Christmas season

Hooray for the Christmas season!  A few glimpses . . .

We held off as long as we could, but finally started playing Christmas music at every possible moment the week before Thanksgiving. We also started working on our "must watch" list of Christmas videos.

Dan and Joseph feel strongly that colored lights are prettier on the tree. The girls and I like white lights. So we finally bought an artificial tree which has pre-lit lights which can be switched between white and colored lights, so everyone is happy.

 On Thanksgiving Day we started decorating for Christmas. We pulled out Brandon's special ornaments to give to him and Angela for their first tree and then everyone hung their own ornaments.

 

 

We started reading Christmas stories around the tree every night.  This my my favorite tradition.

While we read Christmas books Aubrey sketched this awesome Santa Claus. I'm going to frame it!

It was COLD the first week of December. Cold enough that Joseph finally agreed to wear a heavier coat to school.  He added a cool looking beanie to the ensemble, but only after he had thoroughly inspected the effect in a mirror.

We attended several of Aubrey's vocal performances; a VSAA Choir performance

And a fun performance at Portland's Singing Christmas Tree, a 52 year old Portland tradition. It is impossible to see her, but her choir is in red dresses at the front of the tree.

Before and after the Singing Christmas Tree performance the girls and I went Christmas shopping in Clackamas. We had a great time and shut the mall down at 9 p.m.!

That day Dan and Joseph were given tickets to the "Civil War" college football game, between which U of O and OSU. It was freezing cold that day, but apparently it was a great game and a fun bonding day for them.

Apparently Bailey and friends found Santa during lunch at Skyview High School.  Who knew Santa visits the high school students?

We have heard some beautiful Christmas tunes coming from Joseph on the piano. He also is beginning to sound very nice when he plays his cello. He recently was able to move from "pizzicato" (finger plucking") to using the bow.  I love the sound of the cello!

 Because we have some busy plans this Christmastime, we scaled down some of our other events and traditions. We did take some yummy treats to a few families and have been able to do some service projects. The kids and I participated in Walk n Knock, a Vancouver-wide service project to gather food for the local food pantries. The girls and I helped at the Share House, which helps homeless and transitional clients, at Mutual last week.

It has been a wonderful December so far! 

More November Glimpses

A round-up of a few more November moments:

Dan and Joseph puzzling on a Sunday afternoon.

Brilliantly colored trees everywhere.

Bailey helped babysit the kids of Joseph's flag football coach during the last game. This was no small feat - they have six kids under the age of 8!  As a thank you gift to the coach we gave him and his wife movie tickets and said we would babysit all the kids while they went to a movie. That took place last weekend, and it was BEYOND wild. I couldn't believe how much 5 tiny kids (they didn't leave the baby) could exhaust two adults, two teenagers, and a Joseph. It took several days for us to put our house back together after the whirling dervishes destroyed it. They were absolutely adorable, but we all decided afterward that we kind of like our mostly peaceful household!

And here's my cute football player with his best buddy and teammate Alex.

Alex has the ball on the left and Joseph is in black on the right.

After the game the coach gave Joseph a great motivational poem to hang in his room.

One of Joseph's super cool and original Lego creations.

Another Joseph story . . . clothes shopping with this boy is always hilarious. He strikes poses in the mirror to see if he looks  nice enough in the clothes before he is okay with  wearing them. 

And this is a random Bailey selfie I found on my phone.  

Shopping one day with Aubrey. This girl has a great sense of style. Both my girls do, and they definitely didn't get that from me!

Joseph and Alex after their basketball game (basketball started as soon as football ended). They have had a great season and Joseph's basketball skills are growing tremendously!  We have a tradition of getting a McDonald's ice cream after every Friday night game.

Bailey earned her YW Medallion about 15 months ago, but because of some miscommunications with the leadership in the ward she hadn't actually received the necklace.  I was released from the Relief Society presidency a few weeks ago and put into the YW presidency, so I was able to arrange for the "official" presentation of the award. Way to go, Bailey!

Giving thanks (and missing family)

We did our best to make Thanksgiving festive and had a good time, but we really missed having family around, especially Brandon and Angela (who couldn't get away from work and school long enough to join us).

This was a low-key year food-wise since no one would be joining us, especially compared to last year when we hosted Angela and Angela's parents (we invited several families in our area to eat with us but none were able to). In many ways it was nice to have a laid-back holiday, but I actually felt more frazzled on Thanksgiving than I did the year before! I think it's because I had to be SO organized and prepared last year and did much of the food prep on the days before Thanksgiving. This year I half-heartedly prepared, leaving too much for the big day.

Aubrey did bravely accompany me the day before Thanksgiving to pick up a few pies at Costco. Amazingly, we didn't even wait in much of a line.

For dinner we had turkey (although it wasn't done cooking until after dinner . . .), ham, homemade rolls, salad, several types of veggies, jello, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and three types of pie.  Personally, I find this type of food so boring becuase there is nothing spicy, but it met our need for traditional foods and made most everyone happy.  I have to admit that I had a post-dinner treat of Afghanian flatbread and dipping sauces I had picked up at Costco.

We also had as much sparkling cider as we could drink.

Wow, Aubrey got a little carried away!

There was lots of giggling and joke telling.

After dinner we watched "It's a Wonderful Life" while we tied blankets for the homeless shelter.

In the evening Dan spontaneously decided to check out Black Friday at Target and Best Buy, and Aubrey went with him to shop. They said it was decidedly non-crazy and they found almost everything for Christmas!

Aubrey even came home with matching ugly Christmas sweaters for her and Bailey.

And, finally, here is a picture my mom sent of Brandon and Angela playing a game with Kara and Dave's kids.  We were sad to not be with all the family at the cabin in Heber this year!

A tale of clear blue skies and broken appliances

Last month Dan and I celebrated 25 years of marriage by soaking up the sun in Maui for 5 days. It was wonderful We shaved time off the beginning and the end of the trip so we could be in town for both weekends of Aubrey's play, but 5 days was still plenty of time.

It was so great to see this guy actually relaxing. He never relaxes! It was so decadent to spent hours in the shade of a palm tree on next to the beach; reading, napping, people watching, and occasionally swimming. 

We only interrupted our relaxation to consider the difficult question of what should we eat for lunch/dinner.  

We even survived the very precarious yet beautiful road to Hana (Dan was heavily medicated with motion sickness meds!)

We ate some really amazing food. And we did not skimp on calories at all. Pictured below, white chocolate macadamia nut pancakes with coconut syrup. DELICIOUS!

 And a closer view . . .

 The sunsets were fabulous.

We couldn't and wouldn't have felt so relaxed without Bailey's incredible help at home with babysitting. She took over my job for the week, keeping the house running, driving Joseph and Aubrey to lessons and appointments, and preparing food (which is no easy task in our house).

Bailey's job babysitting at home was MUCH harder than it should have been. I had everything completely planned out, with pages and pages of lists and directions. I left about a dozen lists taped all over the house. Here are the few that were remaining when we got home:
I had stocked the fridge and inside freezer with food I knew everyone would eat, and made a huge batch of a homemade soup they love.

The very day, maybe the very moment we got on a plane to Maui our fridge decided to die. And by the time we landed and could talk to the kids about it, everything perishable had spoiled.  We put out some calls to good friends who helped the kids move some food into coolers, which they kept on the back deck.


 It was actually really lucky that it was freezing cold the week we were gone, because the ice in the coolers never even melted.  

In the meantime, Bailey had to figure out how to feed everyone with very little food available. It was a supreme challenge, but she never complained. What a champ! I told her that now that she has weathered an unexpected calamity she is truly ready for college and real life, because both are full of such experiences. 

We texted and called a lot the first few days we were in Hawaii, helping Bailey coordinate a repairman visit (who told us our 7 year old fridge WASN'T repairable) and arrangements when inclement weather caused school to be delayed. But, because Bailey and the other kids were positive and upbeat about their troubles, Dan and I managed to relax and really enjoy ourselves in Hawaii.  And we paid Bailey a substantially higher babysitting rate given the unforseen circumstances!

We took a redeye home late Thursday night and arrived home by 6:20 a.m. Friday. We froze as we rode the shuttle bus to our car. The weather had dropped 30 degrees since we left, and we were still in the mode of 80 degree weather.

We made it back for the second weekend of performances of Aubrey's play - 4 over the weekend!  So we jumped right back into our fun, crazy life.

Also, when we returned we bundled up the nonfunctioning fridge and set it out to be picked up for recycling by the utility company.

Which left a big open space in our kitchen for about 5 days until we could purchase and install the new fridge.  By the time we were able to get home and then find a replacement fridge (because it turns out our 7 year old fridge was NOT repairable), we hadn't had a fridge for 9 days. 

We actually liked the increased openness in the kitchen (which has always felt a little cramped).  But we like cold food even more!

Finally we threw away everything that was spoiled and started to slowly restock our new fridge.  This is definitely the cleanest and the most empty the fridge will ever be.

And now, one more Hawaii picture, just because. Despite the challenges, it was a wonderful break and a privilege to spend time just being together.