Christmas and New Years and a billion pictures

Since the last two Sundays were holidays, I let myself be lazy and not do blog posts. But now I have a ton of catching up to do. Because they were holidays!

Two Sundays ago was Christmas. We felt very blessed this year. We've had a stable past couple years and had no worries about buying Christmas gifts for everyone on our list. We were able to give generously to a United Way Giving Tree name. We helped out a friend who was struggling this Christmas. We donated to a couple of projects. And we still felt like we got more than enough on Christmas morning. My only real worry is that my kids will never know what it's like to not have enough and won't appreciate all they have and the feeling of safety and comfort it brings.

I wrote in my journal a few weeks ago that I felt the Christmas Spirit this year more than I have in a long time. I think it's because I finally got my hormones and depression mostly corrected and I feel more able to be joyful.

So as I was able to serve the people around me, I felt fulfilled and closer to the Savior. One way I tried to serve was to give a gift to a friend from church who has decided that church isn't for her. It makes me sad to know that she doesn't feel accepted and loved enough to want to be there. So to show her that she is still loved, no matter how she chooses to worship, I tried to give a thoughtful and loving gift. I gave her three things to represent the three gifts of the Magi to Christ. One was this nativity set that I painted for her.

The next was a wheat bag that I made (because I LOVE my wheat bags and I wanted to share the wealth). I also made wheat bags and handwarmers for neighbor gifts this year. The ones below are the neighbor gift ones.

The third was a book, but I didn't take a picture of that. The handwarmers and neighbor gifts were fun to put together. I don't usually get crafty for neighbor gifts, but I was in a crafty mood this year.

I also made a wheat bag for each of the girls so they would stop stealing mine. :)

This is what happens to my house when I get in a crafty mood. Just multiply this picture by every room in the house.

Mystery got into the holiday spirit, too. ;) She loves sleeping on top of paper. It's the weirdest thing.

On the 24th, we celebrated Christmas with my family at Ben's house. When I was little, I remember going to my Grandma and Grandpa Frohlich's house with all the aunts and uncles and cousins. We would all sit around the livingroom. Or perhaps squish around the livingroom would be more accurate. The kids who could read were allowed to hand out gifts from the enormous pile around the tree. Then each of us would open our gifts in turn and watch as the others opened theirs. It was magical for me. The pile of presents around the tree and the excitement of knowing your name was on one of them. The anticipation of waiting your turn. The mountains of colored paper and shiny bows that accumulated over the hour it took for everyone to open. Not quite being sure what you would get, but knowing you could play with it with your cousins after the opening was over. Even picking up the paper afterward was fun when some hooligan would start a crumpled up paper fight. I loved everything about it. So I'm glad that my family has adopted that same ritual.

The table was beautifully set for lunch when we arrived.

The kids never strayed far fro the tree and its pile of presents. (This is Ford trying to run off with one of them.)

We all ate dinner together. The kids even had their own table.

The next morning, the girls were so patient. Cecily gets crazy when she doesn't get enough sleep, so I made the older two wait to go through their stockings until she woke up around 9am. Perhaps that was harsh of me. *shrugs* Oh well. They gotta do hard things sometimes.

Cecily with our stockings. Emilia put out stockings for their reindeer stuffed animals on Christmas Eve and Santa was kind enough to leave a note saying that though he appreciated how thoughtful she was, he only had time to take presents to real children on Christmas Eve. She smiled and agreed that he had a point.

The favorite gifts from Santa were Glitter Force dolls (that Momma did not think were a good purchase). This is a picture of them holding up the packages. They were so excited, I couldn't get a not-blurry picture.

These are the dolls out of their packages.

After seeing what Santa brought, we got ready for church. Each girl got a new dress and I tried to do their hair extra fancy.

I don't know if you can see it, but Emilia's was supposed to look like a Christmas tree with a star at the top.

Mira got double french braids with silver ribbon tied at the ends.

Cecily got criss-cross ponytails with new little bows at the end.

The service was beautiful. Lots of members of the ward sharing their musical talents and a few words by the bishop finished off the hour. There was a great sense of comraderie and unity that day. I felt uplifted and known.

After church Nick and Wilda came down and we opened the rest of our presents with them.

The rest of the day was just hanging out and playing with our new toys. I particularly enjoyed snuggling with Cecily in the afternoon and eating babyback ribs for dinner.

Steve had the entire week off between Christmas and New Years, so the Tuesday after Christmas, we decided to take the kids to Moana. Cecily also got a Build-a-Bear gift card, so we planned on going to the theater at the mall and then taking her to Build-a-Bear to pick out her stuffed animal. The movie ended up being sold out at the mall, so we hurried to Build-a-Bear to get the stuffed animal before running to another theater for showing an hour later. Of course, there was a Build-a-Bear party with 17 kids in it that came right at opening, so we ended up running back to the car after waiting in line forever to get a Barf and Belch (from How to Train Your Dragon). Cecily has very much enjoyed having it, so I think it was worth a little bit of stress to get it for her right away.

Later that day, I got to go out with my friend Gina to shop and have a late lunch. The lunch was from the Trolley in Springville and it was to die for. Yumm!

Steve got to play LOTR twice that week, we drove up to Layton to visit the Nelsons and go sledding again, we had a popcorn and ice cream party with Grandma and Grandpa Watts (because that's what we'd given them for Christmas), and then had a stay-up-late New Years party with Gma and Gpa and the Nelsons Saturday night. Sunday and Monday were also spent with cousins and grandparents. Steve was nice and took the kids to the Dinosaur Museum and the Discovery Museum without me so I could write.

This is what happens when you have entirely too much fun and stay up until midnight.

I felt pretty on New Years day. My kids are pretty cute, too.

Grandpa has been reading a book about all the systems of the body to the girls. It was quite the group on New Years eve.

They also did true banana splits that night. Don't those look delicious?

On one of my shopping trips for Steve, I ran into a pair of Converse All-Stars in baby blue. So I gave them to myself as a late birthday present. 😍😍😍😍😍

This last week was mostly spent in recovery mode. Grocery shopping, cleaning, resting. Not taking down the Christmas tree, though. Maybe I'll do that next week. :)

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.