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.
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