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.

Bye Bye Birdie

Here are some pictures of the fun production of Bye Bye Birdie Aubrey was part of last month.  It was such a great play. She feels like she learned a lot, and we were so impressed at the quality of her singing, dancing, and acting. I am still hoping that we can get some more official professional pictures or video from the show.

 One of the parents snapped these pictures at one of the dress rehearsals.

On the way to the first performance.

Bailey and I attended the first performance. After dropping off Aubrey to get dressed, we walked through the FREEZING and WINDY weather to get some authentic Mexican food and then to get delicious Cacao drinkable chocolate (it is just as good as it sounds!)

We were not supposed to take pictures during the performance, but I furtively grabbed a few shots with my iphone.

Dan and Joseph sat on the front row.  At one point Aubrey was singing just inches from them!




















Pictures afterward:

These pictures were taken after another one of the six performances:

Aubrey's cute vocal teacher came to see her in the play!  I didn't get a picture, but Aubrey's favorite Sunday School teacher/YW leader Becky Harrington also came with  me to see the play.  And another wonderful leader Cami Lemmon came with her husband on one of the Saturday performances.

 Changed out of costume and ready to go home.  What an exhausting but wonderful two weeks!

November thoughts

Oh, November . . . . where did you go? I feel like this month has been a blip and now we are barreling headlong into December.  As I raced my way through this crazy month I kept a few notes on my phone about things I wanted to note in the blog. Here they are, in no particular order:

The Most Important Part of Our Year Supply

This is the time of year when the good Guittard chocolate chips go on sale at Winco and I stock up on my year supply (a variety of course: extra dark, semi-sweet, milk chocolate, mint, white). One year a friend saw the 40 or so bags of chocolate chips ready to go in my freezer and she thought it was really funny. I didn't understand her mirth. Doesn't everyone have a year supply of chocolate? If you don't, you will not be as happy as we will be during any disaster, big or small. 

Also, I have to admit that we ran out of last year's supply of chocolate chips by JUNE, but I blame my daughter who likes to cook now and who used up lots of the hoard making yummy treats. Usually the 40 bags gets us through to the next November, but this year I will compensate by buying many more bags.

The Bane of Leftover Halloween Candy

Speaking of chocolate, we gave out at least 400 pieces of candy for Halloween this year but somehow ended up with two huge Costco sized bags of candy left over. This has been a problem for me for all of November as the Snickers fun size bars called my name every single day. I finally sent the remainder of the bags with Dan to give to his Seminary class. It's crazy - I usually eat really healthy meals with very little sugar and normally I never EVER crave or purchase a candy bar. (This is progress for me, because in high school I considered candy bars an adequate breakfast and lunch.) But if the candy bar is already in my home it is too difficult for me to resist. From now on I am only buying Sour Skittles or something equally disgusting and non-chocolate for Halloween.

"What's the Story, Morning Glory, What's the Word, Hummingbird?"

Some of that chocolate was needed as I spent quality time driving back and forth to Portland the first few weeks of November. Aubrey was in a play, Bye Bye Birdie at the  Winningstad Theater in downtown Portland.  The first week of the month was "tech week", in which the kids had run-through rehearsals every day immediately after school until 9 p.m.  That meant that I did a lot of driving and searching for parking spots.  Some days she rode in a carpool, but every day I had to make her dinner and then meet her at the school at 4 with her food.  

On the definitely positive note, I really enjoyed the time in the car with Aubrey and her theater buddies. They are good kids, and it was so fun to see kids who live and breathe music and theater the way that she does. I loved the fact that she would ask, "What is your favorite song from a musical?" and everyone, from the 6th grade girls to the high school boys, had definite favorites and enthusiasm for musicals. We had some great sing-along moments between Vancouver and Portland. 

Boot Season

Can I just say that I welcome boot season? That means that I don't need to shave my legs or paint my toenails until about June of next year!

Helping in the School

I've always loved helping in my kid's classrooms. In fact, I make that my priority and eschew PTA-type duties (after one stressful year when I tried to do both - I'll have to write sometime about how I learned to prioritize my time).  Usually the teachers have had me run a small reading group which includes one of my kids. And I LOVE doing this and seeing my amazing and super smart kids in action.

This year, however, the teacher asked me to do something different, and it has been a remarkable experience.  She asked if I would give one-on-one help once a week to a boy in the class.  This boy has had a rough life so far from what I gather. He has bounced from neglectful and likely abusive parents to foster care to eventually living with grandparents who don't speak English.  He attended almost no school from kindergarten through halfway through 3rd grade. So, he has what the teacher sweetly calls "holes" in his learning. There is just no way he can keep up with the normal 4th grade expectations when he reads about as well as my kids have read at age 5. I'm assuming he gets professional resource help during the day. My help is not at all professional, but it has been such a gratifying challenge for me to help him with rudimentary reading and math. Now that my  kids are growing up and shining in the academic arena, it's been awhile since I've helped a child make the initial exciting acquisitions of the basics of language. I find myself thinking about different ways I can explain things to him. I think that it would be fun to do this type of tutoring when I'm "retired" someday.

What Time is For

I have a lot more things on my "to blog about" list, but this will have to do it for today, as I have a lot of pre-Thanksgiving errands to run (yuck - I hate crowds).

Last week I was in charge of making and taking treats and cards to all the women at church who have a birthday in November. Because of some different time constraints, I  needed to accomplish these deliveries the week after we returned from Hawaii. I guess I haven't blogged about this yet, but it's coming . . . we came home and immediately needed to buy a fridge, and then it was delivered midway through the next week. The point is that I had a lot to do when I set out to deliver cookies. On top of doing laundry and finishing unpacking, our new fridge had just been delivered and I needed to shop for food to replace almost everything in our fridge and freezer so my poor family could have a decent meal for the first time in a week!

As I walked toward the first door I fought an inner battle. What I really wanted to do was slip the treat bag on the door handle and tiptoe away so I wouldn't have to talk. I figured that if I allotted no more than 3 minutes per delivery plus drive time I could be done in time to run to Costco and get home before the kids returned from school. 

As I stood at the first door, though, I didn't feel right about slipping away without at least ringing the doorbell. So I did, and I had a sweet conversation with an amazingly independent woman who was turning 92. At the next house I heard the fun story about the woman's birthday - she was born at home in a small village in France on November 20th. But her father forgot to report the birth to the local authorities until November 22nd and he would be fined for this oversight, so he noted her birthday as November 22nd. Her mom objected to the change in date, so growing up her mom celebrated her birthday on the 20th and her dad celebrated it two days later!  At another house I talked to a woman whose husband had a successful liver transplant recently, then to a friend whose daughter is a rebellious and struggling teenager. At one house the woman wasn't home, but I talked to her husband, who proudly showed me the flag they were just presented at a reception in Florida when their son retired from the Air Force. 

And so it went on for hours. I didn't get around to food shopping until the next morning and I didn't even finish all the visits until the next day.  As I was driving home to throw together something out of the pantry for dinner I sighed and thought about how I loved the visits but they just took so much time.

And then I had this very clear thought: 

"This is what you have time for."

I wrote down this experience so I will remember it whenever I'm tempted to let my to-do list take precedence over really seeing and loving the people I'm able to encounter each day.