that I wouldn't have had in any other way. I wonder if she felt the need to ask me for her sake or for mine. And I wonder if that happens a lot in our lives. If we ask others for their service when needed, I think it often blesses their lives just as much as it blesses ours. I need to be better about asking others for help.

We've had a wonderful and busy two weeks. Two Tuesdays ago, we had family pictures taken. I wasn't as stressed about it this time as I was previous times, so I figure I'm either mellowing or getting better at this whole momming thing. You can see the pictures here: http://picti.net/vZLQn

The next day, I had my hair cut and colored (sadly I couldn't get an appointment before family pictures were done). I love how it turned out.  My mom watched Jules for me during my appointment and they had tons of fun together. It's nice we're close enough to family that my kids can know their grandparents well.

That night we had to pack for our week-long vacation to St George. We left Thursday after the kids got out of school and stayed until Wednesday afternoon. Nicole and her family flew in from Seattle and Heather and her family came from Colorado, so the whole crew was there.

Friday, my kids headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's as soon as possible and got in the pool. It was only about 50 degrees outside, but Grandpa had heated the pool to 90 degrees, so those who love swimming were totally up for it.

After two hours in the pool, we made them get out and everyone who'd arrived already (and the Coombs' who were already there) went to Cougar Cliffs Climbing Area to let the older cousins try their hand at repelling. Jane, Meg, Emilia, Mira, and Kate all tried a short repel. I think everyone who tried cried at least once. But everyone managed to go down the rope at least once except Emilia. She was really close. Her form was good and she was nearly past the hardest part, but then I could see her shift from focusing on the technical aspects of what she was doing to "I'm going over the edge of a cliff!" and she would just shut down. I was so proud of everyone for trying. I didn't do my first repelling until I was 26, so 8 - 12 year olds trying it was amazing. I got on the second rope to coach Emilia through it and it was so fun to do that short repel. I haven't repelled since we did Mystery canyon in Zions back in 2007 (? I think that's when it was) and I kinda missed it. :)

Me and Emilia

Me and Mira

After we got back to Grandma and Grandpa's, the kids swam for another two hours. And everyone got sunburnt. On the 22nd of November. 

By Saturday, everyone but Ryan had arrived, but Tristan and Nicole had to head to Tristan's side of the family for their Thanksgiving dinner. My kids got in the pool again in the morning and except for a short lunch break, swam until about 3pm. By that point, we decided they'd had enough and made them get out. Mira and Cecily both got a rash from the pool water which wasn't fun, but we slathered them in vaseline and that seemed to help. They watched a movie, we had a delicious dinner and we played a few games. Then the adults practiced a song that we were singing in church the next day and headed home kinda late. By that point, Jules had a fever, Mira crashed from a sunburn and a horrible headache, Emilia's ear had built up pressure to the point of fairly severe pain, and Cecily still had a rash all over her arms. It wasn't looking good. But we gave everyone pain meds and prayers and sent them to bed.

Sunday morning, everyone was better except Jules who continued to have a fever through Monday night, after which she ended up mostly covered in a rash (roseola, poor kid). Singing went well, we had a delicious lunch and then we decorated "gingerbread" houses. I don't love how mine turned out this year. Steve and I were in charge and it was really stressful and crowded and I just got overstimulated before I had a chance to even start mine, so I did something small and uncomplicated.

Emilia did a marketplace.

Mira made Santa's workshop (but then when they picked it up, it fell off the cardboard and broke--it was so sad--but they were able to kinda fix it).

And Cecily and Steve made a beach scene.

I was impressed with the creativity of the other builders this year though. Everyone worked hard and made some well-executed creations.

Monday we decided to take another trip to Cougar Cliffs to give the girls one more go at repelling. Cecily tried this time too and didn't get even as far as Emilia did, but I still thought she was awesome for trying. The adults got to do some longer repels and Meg even did the 100+foot-long one. The one I did was 200 feet. I didn't look down the whole time or I wouldn't have made it. 

Steve on the 100-foot:

I only have a video of me doing the 200 ft and it's too big for blogger to load.

The kids swam again that afternoon (not for 6 hours this time) while all the women worked on baking rolls and pies for the feasting on Tuesday. 

Wednesday morning, we decided to skip the hike that the Nelsons and Coombs' went on so we could take the girls to Frozen 2 with Grandma and Grandpa. Unfortunately, G & G forgot something at home and Jules refused to take her morning nap, so we ended up scrapping the movie idea and went to B & N for some hot chocolate and books instead before heading home. 

Thursday, we hosted my family for another Thanksgiving meal. Even though we had it at our house, my mom did the majority of the work. She cooked the turkey, two kinds of stuffing, squash and 3 pies and pumpkin dessert (though Alison did help with the desserts). It snowed that morning and Mira and Cecily went outside for a little while. We have a great sledding hill just behind our house, so that makes it really nice when Jules can't really be out in the snow yet.

There was more snow Friday morning and all three of the older girls went out for a while. Steve let me write for quite a while and did some laundry. Then we had an early dinner and headed to the Museum of Natural Curiosity for a couple of hours.

Yesterday was filled with a lot of running around, a bit of attempting to build storage shelves in our garage (which involved moving everything out of the way), working on some book cover business stuff and finishing up Black Friday online shopping. Then the girls went to the Childress's for a sleepover and Steve and I met up with his friends, Ryan and Heidi Cook, for dinner at a Thai restaurant that has terrible service but amazing curry. Next time I think we'll get take-out. After we got home and put Jules to bed, we watched the movie Yesterday. It was enjoyable, but not memorable sadly. It was fun to hear all the Beatles songs done well but differently though. And it was clean, too, as far as I can remember. Definitely worth the watch.

Steve cooked me an amazing dinner tonight since my birthday is tomorrow, but it would be harder for him to cook it tomorrow. We had ribeye steaks grilled in 32 degree weather, potatoes au gratin that Steve sliced and made the sauce for himself, and roasted zucchini and peppers, plus ice cream for dessert. It was perfect.

Now I'm tucked under a blanket in front of the fireplace and feeling content.

And the baby just woke up. Haha. Life.

Calming down

I haven't posted in a while! It's been a manic, chaotic mess around here for a while, but things are calming down, so I'm going to try to get back into posting regularly.

We ended up staying with my parents from the 19th of August until September 10th--way longer than the week we'd been planning. This was mostly due to deciding to replace the carpet in the whole house. It was going to take them a couple of weeks to get us in, so we decided to paint the whole house before the new carpet went in. The house is 3000 square feet and I painted about 80% of it myself before the carpet was installed on the 23rd.

We didn't move anything but beds and kitchen stuff in before the carpet went in, so we "camped" for 2 weeks and I pretty much never changed out of my painting scrubs. Steve had the week of the 16th and the week of the 23rd off, so I thought he'd help me cruise through the painting. Instead he came down with a sinus infection that knocked him out for over a week.

He did get on antibiotics in time to be well enough to pull out all the carpet. I didn't have to do any of that. Nick came and helped with painting and some of the carpet pulling. And my parents came for a couple of mornings to help paint, but it was pretty grueling.

The week the carpet went in, I was exhausted and needed a break, so we decided to take the kids on the vacation we didn't get to go on during the summer because we were moving.

We decided on renting a cabin near Yellowstone National Park. It was a 2 room cabin at a KOA with an indoor pool, which I thought was perfect because if we had to sit around while Jules napped, the kids could at least swim.

It wasn't until we checked in that they told us the pool closed "for the season" just that week. Why have an indoor pool if you're just going to close it when it gets cold? Mid-week, they closed one of the only 2 bathrooms in the whole campground, too. I was super peeved about that.

Other than that though, it was an amazing vacation. We loved the landscapes and the wildlife. We would have loved to see more variety of animals, but the ones we did see were fascinating.

Once we got back, I really cracked down on getting us unpacked and settled in. Plus, I broke my computer the week before we moved to the new house, and in order to pay for a replacement, I offered local friends family photo sessions for $50. I got six families to take me up on it, so I was busy taking and editing those photos as well.

The week before Halloween, I started to put together costumes for my kids. Emilia wanted to be Sailor Moon (an anime character), Mira wanted to be a fox, and Cecily wanted to be Toothless the dragon. While I was buying pjs for Mira's costume, I found a pair of red striped pajamas and just had to turn Jules into the baby from the movie Labyrinth. And since Steve didn't seem excited about being the Goblin King, I decided to make that my costume this year. It is probably my favorite costume ever. Jules was just perfect for it.

We've had play dates, and I've built shelves. We rearranged the items still in the garage so we could fit a car in there. I've bought stuff off KSL and at DI to decorate the girls' rooms and Steve got a new computer desk since lost the built-in one at the other house. We've been having a lot of movie nights and game nights since everything is so far away here. And we bought a membership to Thanksgiving Point so we can go there whenever we want. Over fall break, we tried out the new Butterfly Biosphere and loved it, and we went to the dinosaur museum, too.

We're getting family pictures done of us on Tuesday, which I'm really excited about. And the weather decided to cooperate and not get cold until Wednesday, so everything will work out perfectly if it will just decide not to change in the next 48 hours.