Nineteen & 1300

Our marriage turned 19 years old yesterday! I love living and laughing with Jeff. I love the busy, meaningful, interesting, teenager-laden life we have together. It's so much fun! This week we've been wondering if we're actually old enough to hit 19 years of marriage. Physically I definitely feel old enough, with my cranky creaky tendons and the ever-thickening white streak in my hair. But there's something about working with so many teenagers year-round that really keeps our brains from feeling old! Aging is just leveling up every year. It's the best. I love looking back and seeing how much we've done and how far we've come individually and together.

A quick anniversary selfie by our Christmas tree.

Jay got his SAT score back this week. He got a 1300!!! We were so impressed and proud! He won't have to take it again, because that score is the threshold for most scholarships. Woohoo, Jay!!!

Journal excerpts from the week:

Monday, December 15th: I went to Seminary this morning as the second adult. I had a good run (in shorts!) after I took Amber to school. Today I realized that it's December 15th and I have made zero Christmas cookies. I was having a hard time motivating myself to make them, though, because I don't like making cookies. But then I ended up diving in at 5:00 p.m. and making all the cookies! I asked Jay to drive the girls to piano lessons while I stayed in the kitchen for 2.5 hours and made four kinds of cookies. 2 batches of dough to chill overnight, plus a double batch of snowballs and a triple batch of PB blossom Reese's cookies. Once I got started I didn't want to have to pep talk myself into making cookies again another day. So I did it all tonight? Not sure my reasoning was sound, but the dough is all made! I am so tired. We're having another windstorm with whistling howling winds. It was 63° outside today. This is the weirdest December weather of all time!

I made sausage and taters for dinner. It's one of those random meals that came about out of laziness? I cooked 3 pounds of breakfast sausage and dumped in 4 pounds of frozen hash brown cubes. It sat in the crock-pot all day my family inhaled it! There was barely one small bowl left over after dinner tonight. 

Tuesday, December 16th: Jeff is feeling much more like himself so far this week. It's only Tuesday, but still, he's been feeling a little better every day since Friday. YAY! He still has to do all of the techniques to help regulate his autonomic system, but he isn't as deep in the tired-haze has he was last week.

This morning I made dinner in the slow cooker and then vacuumed and spray mopped the floor. It was very satisfying to have clean floors for a few hours before everyone got home. After I took Amber to school, I went running in shorts and a t-shirt again! This is such a warm December! We're supposed to have another windstorm tomorrow, so I decided to run today instead, in order to avoid the wind. My ankle tendons are doing better and better, but my back of knee is so tight and sore! When will my entire right leg start functioning properly all at the same time? Haha.

I got to play the piano (I had the energy to play piano) for more than an hour today, and it was so nice. I have a fun book of Christmas music that I've been working on all month. It's refreshing to take a break from my other piano pursuits and just enjoy playing Christmas music during this season. In the back of my mind I'm already dreading January a little bit, because we won't have our big bright cheerful Christmas tree anymore, and I won't be playing Christmas music anymore. Sigh. But I am doing an ok job of enjoying this season while it lasts.

I wrapped my first Christmas presents of the season today while everyone was at school. I brought the gifts and paper out to the big kitchen island, and wrapping presents at my nice tall countertop was so much easier than doing it crawling around on the carpet! I want to wrap all the presents before school lets out, so I can use the kitchen counter to do it! 

Jeff and I sat on the couch together after dinner and he rubbed my feet, but ... Amber was talking to us and Rose was loudly practicing/pounding out a Christmas song on the piano for most of the time.

Wednesday, December 17th: There was another big windstorm all night last night, and it lasted all day today too. The wind woke me up at 4am and I couldn't fall back asleep. I just laid there dozing in an exhausted haze until my alarm went off at 5:40am. I felt a bit mentally foggy all day because of that early wake-up. 

I still managed to clean the bathrooms, wrap another round of Christmas presents, and play the piano. I also talked on the phone with Mom. Meanwhile, the demo guys finished tearing down the last old shed on the front lot, and now they just have piles of rubble to deal with, plus removing the flag pole and various slabs of concrete.

After I picked up Amber from school, I went out to the barn to visit Jeff and the swim team. It is always a good time in the barn with that group. They are so funny! I laughed and helped a bit and talked and felt so happy when I went back inside our house 45 minutes later.

All 3 of our kids had church activities tonight. When the kids left, Jeff and I snuggled up on the couch together by our Netflix fire and soaked in the tranquility. 

Thursday, December 18th: Jay was looking forward to the third swim meet of the season tonight, which was hosted by Eastmont HS in Wenatchee. Here's the email Jeff sent from the road:

Good evening!

Our meet with West Valley and Eastmont was cancelled, but no one told us until we arrived at Eastmont! Eastmont was kind enough to let us stay and we held a fun joint practice in a proper pool.

We're stopping at McDonalds for dinner and will begin the drive back to Sunnyside at 6:30. Weather permitting we should be back in Sunnyside just before 10 pm.

Thank you,

Jeffrey White

Sunnyside High School Athletics

What next, swim season??? Tonight was our team's 4th practice in a pool, nearly 5 weeks into the season. They have had 2 meets. They are making the most of it, but what a season. 

It rained and rained and rained today. There is so much flooding across the state right now! Our little corner of Sunnyside is safe, but the reason the swim meet was canceled was due to a road closure between Yakima and Wenatchee, due to flooding. The route to Wenatchee from Sunnyside is different, so our bus made it just fine. The Eastmont athletic director incorrectly and inexplicably assumed that Sunnyside practiced and traveled with West Valley High School, so they told West Valley about the meet cancellation, but not Sunnyside. 

I lifted with my friends Danae and Liz this morning. I am so thankful for their friendship. It has been almost a full year since we started lifting weekly together. I love it!

Amber and I had a quiet evening at home together tonight. We assembled her new bookshelf together but the pre drilled holes in last corner were slightly off center, so we couldn't get the screws through. So Amber couldn't put her books on the new shelf after all. Hopefully Jeff can help me muscle the wood into alignment this weekend! 

Amber has been on a screen hiatus all week long starting Sunday, while she cleans her bedroom. She's done with everything except her laundry and sheets, and tonight I was about to tell her that she could watch something after dinner, but she went to her room to read and draw so I didn't say anything. I love the less screen life.

Jay and Rose got home a little after 9pm. Jeff got home 20 minutes later. Jeff slept well last night so he was chattier than usual when he got home, and I was the one who was fading and sleepy!

Friday, December 19th: Today during school, Jay texted Jeff and me in a group: "guess who got a 1300 on the SAT". Our boy triumphed!!!!!!!! One and done! He looked over some testing tips for 20 minutes the night before he took the test, and he got that amazing score! My heart glowed all day with maternal pride for my son's success! 

I fell asleep during family movie night tonight: A Muppet Christmas Carol. I slept through the ghost of Christmas past all the way till the very end. 

Saturday, December 20th: Happy anniversary to us! 19 years! I love Jeff! We put together our new foosball table this morning, with several setbacks. I got this foosball table back in October on a Prime Day sale, and we set it up in the basement today as an early Christmas present to the family, since it would be too hard to set up secretly in the basement right outside the kids' bedroom doors on Christmas Eve. Then we went to the track for a 200m workout with some of the swim team kids. I ran from home to the track instead of at the track because my lame leg is not quite ready for speed work yet. 

This afternoon Jay, Rose, and Amber went to see the new Bible-based movie David at the theater. Our ward provided free movie tickets, so they all went to see it. Jeff and I were tired so we stayed home and took naps. I felt SO cozy and comfy during my nap! It was an amazing nap. I kept adding onto it until I had laid in bed for an hour. Divine luxury.

We had a randomly sourced dinner with the kids: Rose had leftovers, Jay made ramen, Amber had a freezer hamburger on a bagel, Jeff had some smoked salmon and odds and ends from an early Christmas gift of fancy snacks from my parents. I had dino nuggets. After dinner, we had family scripture and then sang Joy to the World. Amber played the first verse in her simplified hymn book while we sang, and I played the other 3 verses using the regular hymn book. It was fun singing and filling our house with joy! Although whenever I sang for too long while playing the piano, I inevitably messed up playing the notes, haha. 

Jeff and I played two games of foosball together tonight. I won both, 10-1 both times. I have wanted a foosball table forever, but now that we have one...I don't have any challenging opponents! That sounds so prideful! But foosball is one of my few random skills, honed with hours of playing back in high school. Hopefully my family gets better at foosball soon! Haha! Rose is the only one who has managed to score more than one goal on me.

Amber made pancakes for dinner last Sunday night.

Running in shorts and a t-shirt in mid December felt SO NICE.

I used Christmas sales to get a few cute new sports bras. This sloth one makes me so happy. It either fits my energy levels at the beginning of a run or helps me feel like I've overcome something when I run fast while wearing it.

We still have two volunteer flowers blooming in my nemesis side flowerbed. It's the winter solstice!

My unplanned cookie marathon! I made 95 snowball cookies, 36 peanut butter blossoms, and then scooped the remaining PB cookie dough into balls before refrigerating them along with the other two batches of dough in the fridge (chocolate snowtops and gingersnaps).

Demolition on the front lot! This is what it looked like when half of the old red shed had been scooped away.

The red shed was suddenly GONE when I looked out the window one afternoon.

Breaking the final structure. It was fascinating to watch the big clunky machine delicately pluck off pieces of the buildings and place them in the dump truck. They neatly sorted the different materials for disposal: a pile of crumpled metal from one shed, a heap of chopped concrete from another, and a stack of wood from everything.

Progress.

I am way better at wrapping presents when I do it at the kitchen counter. Having a solid surface to fold the paper on made a huge difference! So did being able to stand up while wrapping--my joints were all so glad to avoid the crunchy creaky crawling around on the floor.

In between windstorms one night, Rose and I went out and took down our saucer swing. During previous windstorms, the swing had gotten caught up high in the tree branches, and we didn't want it to get punctured or messed up. So we took it down and I tied the two tree ropes together to keep them from being blown up into the trees. These December windstorms are getting very old.

All three kids, ready to head out to church youth activities! This will be the weekly norm starting in 2026. My children are so old.

Quality time with my Amber girl while everyone else was away in Wenatchee with the swim team on Thursday night.

Amber was so ready to put her many books onto her new bookshelf! But we failed to get those last two screws in, so she had to wait.

My friend who works at the elementary school sent me this cute picture of Amber at the school Christmas lunch feast.

Bungee swimming! Jeff sent this picture to the Eastmont swim coach to show what our usual swim practices have looked like for most of the season, and to tell the coach just how thankful our entire team was to be able to practice in the Eastmont pool on Thursday night.

Jeff was able to muscle Amber's bookshelf into submission and she got to organize her books on Saturday morning.

Setting up our first-ever foosball table! It was such a pain screwing on each individual plastic player! We had to take them off to make sure everything was facing the right direction twice.

I was a little bit sad that Jeff challenged Rose instead of me to play the first official game on the new foosball table, but Jeff wanted a more equal competition. I wonder if any of the teenagers on the various teams we coach have foosball skills. I want to play too!

When I woke up from my nap on Saturday afternoon, the sun was shining so cheerfully, lighting up our family room in such a sparkly happy way, that I had to take a picture of it.