Author: lilydarais

On Thursday the girls performed in the Arches Candlelight Christmas Concert. They both did so great. My favorite moment was when Mary sang, “One for the heeeaaarrrt!” over and over with the sweet little heart gesture. It was just such an appropriate lyric/gesture combo for her.

On Wednesday Lydia was her favorite Civil War hero, Harriet Tubman, in the 2nd and 3rd grade play. She was over the moon to be Harriet Tubman and talked about this for weeks. I am so grateful for good teachers who recognized how much she loved this woman from history and allowed Lydia to have this role.

Ammon and Clarissa also played sweetly together today:

Also, Abe came home at midnight today! This was his last work trip in December. Hallelujah!

On Tuesday Abe left town at 3am for another work trip. I am back blogging and don’t remember anything else from that day!

On Monday for FHE we read the story of Jesus’ birth from Luke two and then played Pin the Tail on Rudolph.

On Sunday Abe asked for a blessing from out ministers, the Moons. They came over after dinner and gave Abe a blessing, and then they stayed and talked with us for an hour. Reed Moon is the owner of Moon’s Rare Books and privately owns the best Mormon book collection in the world. He has copies of Books of Mormon owned by Joseph Smith, Sophronia Smith, Alvin Smith, and Samuel Smith, as well as the personal scriptures of twelve latter-day prophets. He also owns a ton of other rare books, including the first editions of, it seems, most any important book you can name!

Even more interesting is Reid Moon himself, who seems to have a photographic memory and is, obviously, steeped in historical knowledge. I asked him a lot of questions about polygamy, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young, and in response he, at times, quoted obscure letters from heart. He regaled us with tales of Mormon history that are not well known, and he was all around just one of the most interesting people we have ever met. I felt so grateful for the time he took with us because he leads such a crazy schedule he must hardly ever see his family.

I also forgot to take pictures of this day. Darn.

On Saturday after I came home from yoga I raced to get ready so that Mary could make it to her piano lesson, which was right before Lydia’s harp recital. December gets so crazy! Lydia did great at the recital. The student before had changed the key signature of the harp and forgotten to change it back, so Lydia started off playing the wrong key. She powered through without any mistakes,  not stopping even when Anamae came to flip the levers and correct the key. I was so proud of her.

Then we went home and Abe, Clarissa, and I napped while the other kids watched a movie. When we woke up, we piled in the car and drove to Salt Lake to buy my mom’s Christmas present, see the lights at Temple Square, and eat dinner at Cedars of Lebanon, a restaurant Abe and I ate at years ago and remembered fondly. In the ensuing years, the restaurant has become a lot more fancy than we remembered. Abe ended up sacrificing eating dinner with us so and took Ammon and Clarissa out to get the car while the girls and I ate. After we finished, the girls LOVED watching the belly dancer. Mary was copying her moves and asked if she could become a belly dancer when she grows up. I said sure.

Here are the pictures from the outing:

On Friday I took Ammon and Clarissa to the mall playground while the cleaners cleaned the house.

I spent a lot of the day eating sugar and carbs. By the end of the day I felt very burnt out on kids and just wanted Abe to come home. I went to bed early so that the time would pass more quickly until his arrival at 1:30am. I will be so glad when all of his traveling this quarter is all over!

On Thursday I think we were all tired of not having Abe around. Mary threw tantrums, and so did I. We managed to get through all of our normal routines, and I went to bed counting the hours until Abe’s return.

During Clarissa’s nap today I was a bad parent and watched S.H.E.I.L.D. shows while I wrapped Christmas presents. Unfortunately Ammon was around and happened to see someone get stabbed through the heart. I quickly paused it, put him on a phone, and resumed watching and wrapping. If I were having a good parent day, I would have switched off the TV altogether and just focused on Ammon instead. Oh, well. Thank goodness for repentance.

Abe is traveling today and for the rest of the week. It is so sad to have him gone, but the upside is I feed everyone a really early dinner and then the kids are in bed an hour earlier than usual. That means I can catch up on blogging, read my scriptures, finish some of my photo projects…and now binge watch more S.H.E.I.L.D. Hopefully I don’t get nightmares.

On Tuesday we had the Kahlers over for our German Christmas dinner. I am trying to do Christmas around the world with dinners, but it is a bit hard because Abe is out of town so much this month. We managed to get Germany done with the Kahlers, though! And we had so much fun with them. We are so lucky to have the best neighbors in the world.

I made Sauerbraten, rotkohl, smashed potatoes, and steamed green beans with a side of Great Harvest bread and an assortment of Trader Joe’s German cookies. I actually don’t think this dinner was a traditional German Christmas dinner, but the sauerbraten and rotkohl were, at least, German.

This is the kids on our Trader Joe’s outing before dinner. They asked me to take their picture, so I happily complied: