After All There's Only One More Sleep 'til Christmas

The kids were supposed to have a half day of school on December 23 (I have no idea why the school board thought that was a good idea), but we had a snow day instead. I did not mind. We all turned off our alarms and I woke up at 9 o'clock! I slept in so late that I had missed several texts from the dentist asking if we could bring Phoebe in earlier than planned for her cleaning.

Pre-Christmas day activities included a high fit class for me and Sophie taught by a friend's daughter home from college (this picture was taken at the end of the class, we could barely stand),

a round of the game Why Are You Like This,

Christmas themed Legos,

the most delicious Christmas Eve soup Bryan has ever made (chicken and potato, I'm sure I will dream of it),

a pajama photoshoot,

the annual viewing of The Muppet Christmas Carol,

and a very late bedtime for the parents.

Come Let Us Adore Him

We had our annual interfaith concert on Sunday night. We didn't host this time, but between our two wards and the kids choir, we brought seven songs. And guess who didn't take any pictures all night? You'll have to make do with a screenshot from our ward choir and another of me directing the kids.

The girls and I did take a selfie when we got home, to commemorate the evening.

One Hundred and Four Days of Summer Vacation

Ten years after the show originally ended, a new season of Phineas and Feb came out today! This is one of our favorite shows. We have most of the songs from the first run memorized. Cooper suggested we watch a few episodes for family movie night and that's just what we did. It felt very nostalgic.

Brotherly Love

It was really nice having Peter here for the weekend. He got his Real ID (the reason he flew home between fall semester and spring term), had his dentist appointment for his mission papers (and a subsequent visit for fillings), and got some much needed sleep. He also played lots of MarioKart with Bryan and the other kids.

Topher requested that we save our traditional Resurrection Rolls for when Peter was here. So, a week after Easter, we gathered around the table to tell the story of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection using marshmallows, butter, cinnamon/sugar, and crescent rolls. It sounds kind of irreverent, but it's a great object lesson.

We were all sad to see him go back to school on Monday afternoon. Topher was especially upset. He burst into big sobs and wouldn't stop hugging Peter.

We love you, Peter!

Neigh

We went on our annual carriage ride with our friends on Saturday night. It went mostly smoothly, although both Topher and Violet were scolded by the carriage drivers after they decided they really wanted to pat the horses at the conclusion of the ride. We didn't let them get that far, but they did try. That's why they're both being restrained by older sisters in this picture.

So Long, Farewell

Saturday was nearly gone when I realized it was the last day of summer and I hadn't been outside at all. Bryan was driving Cooper and Phoebe to a church activity, so I called Sophie and Topher downstairs and said we needed to go outside and say goodbye to summer. We were out there for as long as it took me to harvest a small mixing bowl full of cherry tomatoes. Sophie and Topher bounced a few beach balls and ran around. Then we stood on the edge of the deck and called out, "Goodbye, summer!"

Sophie said she thinks this should be a new tradition. I think it will be.

Lovely Weather for a Sleigh Ride Together With You

Saturday was a full day and it ended with our annual tradition of going on a sleigh ride with some friends. We happened to pick one of the busiest nights of the season for this city. The traffic was kind of intense, but we made it and found a place to park. The best part was singing Christmas carols with friends while looking at all the Christmas lights downtown. The second best part was that it had been a warmish day (which means I was a comfortable temperature in my hat and scarf and coat and gloves rather than freezing in spite of them) and the impending rain held off until the next morning.

General Conference View: October 2023 Edition

Traditional Saturday morning Conference breakfast:

Viewing party:

Sunday walk between sessions:

A Bibliophile's Yuletide

Many years ago a friend told me that one of their Christmas traditions was to keep all their Christmas books packed away for eleven months of the year. Then, at the beginning of December, they would pull out all the books and wrap them individually. Each night over the course of the month they would unwrap the books as a family and read one. It was a literary advent calendar.

I thought reading the books together sounded sweet, but the thought of keeping all those books in book jail for so long made my heart sad. I like having access to all my books all the time. So I quickly pushed aside the possibility of adding this particular tradition to our repertoire.

This year the kids were complaining that they didn't feel Christmas-y enough, even after we had put up all the decorations. I had been playing Christmas music, but that didn't seem to be helping them get into the spirit of the holiday. Christmas movies weren't doing the trick either. We had talked about the Savior's birth as we set up our many Nativities, but even that didn't help. What could we do to help us feel the beauty and magic of this special time of year?

That's when I remembered the Christmas book tradition. At the end of November Sophie helped me gather all our Christmas books. We had more than the required twenty-four books, so I sorted through and picked which ones I wanted to read together. Then, instead of wrapping them up, I plunked them into a basket near the Christmas tree, so we could read any of them at any time if we wanted to. I told Bryan my plan to read one of those books each night as a family, then introduced the idea to the kids.

Some of the books are funny and about Santa Claus. Some of the books are about the Savior and require me to pause repeatedly so I don't cry while I'm reading aloud. Some nights we've had to skip reading because things got too busy, so we've doubled up on other nights. Some nights have been crazy chaotic since Topher has a hard time being still (or at least quiet) so close to bedtime.

Even with all of that, I've really enjoyed adding this Christmas countdown to our season. The daily reminder has helped me be more excited for Christmas and more focused on the Savior.

This is what we'll be reading tonight for Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Sunday Best

 

Ready, Set, Go!

I finished prepping the General Conference notebooks tonight and we have the food we need for our traditional breakfast tomorrow. For the whole last week Sophie has squealed with delight each time she's remembered Conference is this weekend. And we've talked as a family about prayerfully bringing a question into the weekend and listening for an answer.

We are ready for General Conference!

Closing Time

We made it to the end of the school year.

Cue my audible sigh of relief.

I thought about taking our last day of school picture in pajamas as a nod to doing school at home, but the reality is that we got dressed in daytime clothes almost everyday, so I figured a pj picture would be inauthentic. And since the snake may still be living in the bush by our front door (though we didn't see it yesterday!), I decided to move our traditional front porch pose down the sidewalk a bit.

Home Decor 2019 Edition

Remember last December when the kids decorated gingerbread houses, then you all guessed who the artist behind each house was? The kids got such a kick out of your responses that they asked me to do it again. So, dear readers, I present this year's entries.

Who do you think made each house?

1.

2.

3.

4.

Movie Night Success

Friday night at our house means movie night. Tonight there was a lot of back and forth about what we were going to watch. Each child wanted to watch something different, and the thing that Bryan and I wanted to watch had disappeared from our cue. While Bryan was on the computer trying to locate the missing movie, the kids and I watched trailers for the movies we do have, a cool feature of the streaming service we were using.

After watching the trailers for The Young Victoria (Phoebe sighed happily when it ended and announced it as her pick for the night) and Young Frankenstein (which totally weirded the kids out), we watched the trailer for Singin' in the Rain.

Way back when the boys were three and one, we watched Singin' in the Rain. I distinctly remember how much both boys loved it and that it was an eye-opener for me as a young mom that they could be engaged by more than just cartoons. Frankly, I was pretty sure that meant my children were geniuses.

So when we watched the trailer tonight, I watched the kids reactions. The boys clearly had no memory of seeing it, but everyone liked what they saw enough that we reached a unanimous movie vote and I pushed play on the Gene Kelly classic.

Of course, Singin' in the Rain is a classic for a reason: it's wonderful. And I was delighted to see that my kids recognized that. During Donald O'Connor's famous comedic number "Make 'Em Laugh" we were all laughing out loud and Peter announced, "This is the best movie."

At the conclusion of the film, I remembered how much I love sharing great movies with my family, movies that make the whole world seem a little brighter. And while we watched I made a mental note of future family movie submissions, including It Happened One Night, Some Like It Hot, all the Danny Kaye movies, The General, and pretty much anything with tap dancing.

I love movie night.

One Hundred and Eighty-Seven Years of Goodness

One of my favorite times of the year concluded yesterday. This weekend, plus a session last Saturday, was the 187th Semi-Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every six months I look forward to my soul being filled by the messages, both spoken and sung. And with all of the chaos currently in the world, I think I was aching for words of comfort.

I felt that more talks than usual really spoke to me. There are always major themes in each Conference (which is remarkable because every speaker decides on their own topic). For me, the themes this time were: the example of the Savior, service, humility, The Book of Mormon, our ability to choose how we respond to trials, and kindness.

All of the talks are available online to watch, but they don't all have the written transcriptions posted. Because of this, today I'll simply share the two talks from the Women's session (which happened a week ago and the written talks for these are already online) that I loved.

Turn on Your Light by Sharon Eubank, First Counselor in the General Relief Society Presidency, was the first talk of the evening. She quoted and elaborated on President Spencer W. Kimball's 1979 talk about women in the church and spoke with boldness about our need as women to be a "significant force" for growth in the church. She listed five things that we need to do to fulfill this: be righteous, be articulate, be different, be distinct, and do all four of those in happy ways. If you've been reading this blog for long, or have spent much time with me in person, you'll recognize that these five things have been important to me for a long time. To hear them spelled out from the pulpit was exciting and inspiring.

Three Sisters by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Second Counselor in the First Presidency, was the closing talk of this session. He told a story of three sisters, one who was always sad, one who was always mad, and one who was always glad. regardless of their circumstances. Then he explained the parable. I encourage you to read it (or reread it). This will definitely be a talk that we teach during an upcoming Family Home Evening.

The kids were all just as excited as I was for General Conference. We all enjoyed our traditional breakfast of waffles, whipped cream, and strawberries. I was pleased to see how delighted each child was when they opened their freshly stocked General Conference notebooks. And even better? They listened to the speakers and each child could tell me which talks were their favorite. That always makes my mom heart happy.

General Conference Breakfast Tradition

"Look Mom, I made a Temple!"

Tradition! Tradition!

Merry Second Day of Christmas! What was that? You didn't have a second day of Christmas at your house? Well, we did, kind of out of necessity. Our ward combined with the other ward that meets in the building for a special, short, one-hour meeting yesterday. And that meeting was at 11 AM.

We know that it takes us a long time to pull ourselves together for church, so we needed to make a plan. We asked the kids what they wanted to do on Sunday: Get up early and open gifts fast, then get all gussied up, go to church in time to find a seat, and be ready to sing with the choir? Just do stockings and maybe one present before church and save the rest for later? Wait until after church for everything and have a fancy breakfast instead?

Much to our surprise, they chose the last option. That means that we all slept in until nearly eight o'clock on Christmas morning, had a nice cinnamon roll breakfast, got dressed and were out the door and at church with enough time to sit near the front of the very full chapel, and only had a few complaints about waiting even longer to get to those packages under the tree.

As we were getting dressed, I realized that we had semi-accidentally coordinated our outfits. I say semi because the girls had new matching blue and silver dresses that of course they wanted to wear, I wore a red sweater and Bryan picked a red and blue tie, so I asked the boys to wear red and blue ties. Add on combed/brushed hair and suddenly we looked like we had planned our unintentionally patriotic holiday attire.

And that's why, after a nice Sacrament Meeting, we tortured ourselves by taking fancy family pictures in our library instead of getting to the business of Christmas. We finally finished (and got at least one very nice picture and several where Bryan has no head because he is a particularly tall human) and changed back into our Christmas Eve pajamas. By the way, I bought myself the warmest, most comfortable, most unflattering pjs ever. I reviewed some pictures from Christmas and wow, they look awful, but they feel so good.

Our family tradition on Christmas morning is that Bryan and I go downstairs (or out to whatever room is housing the tree), we make sure the stockings are still where we placed them the night before, then we turn on Christmas music. That music is the signal the kids, who are usually waiting at the top of the stairs (or in their rooms) recognize. It means "Come open presents!" Peter asked that we do the same thing this year, even though it wasn't the morning. So after we had changed our clothes and taken a few minutes to tidy and put away folded laundry (the laundry fairy must have taken the holiday off), the kids ran upstairs to wait.

I scurried around, gathering the stockings and placing them just so. Because we stick to our gift giving poem ("something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read") and only give four gifts each, I tried to make the stockings extra fun.

I got Bryan his own Sonic Screwdriver because, well, I thought it was cool.

The kids delighted in handing out gifts they had chosen for our family, and enjoyed opening their own presents. By the time we finished our slow, one-gift-at-a-time routine, it was late in the afternoon. We forgot to pull the roast out before church so it could come to room temperature, but when we realized our mistake, it was too late to have dinner ready on time. So, we decided not to stress and simply bumped Christmas dinner to today. That opened the rest of yesterday for calling family, sending holiday messages, and succumbing to the hypnotic click of new Christmas LEGO.

We enjoyed a delicious dinner of poached eggs and waffles, courtesy of Bryan's gift of a lovely new waffle iron to me. It was wonderful not to be anxious about the time and getting a fancy dinner on the table. Maybe Christmas dinner on December 26 should be a new family tradition?

One Last Thing

I've written (probably more than necessary) that bedtime is tricky. And by tricky, I mean hard. Part of the reason is that, after refraining from sharing details of the school day all afternoon and evening, the boys suddenly what to tell us everything. I've spent many years trying to listen to all they want to tell me, then feeling guilty when I couldn't listen anymore.

A few weeks ago I was tucking Peter in after the other kids were asleep. He had a million things he wanted to tell me and I was almost out of brain power. As he was launching into another story, I stopped him. I said he could pick one last thing to tell me. Anything else would need to wait until morning. This frustrated him at first. He didn't want to choose one thing, he wanted to say ALL the things. But I was firm and he told me one last thing.

The next night I did the same thing. He was a little less frustrated and quickly figured out what he wanted to tell me. The night after that when we did bedtime I said, "Okay Peter, say your prayers, then we'll do your song and one last thing." And just like that, it's now a part of our bedtime routine.

Cooper overheard Peter saying his one last thing, and he wanted to do it too. Now Cooper's routine consists of prayers, a story, a song, and one last thing. Maybe that sounds like a lot, but I guarantee that it's much quicker than bedtime used to be. Sometimes they choose to tell me something that happened that day, sometimes it's something they're curious about or looking forward to.

Whatever they tell me, it's a nice moment where they talk and I listen.

National Homemade Bread Day

The first recipe I ever posted on this blog was back in September of 2008. In the six years since I first posted it, I've tinkered with that recipe, so much so that I thought it was time to update my original instructions. Today is National Homemade Bread Day, and that seems like the perfect time to share The Bread again.

The Bread

Ingredients:

• 5 cups warm water
• 3 Tbsp instant yeast
• 2/3 cup oil (canola, olive, or coconut all work great)
• 2/3 cup honey
• 2 Tbsp salt
• 12 cups flour (I use 4 cups wheat and 8 cups white) 

1. Get a really, really big bowl.
2. Briefly mix together water, yeast, and a spoonful of the honey. Let it stand about 15 minutes, or until the yeast has puffed-up.
3. Add the oil.
4. Add the rest of the honey. (I pour it into the same cup that I used for the oil. The honey slides right out.)
5. Add the salt. 
6. Add the flour. 
7. Stick your clean hands directly into the mixture and combine ingredients.
8. When you're done kneading, place the bowl of dough, covered with a towel, on your counter. Let it rise for at least 30 minutes.
9. After it's risen, punch it down and form it into loaves. I get 4 loaves from each batch.
10. Place dough into greased bread pans.
11. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
12. Once in the pans, let bread rise again until the top of the dough reaches the top edge of the pan.
13. Bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees.
14. Enjoy!

The Beginning of the End

The first semester Bryan and I were married we took a couples-only Ballroom dance class. It was a fun date every Friday night. I remember one Friday in November, our class finished early and we were driving around town looking for something else to do. We decided on a movie.

"Didn't that Harry Potter movie come out today?" one of us said.

"Yeah, but it's probably sold-out," came the reply.

We decided to check it out anyway. There were a few tickets still available and we snagged two of them. I had only read the first five chapters of the first book, so I had nothing to compare it to. But I liked the movie, I thought it was fun.

We enjoyed it so much that when the second movie came out we bought our opening-day tickets in advance.

For the third movie we went at midnight. This was the first Harry Potter movie I saw after having read the books. It's also my favorite film of the series.

We saw the fourth movie twice, two days in a row. Once on opening night. Then again on Saturday morning as part of a company-wide movie day from Bryan's employer.

The fifth was our first of the franchise to require a babysitter. Luckily, Bryan's sister lived nearby and stayed with Peter while we watched the Order of the Phoenix. This is my second favorite.

You can read my thoughts on the sixth movie here. We were in California and had the luxury of leaving Peter and Cooper with my parents while we saw an opening day showing, not at midnight, because we were no longer crazy.

We've seen every Harry Potter movie on opening day since the first one premiered.

Until today.

We do not have tickets for part one of the Deathly Hallows. Even if we did, we don't have a babysitter. I've never been comfortable taking a baby to a movie theater, and even if we had a babysitter, we couldn't leave Phoebe, at least I couldn't, she's still too little to be away from her food source for an extended period of time.

So today we're breaking our nine-year tradition. I'm a little sad, but I figure I'll feel the same way when I see it on DVD as I would after seeing it on the big screen. Maybe I'll sit really close to the screen and throw popcorn all over my floor, you know, to recreate the theater feeling at home.