The holiday Spirit

Some years Christmas is nothing but stress. Some years it is a source of joy. I think this year is going to be the second kind. I have almost all of my shopping done already. I have all of my indoor decorations up. I think our tree is gorgeous and love that Cecily jumps for joy every time she sees it and yells, "It's so beautiful!" I love that I'm not in the middle of a writing project and therefore I can take all month to work on craft projects that will make Christmas less expensive and more fun for me. I got to go to a "kick off December right," girls night on the first day of December and did my nails and toenails for the season, along with eating tasty food and enjoying great company. The next day I had a perfect birthday, and the day after that, I got to have dinner with my family and open presents. That was today. I'm really looking forward to the season.

Now to the photos, which is really the important part, am I right? Apparently I didn't take any photos before Thursday. I don't remember a lot of what I did before Wednesday. I do know I helped Julia for like 3 hours on Tuesday because she needed a window cleaned inside and out including the tracks (and she doesn't own a vacuum). On Wednesday I got to have lunch with two ladies from my old writing group and it was fabulous. I found out the one who didn't already have an agent got one last week after only sending 6 queries. That's insanity. Most people send out hundreds before getting an agent. I'm so elated and jealous and not sure I should be jealous at the same time. Having an agent means pressure. I waffle back and forth between feeling ready for that kind of pressure and thinking that is the worst idea I've ever had. Steve went out with friends to say goodbye to one that was moving away that night. Thursday was the last day of November and I had a short story due. I had to go check and see if I'd told you about it already. I don't think I did. I found out from a writing group I'm part of on Facebook that thebrothersuber.com was doing a submission call for a short story that was a sci-fi retelling of a fairytale. That's exactly what I was doing with the last book I wrote, except I used Alice in Wonderland. I wasn't sure if they would consider AinW a fairytale, so I just took the same world I had already created and picked a different fairytale to tell about. I picked Little Red Riding Hood because it was the one I could picture fitting the best within my world. I just barely slid that baby in under the deadline, which was midnight on November 30th. I'll let y'all know if it gets chosen for publication. Also being the last day of November, I realized we hadn't visiting our visiting teaching sisters, so my partner and I put together these holiday potpourri bags and delivered them to the sisters we visit. I love the smell of that stuff. If you want to try it out yourself, you can get the recipe here: http://rachelschultz.com/2013/12/12/cinnamon-cranberry-stove-top-potpourri/

Friday, I planned on doing fun stuff and relaxing because that writing deadline almost killed me. I don't think I got enough sleep for the whole week beforehand. I felt like a zombie all day on Thursday. But instead, I wrote a letter to a friend for the kick-off of #LighttheWorld, put dinner in the crockpot, exercised, roasted a pumpkin, made 4 loaves of gluten-free pumpkin bread, took the girls to pick out Christmas presents for their cousins, and cleaned out my car. But at least I got to go to the girls' night that night. It was so much fun.

Saturday was my birthday! I turned 39. And instead of rehashing everything, you get my summary from Instagram: Thank you for all the birthday wishes! I had a wonderful day. We put up and decorated our Christmas tree, I got to exercise, we celebrated Mira getting her art selected for the Springville Art museum's children's art exhibit (they had an opening "gala"), went to dinner and the BYU MOA M.C. Escher exhibit, played a new game at dragons keep, and now I'm going to listen to my book and crochet. It was so lovely!

I'm looking forward to another great week this week. I hope your Christmas Spirit is thriving as well. If not, check out the #LighttheWorld initiative. If nothing else, the introductory videos will make you cry. :) (It's put on by our church, but it's almost completely non-denominational Christian. The idea is to purposely do things this season to emulate Christ as a way to remember Him at this time of year.) For example, yesterday's theme was "I was thirsty and ye gave me drink," from Matthew 25:35. So we donated money to an organization that provides clean water to people who need it around the world. Today's theme was, "Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days," from Matthew 12:12 (the idea being that we should do good works on the Sabbath and not just sit around or do housework) so we wrote letters to Great Grandpa Frohlich and are going to mail them tomorrow along with a family photo. I appreciate the help to be less commercial during this sacred season. The link to the calendar, videos, and ideas is here:  https://www.mormon.org/

Also, here are all the photos I got off Steve's phone tonight of things that happened a while ago.

The Tabernacle viewing and subsequent visit to the Bean Museum:

The Daddy/Daughter Date from halloween:

And a "family photo" in bed that Cecily insisted on. :)

Last week was an "I'm struggling with the motivation part of depression" sort of week. I've been sick off and on for a good month and a half now and whenever my body needs nutrients to keep my body healthy, my mind doesn't get the nutrients it needs to be healthy, and my depression rears its ugly head. It hasn't been terrible. Just sorta iffy. Iffy mental health, iffy physical health = iffy housecleaning and other responsible adulting. I didn't even really take pictures, so it must have been iffy. :)

This picture was taken to document something humorous Cecily said.

Here's the story as I put it on Instagram:
Yesterday afternoon I picked up Cecily from a friend who had been babysitting her. As we left, Cecily waved and yelled, "Bye, I love you!" and happily skipped to the car. After we picked up her sisters from school, we stopped at Home Depot to get some wire for a craft project. The guy helping us reminded me of my dad and he asked the girls grandfatherly questions as he worked. As we walked away, he waved and warmly said, "Bye!" Cecily enthusiastically waved back and said, "Bye, I love you!" But instead of skipping away happily, she made this face, totally embarrassed, and said, "I just said I love you to a man I don't know!"

She also desperately wanted a picture with her fake keys. Because she's Cecily.

This picture was taken to commemorate a trip to Nickel City with the girls and the two younger Stratton cousins. We were going to send one of the girls to the BYU football game with the Strattons earlier in the day (because they had an extra ticket), but then two of them wanted to go, and then both of them said they'd prefer to go to Nickel City instead when I offered it as an alternative to the one who didn't get to go to the game.

This is Emilia's water cycle project. The red ball is the sun. The black cloud thing is precipitation. The white clouds are condensation. and at the bottom are piles of snow and a streak of water that are the accumulation. I thought it was clever that she wrote the word "accumulation" with pipe cleaners on top of the snow. She learned a song that goes with it that she sung over and over and over and it got stuck in everyone's head. Evaporation, and condensation, ... Great, now I'm going to have it stuck in my head again.

This week was Thanksgiving of course. We were busy every single day prepping for our very first Thanksgiving meal that we prepared by ourselves, eating and cleaning up after said meal, playing games with family members, making gingerbread houses, getting a Watts family picture with all 26 Wattses, cleaning out my parents' house and moving stuff into their new house in Spanish Fork, and being sick (with a not-fun head cold). The girls LOVED playing with cousins all weekend since all of Steve's sisters were in town.

And one more funny Cecily story copied from Instagram:
Despite her mischievousness (like cutting off the hair of 4 of her *sister's* Barbies on a whim the other day), this one is also often my best and most willing helper. She made her bed this morning just because she thought it should be made (I don't require bed making on Sundays). She also cracks me up every day. Today while making her bed she told me, "This is my version--Michael and Maya sitting in a tree, one fell off and broke their crown, Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, no more girls falling on broken trees."

Now I'm pooped and I'm headed to bed early. Have a great week!

Boys happened

Emilia had an appointment with an orthopedic pediatric specialist on Monday because the regular doctor was unsure if the break would affect her growth plate. Fortunately, the orthopedic surgeon said the break touched the growth plate, but didn't cut across it, so he doesn't expect any problems. He also said both fractures were pretty small, so she only has to wear the cast for 3 weeks before they cut it off and re-x-ray it. If it looks good at that point, she won't have to have another cast. Three weeks is way better than I thought it would be. And I was so glad she didn't have to get it above her elbow and she has use of her fingers. She was excited about that, too.

It was funny, when the nurse came in to get the appointment started, she asked, "How'd you break it? Did you fall? What happened?" And Emilia's response was, "Boys happened." The tech laughed so hard and then responded. "Boys happened. That's the best response ever. I should have that tattooed on my forehead." Lol.

Tuesday I helped Julia for a couple of hours, ran to the store, got a haircut, had a counseling appointment, and then was totally peopled out for the day and made Steve put the kids to bed so I could decompress. After the kid craziness was out for the night, I listened to a book while I folded clothes.

Wednesday, Cecily had tumbling and Thursday, Mira had gymnastics. I only moved Cecily's to Wednesdays because I had a friend in my ward whose girls were going Thursdays at the same time as Mira. She was willing to drive Mira, so I would only have to go once a week still. But then, two weeks after this arrangement started, the friend moved her girls to a different day. Ugh. So now I'm driving there twice a week and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to keep it up very long. It's hard on me and the girls.

But other than those two things, we didn't have anything on the schedule. But somehow the week seemed incredibly long. I guess I did decide to clean out the garden that morning. And that turned into me winterizing all the planting beds, too. It took me a few hours. Then I had a presidency meeting that went for a couple of hours. So in between the yard work and the meeting, I had to do a bunch of shopping in order to get the items we were thinking about using for our yearly ward Christmas party service project. This year we're sending supplies to the family of a lady who's from Puerto Rico, so I had to figure out which supplies would fit in a priority mail box and not be too heavy.

The garden after I cleaned it out.

A praying friend I found and moved.

My totally adorable shopping partner.

Thursday Mira stayed home sick with a sore throat and then was fine like an hour later. So I took her and Cecily to a park for a picnic lunch since it was supposed to be the last really warm day of the year. We stayed for a couple hours and the girls had a blast. We gathered horse chestnuts for decorating while we were there, too. That evening I came down with a fever again, but I had to take Mira to gymnastics and Steve had game night, so we had McDonald's for dinner and the girls played video games until bed time.

Before we went to the park, Mira was making "blind bags" for Cecily to open. They are so creative.

Friday I had to go to a training meeting in Salt Lake. I found out that Utah has a free online preschool and I found out there was an opening for her at the beginning of last week. But I had to attend a training meeting in order to qualify, so I took Cecily up to hang out with my mom while I went to the meeting. It seems like a pretty cool deal. Kids who have used the program in the past (it's required they use it 15 minutes a day 5 days a week if you sign up), end up at a 1st grade reading level. I don't care if Cecily can read early, but she seems interested in letters and sounds, and she LOVES screen time, so I thought this would be a great fit for her. They also offer optional math and science readiness through the program, so it will be interesting to see if she chooses to do that part of it, too.

Yesterday Steve and I did a lot of writing. Steve is doing National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, which is a contest to see if you can write 50,000 words in 1 month. For reference, one double-spaced page in microsoft word is about 250 words and to accomplish the goal, you have to write 1667 each day of November. He's doing great and is even a little ahead. He's writing a literary novel about the South. I'm writing a short story for an anthology submission call. It's a sci-fi version of Little Red Riding Hood. Steve also helped a friend move for a good 6 hours. He's a good guy like that. :)

I found Mira asleep in this totally uncomfortable position before going to bed last night. I chuckled over that for a while. :)

Today was a good day filled with food and family and friends and games. We are so lucky that Nick and Wilda are willing to feed us each Sunday and that our kids can hang out with their grandparents from both sides so regularly. What a blessing in their lives!

Was Halloween this week?

It was another crazy busy week. I don't remember much about Monday because it feels like it was three weeks ago. I know I painted my nails and Cecily's nails. I really love how they turned out. I also know I did our laundry. I helped Emilia and Mira with the art they were going to enter in the Springville Museum of Art Children's Art Competition.

Tuesday was Halloween and I still went and helped Julia. It was a terrible idea. I was so crunched for time. But she needs so much help that I feel like I'm abandoning her if I don't go. Then I had to go home and get a costume on me and Cecily and head to Emilia's Halloween party at school. I had two relay games for the kids to do.

After the class party, me and Ces went to the gym to watch the costume parade.

Emilia is the teal mermaid near the front.

After school, Emilia and Mira went to set up for their performance. For weeks before Halloween, these 4 girls made up a song, a dance, practiced it, and made invitations which they delivered to the entire neighborhood. If you want to see a video of the performance, you can view it here.

That night, we went trick-or-treating around Grandma and Grandpa's house. They each got a haul. Again.

This is Cecily being her funny self.  Her words:
Cecily: My brain is fighting, Mom.
Me: Your brain is fighting? What is it fighting?
Cecily: Nooo. There's two people in my brain and they're fighting each other about my necklace.
Me: There are two people in your brain?
Cecily: Yes. They are twins and their names are Percy and Violet.

I waited five minutes and asked her for their names again and she said the same ones. She knows her brain well!. :)

In this one, she's wearing two skirts, a pair of capris, black socks with pink and blue shoes on the wrong feet, an owl shirt, and heart sunglasses. And when we went into the bathroom at the hospital that day, she declared, "It smells like pumpkin pie with cherries inside in here!" If only I had so much flare.

Emilia broke her arm. Some boys at school didn't know when to quit and sent her flying. Broke both bones in her lower arm, but fortunately, not badly. More info on that next week.

The sky matched my mood one morning. Of course I had to document it.

Mira got her nails painted, too. And a collage, because she asked for one. I guess collages mean something is awesome.

Steve and I went on a very short date that included sushi from the grocery store and a view of the valley.

This is every stuffed animal we own sitting in stuffed animal church. It lasted at least an hour, so I'd say my kids got the church thing down. :)