December Daily

Here's an everyday photo-and-journal album from last week, December 16-21. It was the final week before Christmas break, and everyone was ready for time off from the school routine by the end! Or, in Jay's case, he was ready for Christmas break at the beginning of the week! He laboriously counted down the days until school let out for Christmas on Friday.

Journal excerpts from the week, because why reinvent the wheel?

Monday, December 16, 2019. It was another sunless COLD gray day. The trees never lost their coating of fuzzy white frost today. I spent most of the morning working on Christmas cards with Amber. After dropping her off at preschool, I planned to mail a few packages and buy stamps at the post office, then go on a run. When I entered the post office, I became the fifteenth person in line! Right in front of me was a very kind, very loquacious, very rotund man. He chatted off and on about lots of topics and in spite of his kindness, I was feeling overwhelmed and not prepared to make small talk with a stranger for half an hour. I did not ask any follow-up questions, which inattention caused his conversation lulled a few times, giving me much needed breaks.


I was in the post office for a solid 35 minutes. The package with my nephews' gifts ended up costing $40 to mail, so I decided not to mail it. During the post office interval, the 42 Christmas cards I had brought tipped off the table and fanned across the floor. I gathered them up, stacked everything together, and dashed for the door, accidentally cutting off a lady who was just leaving at the same time as me. I said sorry and held the first door open for her, then she held the exterior door open for me. I got stuck in the doorway with my too-wide load of boxes! HAH! I couldn't believe that actually happened in real life, but there I was stuck in the doorway, pushing on my wide load. I had to back up and turn sideways to get out.

Back in the car, I got onto the Amazon app, dreamed up a gift idea, found it on lightning deal for a total of $11 and had them shipped directly to my nephews' house, no extra charge. BOOM. Take that, $40 postage! Hah.

Tonight's dinner needed to be simple after a day spent dealing with mail and Christmas cards, so we had penne pesto meatballs--easiest fave right now, thanks to Costco's meatballs and pesto. During dinner I was trying to figure out what to do for family scripture/CFM time tonight. This week's lesson is called Christmas. So that tells me anything Christmas-y goes. So we SANG. President Nelson recently posted a video of a cute little girl singing Silent Night while he (the prophet!) accompanied her on the piano. It was so sweet and beautiful. In the video caption, President Nelson reminded us to sing the songs of the season to feel the spirit. That counsel came to my mind while I was trying to figure out what to do with our kids for CFM. To the piano we went! I did my best to play (and sometimes sing) while everyone else clustered around behind me and sang (with varying tonal accuracy). Each person got to choose one Christmas song:

• Amber: Samuel Tells of Baby Jesus (in the Children's Songbook; she called it "Hosanna, Hosanna" and sang the chorus with adorably excellent gusto).
• Rose: We Wish You a Merry Christmas (I figured it out on the piano, no music)
• Jay: Jingle Bells (I invented a simple version on the piano, no music)
• Shaina: Have a Very Merry Christmas (Children's Songbook)
• Jeff: Far Far Away on Judea's Plain 

Jay passed gas and stunk up our piano corner during one of our songs so I made him do a solo as a silly "punishment" and mostly a way to get him to sing more. He chose Away in A Manger for his one-verse penalty solo. Then Rose wanted to do a solo, so she chose Picture A Christmas. She wanted to do all 5 verses, but we limited her enthusiasm to two verses. At the end of Rose's solo, Jay's friend Ian knocked on the door, so we invited him in and let him choose our last family song of the night (although Jay and Rose were all about making him sing a solo too, haha). Ian chose Joy to the World-- always an excellent closer. We sang the first verse loud and proud and read a few verses in Matthew 2 (the daily verses listed in last year's Friend Magazine Christmas countdown). Then we had family prayer. It was a loud-but-happy family evening. In spite of the chaos, I felt good about trying to invite the spirit into our home with Christmas music and scripture reading.


Thursday, December 19, 2019. Amber: "I have a moving tooth!" She has her first-ever loose tooth! It makes her seem so old.

We went to the seventh annual Thornock Ugly Sweater and white elephant gift exchange party tonight at our friends Chad and Ashleigh Thornock's house. After last year's party, Jeff suggested that we all bring gifts with our fun-loving host's face on them, and the yearlong conspiracy was born. Over the year, one party-member ordered various photo gifts from Shutterfly and we all chipped in to pay for them. He was aghast and surprised and laughing the whole night. Chad's reaction was worth the entire year of planning and secret keeping we endured. He was a good sport to be the brunt of our big joke, and we all thoroughly enjoyed a night of mirth and mayhem. My abs are exhausted from laughing so hard for so long. Tears of hilarity ran down my face! Quality fun with friends, all of it.


Friday, December 20, 2019. Happy anniversary to us! 13 years of true love.
[That's all I managed to write that night, but it's all that I needed to say.]


Saturday, December 21, 2019. So tired. I did not come close to getting enough sleep this week, and it is catching up to me. This morning Jeff and I dropped the kids off at Dan and Leslie's house in Grandview and went to the temple together. We did sealings for an hour and a half, and it was so good. We also got to do two full family sealings, with 6 and 7 family members being sealed at once (kids to parents) and I felt such a beautiful joyful spirit when I looked around the circle and down at our criss-crossed hands on the altar. It was happy and uplifting and good.

On our way home from the temple, we paused at Target for Jeff to finish his Christmas shopping, and at Panda Express for a carry-out lunch. It was sunny and 60 degrees for my run this afternoon! I wore running SHORTS.

After a fridge free-for-all dinner, we sang more Christmas carols while I played the piano. It was wild--Jay and Rose traded off wrestling Amber and singing. One sang while the other wrestled Amber, then they'd switch. I stumbled through the Christmas songs on the piano alright and we were all laughing by the end.

Working on Christmas cards with my little helper. Amber actually did a great job putting the cards into the envelopes! She did nearly half of the cards all by herself. It was a pleasant cooperative activity for us to do together. I always appreciate a non-combative low-risk activity with my Amber. Such activities can be hard to find.

Getting Amber dressed is neither cooperative nor non-combative. This was taken 15 minutes before we had to leave for church on Sunday.

Rose, putting the finishing touches on her book-in-a-pizza-box book report before school Monday morning.

Uninspiring gray view on my run Monday afternoon.

Jeff, father extraordinaire.

Jay, dutiful dishwasher expert.

Another frigid gray view from another frigid gray run.

Presents are accumulating!

Amber invents some very interesting gymnastics on her favorite daddy-jungle-gym.

Leg lifts.

Rose came home from girls activity days with glasses and ears bejeweled. She surprised all of her friends at school by wearing these stick-on jewels like earrings the next day.

Amber, showing off her "moving tooth."

Amber finally found her birthday money and joyfully picked out and purchased a light-up toothbrush at Walmart. I was relieved she fell in love with the toothbrush before we reached the toy section because not many toys cost $4.50.

On Thursday, Jay attended the 5th grade Biz Town, where the kids run a town and have jobs and learn about money, income, management, government, etc. He was the General Manager of the Apple Pack company and when I took this picture he was explaining how his company did not earn enough money to cover their expenses that day because they didn't price their apples high enough. He was happy to get some good apple juice out of it though, haha.

Jay's teacher gave me this picture of General Manager Jay, working hard in his office at the Apple Pack company.

Our fridge is bursting with holiday cheer. Christmas cards are completely worth all of the trouble.

Friday was our anniversary, so I dug out this gem from our limited 2006 archives. I wonder if the Nauvoo Temple still loans out that same excellent faux-fur Snow Queen cape.

The crew at the Thornock's white elephant party, posing with all of the Chad gear. Hee hee.

We all love our new "World's Best Chad" mug. It is a more contested item than our Star Wars mug (which, interestingly, Chad and Ashleigh gave us five or six years ago--they are the unwitting patrons of our small mug collection)

Saturday at the temple. Doing sealings for the dead is one of our favorite ways to celebrate/commemorate our own temple sealing. We had to dodge a wedding party on our way out of the temple!

Panda on the go.

SUN makes a difference.

Our humble home looks so cheery when it's bathed in warm sunlight. Rose and Amber greeted me from the trampoline as I walked the last little way in after my run. We imposed a mandatory 2 hours of outside time for our kids on Saturday afternoon because it was so nice out.