Some December

I was not a great picture taker while my family was out.  :-(  But it was wonderful to have the wedding on Friday so that the rest of the weekend could be stress free and not time crunched. (So that’s my new advice to people getting married: Do it on Friday.)

Grandpa multitasks for reading and watching Spencer play a computer math game.  Saturday morning Grandma and Grandpa took the Jessie and Conrad, Rachel and Heather to the temple to do baptisms.  It was Conrad’s first trip since turning twelve and how fun that he got to be here to do it with so much family.  That night Rachel and Mom decided that a BBQ sounded like a tasty dinner and so they picked up the stuff and Ken got the grill ready.  And can I just say, the food was heavenly!  Ken’s following in his dad’s footsteps and boy does the future look tasty.  And we were even done with dinner in time that we didn’t have to rush to Spencer’s concert.  Yeah us!We took up and entire row and had some lap sitters too!

The choirs did a great job.  Spencer was so excited about singing The First Noel with the pretend candles.  And it was pretty cool.  On the way up Spencer asked what “noel” meant and we told him “Christmas in French.”  So then we all sang The First Noel replacing the word Noel with Christmas.  He thought that was so funny. 

Great job, Spencer!

My parents and Heather and her family went to SLC on Sunday after church, which was our Ward Choir’s Christmas program.  Ken, Mark and Abbie sang in the choir and it was just beautiful.  Neil loved finding dad when everyone stood up to sing.  And they sang my favorite Christmas song again this year: Were you there?  Mark knows it’s one of my favorites and told me he sang extra loud just for me.  What a sweetie!

That evening Rachel and Becca joined us at Ken’s family for dinner and a sing-along.  I just love Christmas songs.I also took Becca’s school pictures.  It was really funny. I snapped one picture, and she was looking at the camera and smiling and I wasn’t even sure if I needed to take anymore.  We did take a few more, I think ten pictures total.  So funny compared to the 27 or so I have to take of Spencer.While Heather and Mom were packing the van to leave I tried to get a picture of Alexander and Neil together, but it just didn’t quite work.  Ahhh…..fun times.It was so fun having family here. I stayed up way too late most nights, but it was worth it.  Love you guys!!

The Wedding

David and Lisa’s temple ceremony was just beautiful.  Two of the lessons I learned are: if you want to have a perfect spouse, you need to be a perfect spouse; and encourage each other in the pursuit of worthwhile personal interests.

While pictures were getting taken the kids found some unmarred snow and drew some pictures.  Here Spencer was helping Karina draw a picture.  It was so sweet.We got a quick family picture of us being cold :-)Little parts of the day didn’t quite turn out as planned and as a result the soups for the luncheon weren’t heated prior to eating time.  But everyone just pitched in and helped to get stuff done – from making salad, to reheating rolls, to decorating and setting the tables.  Here are some happy kitchen helpers and the way cute center pieces that Rachel and Mom made.

Karina and Spencer had a blast together while everything was being set up and Neil and I joined them for a bit playing silly games with the huge pink bouncy ball so that Ken could stir soup and not have to hold Neil at the same time.The reception that evening was decorated so pretty.  Here’s the cake cutting.  They were so nice to each other – unlike at our reception when poor Ken got a face full, hee, hee, hee.Rachel, Becca and my girls were out in the FREEZING cold having a blast decorating the truck.  They blew up a ton of balloons and filled the cab.At some point the balloons got moved to the bed of the truck and driving away was fun for the kids to watch, but there were a lot of balloons to pick up.

Congrats David and Lisa!

The first of December

One of our Relief Society activities was a service auction.  I bought a place for Jessie in a play from a lady in our ward who directs community plays.  Jessie choose to be in “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.”  And she loved it.  She got to be in the angel choir and run across the stage with one of the main characters on her back, screaming “Get her off of me!”  Jessie is so good at memorizing that she had just about the entire play memorized and quoted different pieces to us during dinner.  David and Lisa went to see her on Thursday evening and really enjoyed it.  And Grandma and Rachel went with us to see it on Saturday.  Neil LOVED it and knew that each time the lights dimed that was his cue to clap.  It was so stinkin’ cute. Rachel brought Jessie three pomegranates (instead of flowers) to celebrate, and Jessie was in heaven.We also got to go to Jessie’s first band concert.  Unfortunately we couldn’t exactly hear the flutes individually, but we still knew they were adding to the concert.  Spencer was so excited to hear the band play “The Hanukkah Song,”  his favorite of the songs Jessie had been practicing.  But when they started playing he was really confused, “This doesn’t sound like what Jessie plays!”Neil and I did a little Christmas shopping and he conveniently fell asleep – so nice.  I just tucked his and my coat under his head and I had remembered to bring his blanket and binkie to facilitate that little maneuver.  YEAH ME!The first Saturday of December was a full lunar eclipse.  And Mark and Ken were not going to miss it.  At first they were thinking of getting up at 4:00 am, but it was later revised to 6:00, much more reasonable.It was NOT warm that morning, but it was worth the watch to see the shadow of the earth going over the moon with your own eyes!!  SO COOL!  I opted to watch from inside and then we made some homemade hot chocolate to warm them back up.

This is a little on the dark chocolate side for those of you who are more milk chocolate people, but I’m sure you could add some more sugar if you like.

Italian Hot Chocolate

3 Tbsp. cocoa powder

1/4 cup sugar

2 cups milk

1 Tbsp. cornstarch

1/2 cup milk

1/2 tsp. vanilla

Whisk together cocoa powder and sugar in a small saucepan.  Add 2 cups milk and whisk together over medium heat (the recipe says low heat, but that takes SO long!  So just keep the milk moving and turn the heat up some).  It will take until it is almost almost simmering to get the cocoa powder mixed in.  Turn off heat.  Dissolve the cornstarch into the 1/2 cup milk and stir into the milk on the stove.  Turn the heat back on and whisk until it starts to thicken.  Turn off heat and add the vanilla.

Here is cute Neil’s smile.Mark put together this map at school and was quite proud of his work and how well all the pieces fit together.We enjoyed Mark’s Christmas concert choir at the Elementary School.  He got to be in a special song about how the snowman melted.  All the boys got different parts like monks, Mexican guys in sombreros, Batman, Michael Jackson, jazz, etc.  He was a rapper and a dog.  The rapper line was: yo, in the sun he melted, melted, melted, in the sun he melted small, small, small, word.”  And the dog line was: “who let the sun out, who, who, who?”

It was hard to get a picture of him from the back but, he’s the one it the sunglasses and backward hat right in the middle.

Mom and Heather and two of her kids made it out a week or so before David’s wedding and I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t take very many pictures at all, but we had a lot of fun!  We did make several batches of crescent rolls and mom worked on the center pieces for the luncheon (which turned out awesome):the boys played together:and waved goodbye to the kids in the morning when they left for school:and here’s a cute picture of Alexander that someone took with my camera:

So Much to be Thankful For

Don’t you love it when a baby falls asleep in your arms.  Especially when they’re past that cuddly stage!Late-over fun!!  Jessie and Abbie had a late-over on Friday and Jessie wanted to try out her new idea of painting eyes on your eyelids.  Megan was a bit hesitant at first, but finally volunteered to be the first participant.  Jessie mixed and mixed trying to match her eye color just perfectly.

Then Megan returned the favor on Jessie.

Not wanting to miss out on the fun Abbie also got her eyes painted.  Check out those killer eyelashes!  When Ken went in to cover her up after she had fallen asleep he said it was really weird to have her “looking” at him while she was snoozing.Abbie and her friend also made us some tasty peanut butter cookies too.  Yummy!  Their favorite part was smashing the cookies with the fork.  The next day Abbie dropped off some cookies to her secret sister’s doorstep.  (For one of our Activity Day activities we talked about serving others and each of the girls drew a name of another girl to do something nice for them.) Neil was so excited about his new fuzzy pj’s that covered his feet!My dad flew out to spend the week of Thanksgiving with his mom and other family up in SLC.  We met him up in SLC for pie night.  Abbie ended up not feeling well, and so she and Ken had to stay home :-(  Besides eating lots of pie, Mark’s favorite thing was the pool table.  Spencer and I also had a little brunch party where he served me all sorts of tasty things to eat and drink.  Neil was happy to hang out as long a someone he didn’t know didn’t get to close.Dad came down and had Thanksgiving dinner with just our family and Rachel.  By now Abbie was really not doing well and Grandpa was  kind enough to spend  considerable time in the bathroom with her.  In between grossness they took turns reading “Carry on Mr. Bowditch” together (one of our absolute favorite books).  Eventually she was feeling a bit better and they retired to the couch to read a little more comfortably.Ken and the boys went to play a little baseball up at the grass behind the church while the turkey was cooking…and the girls played some games.Timing was perfect and we had lunch on the table a little after noon.  And man was it DELICIOUS!  What a great, peaceful, non-rushed enjoyable day.  Abbie even joined us and had about 4 bites to eat.Mark and Spencer got the drumsticks, lucky them.  (Well, at least Spencer tried to eat the drumstick and then decided that eating off the bone wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be.)  We finish up lunch and even the dishes by about 1:30 and had the whole rest of the day to play.  It was just such a good day.  David and Lisa came over for a bit of pie. Ken and some of the kids visited up with Scott’s family for a while.  Rachel and the girls and I started on a Christmas garland for Grandma Jennie.  I hope this will be a Thanksgiving feeling we can repeat often. 

The day after Thanksgiving we opted to enjoy at home.  We brought up the Christmas tree and strung lights on the roof.  The kids set up our different countdowns and read some Christmas stories.  (Although we discovered that our timer for the outside lights was broken because when I got up at 2 in the morning to cover up the kids they had turned back on.)And to finish this post here are a couple of pictures of Neil.  I got him a couple of winter outfits, since all of our boys have been different sizes in different seasons (we didn’t plan that very well, did we?)  His favorites are the one with hats on them.And here’s how Neil puts glasses on by himself.So cute!