October

Feasting

October began with our big General Conference celebration/spiritual and physical feast. It was really fun! We ate great food (crepes for Saturday morning and two kinds of soup for lunch, cinnamon rolls and apple crisp Sunday morning, Mexican fiesta for Sunday lunch). We had lots of visitors: the missionaries serving in our ward (Elder Holloway and Elder Porter, who is a distant relation!), a teenage boy from a neighboring ward who is getting re-acquainted with the gospel, and the Harringtons. Joseph made a big fort and we all were super comfortable and relaxed. And we loved hearing the counsel from the prophets. It might have been the best year ever for discussing the messages. After each session we talked about what had impacted us. I think that having the missionaries there especially helped elevate the discussion, and our kids are old and mature enough to really understand and seek to understand applications. So, it was just great all around. 

 Good Lookin' Guy

Joseph has become very interested in having his hair look good, and so is amenable to regular trips to the barbershop to tidy up his 'do. Afterward we got a slice of pizza to celebrate.

 Two dudes at the Piano Guys

We are all fans of the Piano Guys, but maybe especially Joseph. I bought tickets when they came in concert in July of 2016, but Dan and Joseph were on a campout so Aubrey and I attended. The cello/piano duo returned to Portland in October 2107, and this time it was Joseph and Dan's turn. They said it was an incredibly entertaining concert!

Celebrating a wedding

Ashlyn, Kara's oldest, married Dawson on Friday, October 13th. They are such a great couple! I flew to SLC and met up with Bailey and we drove to the wedding in Idaho Falls. There we were able to hang out with much of the family!

The weather was SO blustery as we waited for the just married couple to leave the temple.

The wedding luncheon was at a pizza place.

 The reception was in a barn, and so cute!

 The night of the wedding the blustery wedding gave way to a snowstorm! And Bailey had the chance to practice driving on slushy roads, as she drove all the way home to Provo.

 Fall colors everywhere, and lots of sunshine!

 I have a rule that if the sun is shining I find a place where I can feel the sun on my face and I sit for at least 20 minutes. In October I took time to read outside on the porch in the late afternoon sun.

 Sorting through, Giving away

I finally sorted through and organized our stacks of music books and sheet music. I realized that I have had a child taking piano since 1997!

 I'm changing the color scheme in our house. So, I piled up all the bedding, pillows, decor that don't match anymore and passed them on to DI.

Wisdom Teeth no more

Aubrey got her wisdom teeth out on October 21st. The surgery was uneventful and she was awake for all of it (but a little loopy because of the laughing gas). Her recovery was fine, but as of this date has  had two infections in one of the surgery sites and needs and additional small surgery tomorrow!

 Here she's exaggerating how swollen her cheeks got, but they were definitely pretty swollen. She had lots of soft foods that week, including mashed potatoes made from purple sweet potatoes. Strange looking but delicious!

 High Places

We toned down the yellowish color in our entryway/stairs/hall upstairs. First I tried out every iteration of greige on the wall for a few weeks.

 Finally, I chose the color on the wall in the foreground. Here you can see the difference between the old and the new color. 

 Painting high in the entryway/above the stairs was tricky, but we were lucky to borrow a painter's ramp from our friends. It made reaching the really high parts a breeze! I did still get to hang off the top of a tall ladder to get the entryway, which is something I really love to do!

Random stuff

Joseph pretends to tolerate (but secretly likes) the affection his older sister showers on him.

 

And I'm not sure what this is? Joseph's YM leader sent me this picture from a youth activity - apparently they had to construct outfits from paper towels and aluminum! I hear that Joseph really rocked his outfit.

 Snippets of Bailey's BYU fall

Meeting up with friends from high school, three who recently returned from missions.

 Helping at New Student Orientation

 Taking pictures in the canyon on Conference Sunday

  

Seen from my kitchen windows

Joseph cutting the lawn

 Our deck being demolished and replaced by a concrete patio. Hooray! This has been a long time coming!

Before

 And the huge dumpster we had outside our house for a few days. We cleared out a lot of junk from the garage, as well as loading up all the discarded wood from the deck! And we invited several neighbors to add their stuff too.

And seen inside the kitchen - Aubrey making our last batch of zucchini chocolate chip muffins of the year. Now, on to pumpkin spiced things!

September

 As September kicked into full swing, Joseph and Gabe spent quite a bit of time outside of school working on their youtube channel (Pandashades). Here they filmed themselves making chocolate chip cookies. Not only do the boys have a great sense of comic timing in their videos, but Joseph's editing is hilarious and very well done!

They left a huge mess!

Mid-September Joseph came down with a lousy illness with a fever and sore throat. He hardly moved from the couch and missed three days of school, which is quite calamitous in middle school.

 That weekend Aubrey got her senior pictures taken at Fort Vancouver. The photographer (Mallory Wilkes did a great job, and Aubrey is a natural model!)

Rockaway Beach

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 The end of August our little family of four ran away for 3 days to Rockaway Beach on the Oregon Coast. We stayed in a beach house half a block from the water. We loved the chance to be together, eat ice cream at the nearby Tillamook cheese factory, hang out on the beach, watch the sunsets over the ocean each night, explore the area, and watch movies and play games together.

The kids made a sandcastle based on the fortifications Captain Moroni built around the cities to protect them from the Lamanites!

The Octopus Tree, near the Cape Meares Lighthouse.

December thoughts

Wow, here I am one month later, still without pictures to upload. Once again, I think I'll just share a few thoughts about the last month. Later tonight most everyone in my family is busy, so maybe I will try to do a whirlwind job of uploading some pictures from the last few months. Or maybe I will just read a book and eat Christmas cookies while listening to Frank Sinatra and Karen Carpenter sing my favorite Christmas songs. That might be the very best choice!

I have to say that this has been a very peaceful Christmas season, and I'm very grateful for that fact. We worked hard at setting healthy boundaries on what we committed to during the past month (which included saying no to a number of invitations) and worked to get the things we value doing completed early in the month. That leaves me now, 10 days before Christmas, with the cards sent, the gifts bought and wrapped, the house decorated, and the goodies all made and delivered. Now my goal every day is to blast the very best Christmas songs at all times while I do all the daily stuff I need to do, interrupted only to talk to my family and to watch Christmas movies. I'm catching up on finishing a few books which are overdue at the library and helping some people in my ward/neighborhood who really need help. I'm doing some extra journaling and working through some of the complications of planning the 2018 stake primary stuff. But none of it feels stressful this year.

One thing I really, really appreciate is the amount of sunlight we have had this year. It's so unusual for us to have a long stretch of cold, sunny days. But, we haven't had measurable rain since Thanksgiving, and almost every day has been sunny and bright. That makes such a difference, and makes it much less overwhelming when the sun drops from the sky around 4 p.m.

We have been reading a Christmas book every night sitting on the floor by the tree, which is probably my favorite tradition. The kids are good about coming to sit by me but are definitely more distracted than they were in past years. Yet another proof that we are quickly becoming a family of teens/adults! But, I cherish the time we cuddle together listening to familiar stories with great messages.

The kids are all doing well, working through their various challenges. Life is hard sometimes, but they seem to all know where to turn for help when they need it. Dan and I are so grateful for each of them. I feel grateful for them all day every day, and I admire their courage and tenacity.

The last few months we have done the best we have done in YEARS at scripture study. Dan had a thought during stake conference about how we could structure scripture study more like he used to teach his seminary class. He has taken on the assignment to read ahead the next day's scriptures and look for some search questions and application questions we can consider while we read. We read while eating breakfast after Aubrey gets back from seminary, and we read about 4-5 verses each, which is just long enough. And we have had some great conversations and made some great connections during our brief study. Woohoo!

It's a truly peaceful Christmas season, despite the abundance of non-peaceful things going on in the world right now. We are grateful for each other and for the Savior.

November thoughts

I really should be posting some pictures from the past few months and documenting our lives, but I have been doing so much picture editing/digital book creation lately that I am burned out on looking at my pictures. So, I'll save that for another day.

Speaking of pictures, I recently decided that I want to print a few pictures on 16x20 canvases for the wall. I want one of the canvas prints to be a beautiful picture of somewhere in the U.K., to remember our recent trip there. However, when I pulled up my pictures the other day to look for a suitable shot, I was confronted by a sad reality. I am not a good photographer, at least not an artistic and skilled photographer. I am actually really good at making sure that we document our lives in pictures, and then I assiduously work to put them into digital books to create our family history. I am always the one snapping pictures of events or vacations. But, I told Dan last night that we need to change that because he has a much better eye for photography. He actually composes his photos and his pictures turn out great. I point and shoot, and then point and shoot some more. So I capture the moment really well, but sometimes the artistic quality is sadly lacking. Anyway, I couldn't find a single picture from our trip which was blow-up-and-print-on-a-canvas-worthy. So I contacted my niece Alexa, who takes great pictures and who recently also visited London, and asked if I could use one of her pictures of London to print on my wall. And she happily agreed, so all is well.

Also, I've been thinking about cleaning out and reducing. This time of year we go through a particular exercise in regards to our fridge. Because of the layout of our kitchen, we have to have a (smaller) counter-depth fridge. Because of this, we never have enough space for the ingredients and the leftovers from a big holiday meal. So, every year before Thanksgiving I take out each item and evaluate whether it REALLY deserves valuable fridge real estate. We usually eat up some things and throw out a lot of things too. And as a result, we have a cleaner and more streamlined refrigerator, and everything has a purpose.

This reminds me of the process Aubrey went through last spring. She got into minimalism after listening to a podcast called "The Minimalists," recommended by one of her friends. She embraced the idea of getting rid of non-essential things and every day brought down huge garbage bags of stuff from her room that she no longer needed. She was ruthless with her de-cluttering, and often made another pass and pulled out more things from an already cleaned out drawer or closet. She also got rid of many things like old school papers which fall into the category of "what if I need it someday so I shouldn't throw it out." In the end, she was left with a streamlined room, where everything has a place and purpose. And packing for college this year will be very easy, as she has already sorted and disposed of things she doesn't need.

As I was working on de-cluttering the fridge today, I thought about how I continually need to apply the same principle to my life. Maybe we all need to do this. I need to pull everything out and examine it and then decide what goes back in and what doesn't deserve space in my life. This last year I've tried to do this a bit, but I could do more. Some things are worth my time and energy, and some just are not. Some worries are an impetus for change or nurturing, but some are just an unnecessary weight in my life and my mind. 

This is probably a bad time to be thinking about de-cluttering life and objects, as we head into the Christmas season. I love Christmas, at least as much as anyone else out there. When I was a kid I would say I loved it exponentially more than most other people. But, as an adult I also see that along with the reminder of our Savior and the warm feelings and fun, the Christmas season involves a lot of stuff (physical things like decorations and time things like parties and traditions) crammed into a month. I love it, but it is a lot. We will do our best to take out the things that don't matter and focus on the things of greatest worth to us, but it will still be busy and there will still be a lot of stuff everywhere.

But, after the joy of Christmas, we will clear things away and I will resume my re-painting and re-imagining of most of the rooms in the house. I'm excited about that, as I attempt to change the color scheme of our house with some paint and a few accessories which are meaningful.

But, first we get to enjoy Thanksgiving, and all our kids will be home! There's nothing like having a house full of people talking, laughing, and just being together.

And, finally, it is really dark today. It's only 3:08 pm, and it is pouring rain and almost dark outside. Thank goodness for electricity today, so we can be warm, dry, and can pretend like we don't live in a dark hole for a few months of the year!