Month: December 2016

This morning Abe and I worked out on the bikes at the Orem Rec Center. We had a great time.

Mary had an eye appointment afterward. One of her eyes is becoming more stigmatized, whatever that means. But at least she’s not cross-eyed anymore! Also, the doctor offered her a job to come teach all of the kids how to behave in doctor’s appointments. He offered to pay her in stickers. She thought that sounded great. I also thought that sounded great. After sacrament meetings I always think I have failed in the child-rearing department. It was nice to hear such positive commentary today.

Abe organized the BEST Family Home Evening ever tonight. He had the girls do an obstacle course, and at each obstacle they had to say an article of faith. They had the best time. All of the rest of my pictures reflect how much fun they had with their amazing dad.

Today after church I helped the girls make candy cane cookies. We intended to give some away, but we never got to that part. Hopefully we get to that tomorrow.

I spent the rest of the day cooking dinner, baking for my visiting teachee, getting home taught, breaking our fast, and visiting teaching. I also realized I have to give the lesson next week in Relief Society. I thought I had traded that Sunday away and so am now scrambling to get something thrown together.

Here is a cute picture and a cute video of Ammon and Sylvia, the daughter of Jenny (my friend and visiting teachee) at church.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_JAj-p2i_E

On Saturday we did errands in the morning. When we got back home the girls did their gingerbread houses.

On Friday morning we had a field trip with Lydia’s school to the Leonardo Museum in Salt Lake. We got there early and so headed to the bakery across the street to get out of the cold.

Then we went to the Leonardo. I had never been there before. Honestly, I was a little overwhelmed at first. All I wanted to do was find a quiet corner to eat the sandwich I’d gotten from the bakery. The minute I finally settled down, I heard a familiar scream fill the entire museum. Mary had knocked heads with a kid going down the slide and had gotten a bloody nose. Poor girl. But thankfully she was fine after two minutes of  lying in my lap. We all went over to the little kids’ section and settled there so that I could have a better shot at my sandwich.

I met a homeschooler mom who inspired me so much. She just had such a bright, cheerful attitude and had been homeschooling for twenty years. She gave me lots of useful tips, but most of all I appreciated how fun and positive she was. What a great example.

Then we all headed over to Robinson’s Christmas tree lot to get our tree.

 I wanted a smaller, sparsely branched, skinny tree. Lydia thought that was perfectly awful and chose the biggest, fattest tree that our house could handle. Christmas is (partly) about making magic for kids, right? I picked Lydia’s tree.

When we came home, Abe joined us to put up the tree, and after work we all decorated.

This morning I let Lydia wear my necklace as a consolation prize while we did her first looooong practice this week…and she broke it. I got much too upset, but then I remembered that I could probably get it fixed somewhere. I then apologized to Lydia for getting mad. I hope she knows she’s more important to me than a necklace.

After I picked her up from school, we went to the repair shop in the mall to see if they could fix it. They did–and they did it for free! I was so touched.

When we got home I stripped Ammon down to his onesie and socks because he was covered in cookie gook. I loved watching his little plump body toddle around thus attired.

And here are some pictures Lydia took a couple days ago. She was very excited about how cute her subject matters were.

I am excited about how cute these subject matters are. I can’t believe I forgot to post these gems from a couple days ago:

Today we had our friend, Nick, over for dinner. We enjoy him so much. He knows so much about subjects we are interested in. He and Abe talked about the sinking of the Lusitania at length, and then Nick answered all of my questions about the Avengers.

While we were cleaning up after dinner, the doorbell rang. A group of youth from our church wanted to carol to my mom, but since she is in Pittsburgh, we got it on video. Nick supplied the impromptu beat boxing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dciIeJvml5I

We made dioramas of Joshua Tree National Park today. I thought it would be a fun way to talk about perspective and digest some of what we learned on our trip. The girls were pretty excited about the project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsA-6OtSKs8

Today I was still recovering from whatever made me throw up yesterday, and Abe did a TON of work getting the house in order after the trip.

Tonight we were hoping to go to a live nativity with the Marshalls, but after we seriously considered our to-do list and the state of my stomach, we had to cancel. The minute Chelsea got wind that we were fighting a bug over here, she called and offered to bring us soup.

Chelsea is doing the #lighttheworld service initiative put out by our church. Every day we are given new ideas for serving others. Today we are supposed to heal the sick, so Chelsea made a big pot of chicken noodle soup and hoped that she could find someone sick to heal. Isn’t she amazing? Since I was sick, we were the blessed recipients of her kind act of service.

I meant to get a picture of her with her inspired pot of soup, but I forgot. Darn.

The soup was delicious and I feel so grateful for loving friends.

Also, I just got this video of Mary goofing around. I was emailing and all of the sudden heard her yelling about power and light. She was stomping around and doing all sorts of power poses. I got the video after she had been going for a solid five minutes, so I missed the best parts. But still, for our amusement in our golden years…:

On Sunday we headed home from San Diego. We would have arrived home at some reasonable hour had we not taken a detour to see Joshua Tree National Park. Even though this detour meant we did not get to bed until 3 am, it was so worth it. We want to go back when we have more time. It was, as can be (sort of) observed below, amazing.

On Saturday we had no idea how we could possibly top the events of the day before. But we headed over to the San Diego Zoo as a post-highlight-of our-lives consolation prize.

What a consolation prize! The zoo is an embarrassment of riches. Each exhibit is a marvel. Even the insect exhibits are stunningly framed in beautiful, wide swaths of copper. We now know we should have swooned at the prospect of a day at this zoo.