Ketch Up time....
Nope - no fries - they're fried and sinful. So it's just a big long letter to try to just fill in the big blank since the last post. I have more that I think I'll post later on....
I guess we can start off with Thanksgiving... since St and I both have to work the next day we figured we ought to just go out for dinner and relax the rest of the day rather than spend it cooking and cleaning the entire day. So we just cleaned for the first half of the day, then went to eat and found that the buffets were WAY too crowded for our taste (and time limitations if we wanted to make it to the show, which we did!). So the Chinese Buffet was it AGAIN for us... yes, we did go there last year too. And then we made it to the Movie (I think it was Chicken Little) and enjoyed ourselves.
Skip to Friday the 23rd - our 14th Anniversary. Yes, we are counting accurately this year. (We lost count and celebrated #13 twice!). We were both not feeling all that great so it was mostly napping that day (St took the day off, and I left work early). So we went to eat a Mexican place and went and watched God's Army 2. Almost a downer for most of the show - but excellent message at the end that made both of cry. Then Saturday, Christmas Eve.... I think St cleaned in the morning while the rest of us tried to keep up with all of the orders issued thus-while. :) Then we washed the truck, dropped off a gift, and went to see the Chronicles of Narnia with the boys. That was a great show! Very symbolic and great imagery/artistry and adventurous! It was J's 2nd time seeing it since he got to see it as a field trip with his school class, but he was happy to notice things he'd missed the first time. We then did the Chinese Buffet thing again since the other Buffets of first choice were closed for the Holiday. Oh, yeah - we actually hit the grocery store since I hadn't thought of going earlier. That was a crazy place!!!! Ch was actually anxious to go home and read for a 1/2 hr and then go to bed - he repeated his request a few times to me at the store and then at the restaraunt. I'm not gonna argue with that! He must've been good on his intention because the next morning....
"Mom - wake up! It's time to get ready! And I'm all ready!" I opened my eyes still lying on my back (I went out like a light at about 2am!) and saw him ready to go - his hair done, tie on, shoes on!!! One of my favorite gifts!!!!!
But back to Christmas Eve - after we got home we all wrapped our respective gifts (kids helping both of us giggling at how funny dad was with his talents in wrapping!) I think I just get to busy to wrap them one at a time when I get them.... and like my mother I do have a tendency to not indicate who they're to - so at least this year I got most of them on, at least who they were to if not who they were from. I think if I wrapped the gift immediately and labeled them, then I'd know better what everyone's getting and they wouldn't end up with so many little goofy things! I find myself seeing things bit by bit throughout the months and grabbing them thinking it would be a fun gift and then when I wrap them I realize that my kids are really spoiled.... The kids that night requested that they be allowed to hand out the gifts and pick out which ones first for us to open. Okay? And it was requested that I not make the Christmas Casserole - so I tried I pull-apart recipe instead. More on that later! So after we got most of the gifts out under the tree we read the Nativity while Dad tried to stay awake and most of us gratefully sank into our beds....
So in the morning St and I rushed to get ready - our choir practice began at 8:15 am and we only had a 1/2 hr to get ready. We made it only 5 minutes late! The program at church turned out very nice, although St was ready to thump me....I sat next to my friend who's the YW Pres and she likes to talk to me, so we weren't very good examples. I'm repenting - or at least trying to. Cool thing was meeting a Ward member's daughter who is a band/orchestra/choir teacher for the Park City School District.... The member was supposed to play the violin for Silent Night, but his back was not well so he asked her to cover for him - and WOW! She did beautifully! And we also easily talked her into singing with the altos for the other numbers and she did quite well! So I *sighed* and gave her huge smiles and hug, happy for her to be living out my dream job! Made me wish for my youth again so I'd have time to make a new friend and hang out with her some more.... ah, well - it's all good! She'll come and visit her dad and then we can see each other again. We only had Sacrament meeting for an hour (there's another meeting right after ours) so we made it home to smell something burning. I groaned..... Not again! (Yes, I do offer a few too many burnt offerings to my family!) But it turns out that it was only a little sugar and nuts that exploded over the edge since I let it rise for too long. Some recipes you really have to have your time organized well to get it done right and at the right time! But the bread itself was alright. The boys weren't too interested in it and the butter all ended up at the top, so it was dry in parts and really greasy in parts. Oh well. We'll try it again another day...... And then! We made Dad stay out and not go to bed to open gifts. He'd been threatening (with a smile) to go to bed and make us all wait until the next day to open them! Aaa!!!! Santa actually wrapped those gifts and put them by our stockings. So the only unwrapped gifts were the HUGE animal slippers we all got! J got lions, Ch got black panthers, I got the yellow tiger and St got the white tiger! The boys laughed when they saw those! They also handed me all of the gifts they could find looking for just the right one - so I felt overloaded this year! Turns out St and I got each other the same gift!!!! Kids thought that was hilarious.... it was a CD called Celtic Women. We saw the concert on PBS a couple weeks ago and we both loved. St did better than me though and got the DVD of the concert with it. We'd like to see them in concert if it's close enough and not too expensive! Let's see. So St got a nutritional guide kit, I got mostly shoes (and I was very excited to get a hand held sudoku game!), Ch got an MP3 player, a watch, and a CD Player with a CD (Flood), and J got a scooter, a little remote control car with all the fixin's to make it into a monster truck, and a little walking robot. All the rest of the things were just little (a few books and games). Oh, and we got a breadmaker - so I've been trying that out. My second loaf turned out better than the first....now I just need to try the ingrediants from scratch. Too bad I'm the only that's seems to like the bread. Everyone else just says "No thank you!" Maybe they'll like white bread when I try that. We just lazed around after that trying to figure out our gadgets. I cooked a turkey that turned out all right - not the best, but not the worst!
I got to talk to everyone from my family except Lindsey and Lyric and I missed Gma Ferrell, and we got to Gma West and everyone got to talk to Aunt Michelle from Puerto Rico!
And then we saved the BEST for last! I took the kids out for a few errands (to give St the time to write letters to the boys), and made them come sit on the couch with their eyes closed. I set out the portraits I commissioned Dalyn to do of the boys as strippling warriors and we put out these decorative "liahona"s St had found a while ago (they're kind of decorative globe/compasses made of metal strips with an arrow that goes through the center of it). With their eyes still closed, St asked them to consider what the greatest gift they could give to Heavenly Father. After some conversation and deciding that it would be to make a personal commitment to live the gospel and live worthy to return to Him he had them open their eyes. I hear J whisper "Cool!" and Ch asked "What is it?" (He wasn't wearing his glasses). So they went over and read their letters from Dad and collected their comapasses and gave their daddy thank you kisses and then went back to look at their portraits. I asked them if they knew what they were. They did make Scriptural guesses and I had them look at the banners they were wearing in the portraits with the scripture references on them. So they got out their scriptures with much cooperation with each other and took turns reading a verse each about the Stripling Warriors. It was everything I hoped it would be! I teared up watching my children so enraptured with how the scriptures actually applied to them! *Wow*! (THANKS, Day!!!!) What an awesome experience!
So Monday morning since I got the day off, I got to chat for a while with Lindsey and Lyric and loved it all and drove the boys crazy, saying "what are we gonna get to do today??" and St was finally able to get through on the phone wondering who I was talking to that whole time! :) He came home and shortly after that we had a pretty major wind storm! It blew in some rain and hail and tons of dust from all the construction areas around! We watched some power poles throw some major flashes in town... and we were very glad that St didn't have go back into that! And then J turned and hollered "We have a leak!" AAaaa! Out of our vent right by the Christmas tree we had a stream of water running down to the floor! The scramble seemed to be right out of the Charlie Chaplin kind of chaos! It was nuts. We're not sure we know what the source was - but we got rid of the fish tank quick after dad found that there was a small leak from the pumps and the upstairs bathroom got a good thorough cleaning and the upstairs deck got a good sweeping (I think that's where the water came in from).... And then Dad wanted the windows to all be squeegeed off so we wouldn't have the raindrops decorating them for the next few months. The kids weren't too thrilled to be doing MORE cleaning! Ch did win the interrupted Scrabble game (which we were playing waiting for Dad to come home), and they learned that Mom takes WAY too long to try to figure out which word to play. I think we'll be playing a different game the next time.
Once things got settled down St and I took off to go shopping like we've been wanting to since my birthday, and we quite enjoyed ourselves - saw some friends that we got to chat with a bit and playing up our whims of vanity....came home and watched the DVD of Mobsters and Mormons with the kids. So it was a very nice holiday.
The kids weren't even too grumpy when I woke them up for school this morning once I left them alone after they reminded me they didn't have school this week. I remember I hated being woken up from a nice sleep for no good reason - and they were glad not to be given any new chores! Spoiled kids.
Family is the whole best thing about the Holidays. I miss them, but I rejoice in my communications with them. I feel their love - it's like the warm fuzzy blanket that I'm so used to that I can easily take it for granted.
I will post more when I can...
I guess we can start off with Thanksgiving... since St and I both have to work the next day we figured we ought to just go out for dinner and relax the rest of the day rather than spend it cooking and cleaning the entire day. So we just cleaned for the first half of the day, then went to eat and found that the buffets were WAY too crowded for our taste (and time limitations if we wanted to make it to the show, which we did!). So the Chinese Buffet was it AGAIN for us... yes, we did go there last year too. And then we made it to the Movie (I think it was Chicken Little) and enjoyed ourselves.
Skip to Friday the 23rd - our 14th Anniversary. Yes, we are counting accurately this year. (We lost count and celebrated #13 twice!). We were both not feeling all that great so it was mostly napping that day (St took the day off, and I left work early). So we went to eat a Mexican place and went and watched God's Army 2. Almost a downer for most of the show - but excellent message at the end that made both of cry. Then Saturday, Christmas Eve.... I think St cleaned in the morning while the rest of us tried to keep up with all of the orders issued thus-while. :) Then we washed the truck, dropped off a gift, and went to see the Chronicles of Narnia with the boys. That was a great show! Very symbolic and great imagery/artistry and adventurous! It was J's 2nd time seeing it since he got to see it as a field trip with his school class, but he was happy to notice things he'd missed the first time. We then did the Chinese Buffet thing again since the other Buffets of first choice were closed for the Holiday. Oh, yeah - we actually hit the grocery store since I hadn't thought of going earlier. That was a crazy place!!!! Ch was actually anxious to go home and read for a 1/2 hr and then go to bed - he repeated his request a few times to me at the store and then at the restaraunt. I'm not gonna argue with that! He must've been good on his intention because the next morning....
"Mom - wake up! It's time to get ready! And I'm all ready!" I opened my eyes still lying on my back (I went out like a light at about 2am!) and saw him ready to go - his hair done, tie on, shoes on!!! One of my favorite gifts!!!!!
But back to Christmas Eve - after we got home we all wrapped our respective gifts (kids helping both of us giggling at how funny dad was with his talents in wrapping!) I think I just get to busy to wrap them one at a time when I get them.... and like my mother I do have a tendency to not indicate who they're to - so at least this year I got most of them on, at least who they were to if not who they were from. I think if I wrapped the gift immediately and labeled them, then I'd know better what everyone's getting and they wouldn't end up with so many little goofy things! I find myself seeing things bit by bit throughout the months and grabbing them thinking it would be a fun gift and then when I wrap them I realize that my kids are really spoiled.... The kids that night requested that they be allowed to hand out the gifts and pick out which ones first for us to open. Okay? And it was requested that I not make the Christmas Casserole - so I tried I pull-apart recipe instead. More on that later! So after we got most of the gifts out under the tree we read the Nativity while Dad tried to stay awake and most of us gratefully sank into our beds....
So in the morning St and I rushed to get ready - our choir practice began at 8:15 am and we only had a 1/2 hr to get ready. We made it only 5 minutes late! The program at church turned out very nice, although St was ready to thump me....I sat next to my friend who's the YW Pres and she likes to talk to me, so we weren't very good examples. I'm repenting - or at least trying to. Cool thing was meeting a Ward member's daughter who is a band/orchestra/choir teacher for the Park City School District.... The member was supposed to play the violin for Silent Night, but his back was not well so he asked her to cover for him - and WOW! She did beautifully! And we also easily talked her into singing with the altos for the other numbers and she did quite well! So I *sighed* and gave her huge smiles and hug, happy for her to be living out my dream job! Made me wish for my youth again so I'd have time to make a new friend and hang out with her some more.... ah, well - it's all good! She'll come and visit her dad and then we can see each other again. We only had Sacrament meeting for an hour (there's another meeting right after ours) so we made it home to smell something burning. I groaned..... Not again! (Yes, I do offer a few too many burnt offerings to my family!) But it turns out that it was only a little sugar and nuts that exploded over the edge since I let it rise for too long. Some recipes you really have to have your time organized well to get it done right and at the right time! But the bread itself was alright. The boys weren't too interested in it and the butter all ended up at the top, so it was dry in parts and really greasy in parts. Oh well. We'll try it again another day...... And then! We made Dad stay out and not go to bed to open gifts. He'd been threatening (with a smile) to go to bed and make us all wait until the next day to open them! Aaa!!!! Santa actually wrapped those gifts and put them by our stockings. So the only unwrapped gifts were the HUGE animal slippers we all got! J got lions, Ch got black panthers, I got the yellow tiger and St got the white tiger! The boys laughed when they saw those! They also handed me all of the gifts they could find looking for just the right one - so I felt overloaded this year! Turns out St and I got each other the same gift!!!! Kids thought that was hilarious.... it was a CD called Celtic Women. We saw the concert on PBS a couple weeks ago and we both loved. St did better than me though and got the DVD of the concert with it. We'd like to see them in concert if it's close enough and not too expensive! Let's see. So St got a nutritional guide kit, I got mostly shoes (and I was very excited to get a hand held sudoku game!), Ch got an MP3 player, a watch, and a CD Player with a CD (Flood), and J got a scooter, a little remote control car with all the fixin's to make it into a monster truck, and a little walking robot. All the rest of the things were just little (a few books and games). Oh, and we got a breadmaker - so I've been trying that out. My second loaf turned out better than the first....now I just need to try the ingrediants from scratch. Too bad I'm the only that's seems to like the bread. Everyone else just says "No thank you!" Maybe they'll like white bread when I try that. We just lazed around after that trying to figure out our gadgets. I cooked a turkey that turned out all right - not the best, but not the worst!
I got to talk to everyone from my family except Lindsey and Lyric and I missed Gma Ferrell, and we got to Gma West and everyone got to talk to Aunt Michelle from Puerto Rico!
And then we saved the BEST for last! I took the kids out for a few errands (to give St the time to write letters to the boys), and made them come sit on the couch with their eyes closed. I set out the portraits I commissioned Dalyn to do of the boys as strippling warriors and we put out these decorative "liahona"s St had found a while ago (they're kind of decorative globe/compasses made of metal strips with an arrow that goes through the center of it). With their eyes still closed, St asked them to consider what the greatest gift they could give to Heavenly Father. After some conversation and deciding that it would be to make a personal commitment to live the gospel and live worthy to return to Him he had them open their eyes. I hear J whisper "Cool!" and Ch asked "What is it?" (He wasn't wearing his glasses). So they went over and read their letters from Dad and collected their comapasses and gave their daddy thank you kisses and then went back to look at their portraits. I asked them if they knew what they were. They did make Scriptural guesses and I had them look at the banners they were wearing in the portraits with the scripture references on them. So they got out their scriptures with much cooperation with each other and took turns reading a verse each about the Stripling Warriors. It was everything I hoped it would be! I teared up watching my children so enraptured with how the scriptures actually applied to them! *Wow*! (THANKS, Day!!!!) What an awesome experience!
So Monday morning since I got the day off, I got to chat for a while with Lindsey and Lyric and loved it all and drove the boys crazy, saying "what are we gonna get to do today??" and St was finally able to get through on the phone wondering who I was talking to that whole time! :) He came home and shortly after that we had a pretty major wind storm! It blew in some rain and hail and tons of dust from all the construction areas around! We watched some power poles throw some major flashes in town... and we were very glad that St didn't have go back into that! And then J turned and hollered "We have a leak!" AAaaa! Out of our vent right by the Christmas tree we had a stream of water running down to the floor! The scramble seemed to be right out of the Charlie Chaplin kind of chaos! It was nuts. We're not sure we know what the source was - but we got rid of the fish tank quick after dad found that there was a small leak from the pumps and the upstairs bathroom got a good thorough cleaning and the upstairs deck got a good sweeping (I think that's where the water came in from).... And then Dad wanted the windows to all be squeegeed off so we wouldn't have the raindrops decorating them for the next few months. The kids weren't too thrilled to be doing MORE cleaning! Ch did win the interrupted Scrabble game (which we were playing waiting for Dad to come home), and they learned that Mom takes WAY too long to try to figure out which word to play. I think we'll be playing a different game the next time.
Once things got settled down St and I took off to go shopping like we've been wanting to since my birthday, and we quite enjoyed ourselves - saw some friends that we got to chat with a bit and playing up our whims of vanity....came home and watched the DVD of Mobsters and Mormons with the kids. So it was a very nice holiday.
The kids weren't even too grumpy when I woke them up for school this morning once I left them alone after they reminded me they didn't have school this week. I remember I hated being woken up from a nice sleep for no good reason - and they were glad not to be given any new chores! Spoiled kids.
Family is the whole best thing about the Holidays. I miss them, but I rejoice in my communications with them. I feel their love - it's like the warm fuzzy blanket that I'm so used to that I can easily take it for granted.
I will post more when I can...
posted by Lisa @ 11:23 AM
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