Christmas lights, Christmas tree, Christmas finery

Is there anything more cozy or magical than Christmas lights? I particularly love the strands of small white twinkle lights. Amber does too...

Magical.

We got our Christmas boxes out on Friday. It was jubilation galore! I discovered that I dust about once per year: when it's time to put the manger scene onto our hall table. Ha! While I was dusting that, I noticed that Jay and Rose were being incredibly quiet for two kids who had just dove head first into two boxes of Christmasyness. When I looked over, my heart warmed to see them sitting in the middle of the unpacked decoration boxes, each reading a Christmas book. (we keep our Christmas books in with the decorations) 

After we had explored every corner of the Christmas boxes, we went to Bill's Berry Farm and picked out a lovely Noble Fir. It was COLD. The temperature has hardly gone above 30 degrees for the entire past week! We were bundled. Christmas trees are expensive. Pondering, pacing, and $51 plus tax later, we were the proud owners of a very handsome 6 foot tall Noble Fir Christmas tree. Noble Fir just looks like it needs to be capitalized, doesn't it? If prices go up again next year, we're going to have to dip down into the 5 foot tall trees. As a 6 foot tall human, that does not appeal to me. Oh well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it! This year's Noble Fir is perfect: fragrant, full, green, and Christmasy-rific.

Searching for the perfect tree...or the most perfectly affordable tree...

While we were there, we gathered at one of the many photo pose spots and took the first White family photo in over a decade. It ain't perfect, but we are all IN it, except for Steph's baby who will be born in about two weeks. Jeff and I had to crouch down in the back to get our faces out of the trailing garland. I'm actually the same height as Sam, for the record. And the kids were standing on various stumps.

All lit and decorated up.

Part three: the kids' Sunday Christmas finery. When Jay and Rose were little, their Aunt Steph and Grama Leslie gave them Christmas Sunday clothes. Ever since then, I have really liked having Christmasy fancy pants and dresses for them to wear at the most wonderful time of the year. But I had a miniature budget for such frivolities so my hopes were low. But luck was on my side! Amber already had a couple suitable hand-me-down dresses from Rose and our friends, so she was set. The sweater I got from Goodwill for Jay's Harry Potter Halloween costume last year still fit him well, so all he needed were some black pants and shoes, which I found for $9 at Goodwill. Yes! Rose was the hard one. She is an incredibly tall slim four year old who can fit anything from a size 6 to a size 10 depending on the brand. I scoured Goodwills and online stores and even ebay before settling on a dark red lace dress from Carter's, which was 60% off. $18 for the dress pluss $2 for the black tights, and we were in business! I tried taking a few pictures before church today with marginal success--there is rarely much daylight to work with at this time of year. I will keep on trying!

Jay just loves photo shoots.

It snowed this week!

The first snow of the season came early this year. It was raining when we went to bed on Monday night. On Tuesday morning we woke up to find a white world outside. 

School was NOT cancelled! Arg! Jay and Rose got all ready and went out to play in the snow before school. I bundled Amber practically beyond recognition and loaded her into the basket: we walked to school. Even though it's been over ten years since I lived in Tennessee, I am still so totally a Tennessee girl when it comes to driving in snow: I don't do it. It was a frigid morning for the half mile walk to school. There was an arctic breeze blowing snowflakes into our faces. Rose was lagging and dragging way behind us, and we left a little late. We still did our best to enjoy the snowy world on our cold, rushed walk to school. For our whole walk I was feeling quite indignant about school NOT being cancelled for this icy cold slippery snow. 

These puffy Amber-pictures make me laugh out loud when I look at them! Her coat is size 2T and her snowsuit is size 3T. Who needs gloves and boots? Hahahaa!

Walking to school in the snow felt so wrong. There should not be school when it snows in a town without snow plows! I almost let Jay stay home but my conscience got the better of me at the last minute.

Rose was tired and cold when we finally made it home from our walk, but she perked up when I asked if she wanted to make a snowman. The snow was powdery so we gathered enough together to make a tiny snowman up on the brick pillar by our driveway. The rocks were too big for his eyes so we called him our alien snowman. 

I let Amber crawl around in the snow for 5 or 6 minutes before we all went back inside to warm up. Snow is magical! It felt so Christmasy that I let myself listen to a little Christmas music while I made pies, even though it was before Thanksgiving. We love snow! It's been in the mid 20's-low 30's ever since the snow fell, so there are still white patches of snow lingering all over town four days later. 

Here's a little clip of Amber crawling in her giant puffy warm clothes. Bahahaa!

Thankfuls

Thanksgiving was full--pun intended! We started the day with a frigid turkey trot 5k with various brave ward members. The temperature hovered in the mid-twenties and it made the ole lungs ache with cold once we started racing. Results: Jeff--17:22, Shaina--23:11. Neither of us have even come close to running that hard or fast in over two years. It was exhilarating and exhausting all at once!

 At the turkey trot--we switched facial expressions for fun. Burr, it's making me cold just looking at these pictures!

After we got home and thawed out in some hot water, I got to work in the kitchen. The White family was having Thanksgiving dinner at 5pm, but for some reason I wanted it at lunchtime too. So I whipped up a mini-feast for our lunch. Of course we had pie first and then got the feast ready (I made four pies earlier in the week: two pumpkin cheesecakes, a sour cream apple pie, and a chocolate chip pecan raisin coconut pie) . We invited Jeff's brother Sam (who was in town for the holiday) and set out our meager offerings: mashed potatoes (expertly made by Jeff), no-can green bean casserole, hot homemade rolls, gravy, and a crock pot-cooked 5 pound turkey breast. I've never tried cooking a piece of turkey in a crock pot, but it was so juicy and tender, and it didn't take up our whole oven! And it still made our house smell like we were cooking an entire turkey. Also: it was cost effective--definitely a repeat. Once the food was all on the table and I was collapsing into my chair in fatigue, I found myself wondering why it was so tiring to make such a small meal! I'll blame the 5k I had with my toast for breakfast that morning.

Our Thanksgiving lunch mini-feast. We were all busy making faces for the camera when Jay "accidentally" flung a spoonful of mashed potatoes across the kitchen. Our silly faces turned halfway to surprised faces as the camera clicked. 

In spite of the lack of side dishes, we feasted at lunch nonetheless. After a quick cleanup, we retired to the basement for Star Wars episode IV and some relaxation before Thanksgiving feast part 2. At 5pm we headed over to the Whites' house down the street, where we were met with a feast of epic proportions. There were at least eight side dishes! Leslie's yams were mine and Amber's favorites. Family and food are a great combination.

On Thanksgiving I didn't really take enough/have enough time to pause and think about what I'm grateful for very deeply. Better late than never! I find that I am always thankful for the same things every year, from indoor plumbing, to always having enough food to eat, from the gospel to my dear family. But each year there do seem to be specific "thankfuls" that I feel especially strongly about. I've narrowed it down to three this year: my family [specifically, husband and kids], my health, and the gospel. Here is a little Shaina-ramble about why those three things are at the top of my list this year...

1. My family
Oh my GOODNESS, on Thanksgiving I had four friends announce pregnancies! It's always happy hearing that a friend is pregnant, but the announcements just kept on coming! It rather effectively stirred up my motherly ache. I've been noticing a few subtle reminders of the fact that I always expected to have at least four-to-six kids:

• I bought four packs of my favorite sippy cups on sale a few years ago--one set for each kid. Amber has a lot of sippy cups, ha ha. 
• I put six clips underneath the shelf where we hang our Christmas stockings. If we had four kids, our family would fill all the clips up. If we had five kids, Jeff and I would share a clip or something. If we had six kids, their stockings would fill the clips up.  
• I have four 8x10 frames on the family room wall--all ready for one picture of each kid (currently they hold pictures of Jay and Rose, because that's who I had when I hung them, but I had plans for those four frames). 

It's just little things like that that remind me how recent this decision to stop having kids really is! It's something that I am 100% certain about--I never would've gone under the knife to get my tubes tied if I hadn't been completely certain. My mind, however, has absolutely no trouble separating the ache of wistful longing and the hard facts of reality. What it comes down to is this: I would LOVE to have more babies so so much. But when I say that, I want something that I can't have, because I want to have a normal healthy pregnancy that I can get through on my own without living in the hospital on a drip at the beginning and without taking double nausea medicine and starving for the rest of the time. My brain knows that I can't have a normal pregnancy and that pregnancy is BAD for my body. So when I get that ache for babies, it's not an ache of regret. It's the ache for an old dream.

So I severed my physical link with heaven (literally, tubes tied really = cut and cauterized) and I'm learning to live with the ache by focusing on the three beautiful children I have had the honor of bearing. I feel so blessed that I was able to have three babies before it got to be too much for my body! All of this would be a million times harder if I had never been able to have any! It's just an interesting situation I find myself in: simultaneously so happy for my friends and their babies while still privately aching for my old dreams every now and then. There's no angst or jealously or bitterness in my heart when I ache, just love and longing for my babies.

Those are some thoughts I've had swirling in my head today, at this thankful time of year. I am deeply grateful for the blessing of having three bright, beautiful children. I am not a perfect mom by any means. I stumble and grumble more than I want to. But I love my kids and recognize the incredible, divine responsibility of teaching them and raising them and guiding them in the right way.

How can I mention my kids without talking about my gold star husband? The other night when I was praying before bed, I started listing all of the reasons I'm so thankful for Jeff--things he does, things he doesn't do, what he says, what a great father he is, etc etc. I had to stop because it wast taking too long! When you live with the same person for almost nine years it's easy to get used to all of their good qualities and come to expect those good things from that person, and expect even more. High expectations are fine as long as they don't cloud the current goodness! I am constantly marveling at how perfect Jeff is for me, and how the Lord KNEW that from the beginning and led us along to the temple. With our anniversary approaching next month, this is the time of year that I get all dreamy-eyed and nostalgic about our relationship and how beautiful a solid marriage is. I love my husband. That is such a lame sentence to describe such a deep emotion! But you get the idea.

2. My health
Switching gears, this past year has been a long journey in my physical recovery from my Amber-pregnancy. I'm not all the way back yet, and I expect it will be years before I'm completely healed and recovered from that ordeal. But when I look back over the last year I am amazed and grateful for the progress I have made. One year ago I could barely, slowly walk a mile, and it made me sore to walk that far. Now I can run seven miles in less than an hour! When I was pregnant and later when I was starting to recover from it all, I felt kind of...old and feeble, like I'd never be able to run or skip or be active or feel strong again. But I have rediscovered my YOUTH this past year. I'm not even 30 years old yet! I have lots of spry years left in me, and I intend to enjoy them! I'm thankful for my youth and how well my body is recovering.

3. The gospel
The gospel definitely makes my list of thankfuls, and how could it not? I am so thankful that I can always pray and study to receive inspiration from the spirit. That is wonderful and amazing and WONDERFULLY AMAZING. I do my best to strengthen my faith and my testimony every day because they are precious and necessary. The peace and joy the gospel gives me are part of who I am. I love it. I live it. I love living it!

Those are my top three thankfuls this November: my family, my health, and the gospel. All three are such real, important, enormous blessings in my life!

Happy Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for YOU too, my dear friends.

Another weekly window

Guess what!!?? Friday night Jeff and I went on our first real date out alone together in nearly two years! We are home bodies and there are few babysitters available nearby, so we usually have at-home "dates." Friday night we went to the movies, using a set of coupons that Jeff got two years ago for teacher appreciation week. Free movie! I skipped through the parking lot holding my husband's hand. We saw Mockingjay Part 2 and I was so excited to be going OUT on a real DATE to the actual MOVIES and that it was going to be FREE that I neglected to remember the tragic, haunting ending to the Hunger Games series. I read the books. I knew how the story ended. So I should have been prepared to be thoroughly depressed. But alas, in my date-night euphoria I forgot and was taken off guard at the hollow victory at the end, after the successful war and coup. So, our date wasn't all jumping and joy, but it was a date and we even held hands during the movie. That definitely counts for something!

We did the thing right--date night selfie in the theater and all. Ha.

Switching gears...
When I write to my missionary sister Mel each week, I try to include one spiritual thought that I had in the past week. I like it because it helps me think a little more deeply and develop thoughts and inspirations that come my way. I figure that the two or three people (hi, Mom and Grama!) who actually read my long-winded ramblings on this blog might not mind reading my inspiration of the week too.

So this week was sort of stressful for me for two reasons:

1. I had visiting teaching appointments: one on Tuesday with a lady who is not active in the church and then the other one on Wednesday with a lady who is in our ward's Spanish speaking unit. These sisters are SO DIFFERENT! I swear I probably have some legitimate case of anxiety or something because I literally dread visiting teaching for days beforehand--it's not the people, it's just the visiting part. Of course I survived both appointments and they were fine like the rational side of my brain knew they'd be. But that dread was real!

2. It was one of those weeks where I have such a hard time navigating the flood of unexpected emotional intensity that comes along with being female. It's just so easy to get cranky at a routine mess or at demanding kids or at NOT being able to have any quiet time to myself. When I'm all wacky and--ahem--hormonal, it's even harder than normal to get something out of my brief scripture time each day. Wow, I struggled this week! This morning I was thinking about emailing Mel and I was laughing to myself because I had zero worthwhile thoughts/inspirations from my feeble attempts at studying this week. It made me kind of sad.

I have gotten into the habit of praying a few times before church for help with being patient and riding the storm of kids/baby through sacrament meeting with my heart still soft enough to listen and learn from the spirit during the rest of church. Well, those prayers HELP SO MUCH! Relief Society was such a RELIEF today! Seriously, what a perfect name for it. I felt the spirit and learned and it was the most in tune I've felt all week. I felt so at peace during Relief Society today--a welcome relief from my week. My mother in law taught the lesson and she is such a good teacher (it is her profession, after all--she's a high school biology teacher). I found my weekly inspiration at long last, during the very end of the lesson. Talk about last minute!

My weekly thought wasn't exactly related to the lesson, but that's the beauty of the gospel and the spirit--it's all related and certain words can spark thoughts and lead to inspiration. We always say that our weaknesses will become strong with the Lord's help, like it says in Ether 12:27. I know that he can and will help us with our weaknesses. But there are two other aspects of this topic that I hadn't considered before:

1. What feels like a weakness to me may appear to be a strength to someone else. Does that make sense? We are our own worst critics after all. 
2. Weaknesses don't always become strengths directly--struggling with our weaknesses GIVES us strength. As we work to overcome our weaknesses, we become strong in new ways. I love that thought so much. 

Examples: There are certain weaknesses I have that I don't ever expect to overcome, like my quietness/fear of speaking out. I feel like this can be seen as a strength as much as a weakness, and as I figure out ways to work WITH this weakness and to do my duties and church callings WITH this weakness, I become stronger in other ways. When I am asked to speak in church, my terror leads me to research hard and pray hard and prepare the thing half to death. In the process, I learn a ton, I receive personal revelation, my faith grows, and I learn to rely on Heavenly Father a little bit more.

A more physical/literal example of this concept is my weakness in childbearing. My body was NOT GOOD at being pregnant. It was totally debilitated and weak the whole time. That is a weakness that will never become a strength for me, at least not in this life. But I learned so many beautiful, powerful lessons about service and sacrifice from my 9 (x3.2) months of physical weakness, and I would not trade that experience for anything. People always say to be thankful for your trials, but who's honestly thankful for something so miserable? It's masochistic to be thankful for pain and agony and suffering, even after the fact! I think what people mean to say is we need to be thankful for what we gain and learn from our trials. It's the same thing with weaknesses bringing strength. We don't have to be thankful for our weaknesses; instead we can be thankful for how the Lord helps us handle them and what we learn along the way!

There's my weekly epiphany. It was very meaningful to me today because I was really struggling with my introverted social agony before I went visiting teaching this week. Everything is always bearable while I'm actually there--it's more the anxiety leading up to the visit and the post-visit should-haves that kill me. Well, I thought I may as well keep going along and bearing it. I didn't feel particularly prompted either way, just that I felt...less bad? about sticking with my route. Then this inspiration came at church today and it cleared the matter up nicely for me. I feel like visiting teaching is something that I can figure out how to do better, wimpy social anxiety and all.

This is kind of personal journal-ish stuff, but it felt like a good, relevant thought to post. When I think about what to post, I always examine that line between too personal and too remote. And that other pesky line between meaningful and cheesy/overly sentimental. Of course there's also the line between interesting and boring, ha ha. Sometimes it's hard to tell if my words are too close to those lines because they're so fresh when I first write them, you know?

The girls were ready for church before the boys today--victory! Alas, we still ended up being late due to unforseen last minute messes. But let the record show, we were ready.

Rose-girl

Since Amber turned one year old, I have been meaning to do an "all about Amber" post. Then I thought it would be nice to do a solo post for each of my kids, since it's been a while since I wrote about them individually. As the middle child, Rose isn't first very often, so that's why I'm starting with her--not that she even knows or cares much about her mom's silly blog right now. Oh well, Rose is FIRST today. 

This morning around 10:30am, Amber needed a nap, so I put her down and decided to devote some quality time to Rose. We split a Costco muffin and then bundled up and jumped the sugar rush out of our systems on the trampoline in the cold. We giggled and danced and wiggled and bounced all over the place. We played zombie tag (one person walks like a zombie with eyes closed, trying to attack/tag the other person). We played don't let the mom pee her pants--that one got Rose really laughing. We did clumsy bad ballet moves. It was so refreshing to spend time with Rose where we were just goofing off instead of one of us trying to boss the other around like usual, ha ha. 

Rose is such a little fireball--she KNOWS what she wants to say, wear, eat, do, love, etc, and she GOES for all of it with a passion. This creates quite a variety of...scenes. Here's a sample of Rose, copied from my journal lately:

November 13th: this morning, walking home from dropping Jay off at school, she suddenly grabbed my arm, tipped her head back dramatically, looked up at me, and said "Mommy? I love you. You're the best Mommy I've ever had in my whole life." Then, her voice went up an octave and she leaned over Amber who was in the stroller and said: "you're the best little Hangaber [hamburger] I ever had." Rose has such intense emotions!! She feels every emotion with her whole self. 

November 18th: This morning Rose wouldn't put on long sleeves or shoes because she didn't want to cover up her painted fingernails and toenails. Steph painted them yesterday, and Rose feels beautiful. I had to work hard to figure out how to get her to choose to put on something warm. [there was no WAY she was going to bend her will to mine in a matter of beauty!] I let her pick one: coat OR shoes. She picked a coat [and then walked barefoot across the driveway to the car in the 30 degree air without a single complaint].

Rose came running upstairs this afternoon saying, "Mommy! I paused the movie because I want to tell you something that's spectacular! Amber just walked from the TV to me because I was sitting on the footstool! Isn't that amazing? And I wanted to get Bunny." [Rose listens a LOT and picks up some of the best words. The word SPECTACULAR rolls deliciously off of her four year old tongue]

November 19th: It is stressful carting two kids around on errands, especially when one of them is such a headstrong little creature! ROSE! I never can trust that she'll choose to listen to me, so the uncertainty along with the concern for her safety and consideration of others totally wears me thin. And today we had to walk allllll the way back into the back corner of Costco [carrying Amber] to go to the bathroom after I had already lugged our cart all the way out to our car. WHEW, that has to be at least a quarter of a mile. 

There was a collision in the kitchen the other night. These girls have one volume when they're in pain: LOUD. 

One of the top ten joys of motherhood is watching my kids play in the park. Does it get much better than flowing hair, sunshine, and carefree smiles? 

Even though it's blurry, I really love this picture.

Leaf rubbings never get old!

 

Rose really likes drawing pictures together, especially when we both draw on the same page. Today I drew a picture of our family on the trampoline, and Rose helped color it. 

Rose built an Amber-proof castle for Elsa and Anna on top of the ping pong table.

One afternoon last week Rose got allllll dressed up and invited me to the basement to watch her act out a "movie"which was part cooking show, part Frozen, part art show, and part creative story. She performed for a solid 20 minutes. She was in rare form.

A little clip of the movie's climax.

And for the grand finale of this post, here's a video of Rose saying the first three articles of faith, but it says that the video exceeds the megabyte limit, so I'm resorting to youtube... We've been working on memorizing them together for family home evenings. Since this video was taken, we have learned the fourth article of faith too. It's always so fun and impressive to hear young kids recite. I'm a huge fan of memorizing.

Rose is a star!

A weekly window

It's Sunday night and I just wrote my weekly email to my dear sister Mel who is in the MTC preparing for her mission to Cambodia. Recycling some of that email for a blog post seemed like an efficient thing to do. Waste not, want not right? I like to think of weekly letters/emails to missionaries as a weekly window into my life because this is all they get each week: a small window-peek into the lives of their family.

Yesterday morning I drove to the Tri Cities to run on trails, and it was glorious. Jeff held down the fort for a few hours while I drove there and ran for over an hour on the twisty crispy brown trails of the Chamna Preserve, down by the Columbia and Yakima Rivers. There is something about peaceful alone time in nature that heals the soul. The Chamna Preserve is fast becoming my favorite outdoor corner of the lower valley. I took a few pictures in an attempt to capture the crunchy tranquility there.

I seem to be on a roll for having one good spiritual insight per week. I hope it continues! It is astounding how difficult it is to find quiet alone time where I'm in the right frame of mind for meaningful scripture pondering. I only have three kids, and one of them goes to school! When I'm extra exasperated/tired/surrounded by kids' demands/noise, I often turn to general conference talks for my scripture time because they are like a nice concentrated dose of meaningful spiritual-ness--it doesn't take as much thought (aka quiet time) to unravel their mysteries as it does when I read the good ole fashioned scriptures themselves. I do my best to at least get in a verse or two of direct scripture each day, but it's an uphill battle! Ok, here's my weekly insight that I've been pondering and feeling very thankful for. Copied from my journal on Thursday night:

"I read the most beautiful thought this morning in Elder Gary Stevenson's conference talk/testimony. Referring to his recent call to the quorum of the 12 apostles, he said this: "As I agonized over my inadequacies this week, I received a distinct impression which both chastened and comforted me: to focus not on what I can’t do but rather on what I can do." That really hit home this morning. One of the things that I often struggle with is closely related to inadequacy: "am I doing enough?" This was a wonderful reminder of a very powerful way to stay positive. If I feel like I can't do something, I need to shift my focus to the Lord Jesus Christ, "for in his strength I can do all things" (Alma 26:12). The next step is to pray to him for help and guidance and then keep on trying! I'm so glad that we can always repent and keep on trying."

I loved reading the testimonies of our three new apostles this week. It's just astounding how I feel a burning, pure PEACE in my heart every time I read their words. They ARE called of God! I'm so thankful for their words and their service.

So my church calling for the past almost year has been a Primary girls activity day leader. It's pretty fun--a little stressful at times, but kind of a sweet deal calling-wise. I help plan and attend two activities per month and that's all. That means that I get to go to all three hours of CHURCH for adults on Sunday. At first that three hours of grown up lessons chafed and I was a little bored (I was used to teaching junior primary and wrangling a class full of young squirmers for the second two hours of church!) But lately I have really been enjoying and needing church. Yes, sacrament meeting is a wiggle fest with Amber and Rose (Jay is usually pretty calm, bless him) and I normally handle Amber through Sunday school since Jeff teaches gospel principles once a month (but Amber's not too crabby yet by then and she can survive that hour mostly on snacks and toys while I get to listen to the lesson). After that I pass Amber off to Jeff for the third hour of church and go to Relief Society by myself. It feels like such a treat! I often feel like a parched, sunburnt person, staggering in from the hot desert suddenly finding a deep cool lake when I go into Relief Society. I go and drink deeply and even SWIM and it is so refreshing and it feels so NECESSARY. Like I'm a little bit broken (or at least cracked, ha ha) when I walk into Relief Society and I leave feeling all patched up and full of peace and optimism. I hope I didn't lose you in my analogy! Hah.

I always thought of callings in the church as me being needed to DO something FOR others. A bonus along that path of service is often personal fulfillment and spiritual growth. Yes, that is still true about church callings. As I've been relishing my time in Relief Society lately, however, I've realized that my current low-key activity days calling is also the Lord's way of giving me this beautiful, priceless gift of quiet time to listen to a lesson, ponder, and feel the spirit, when I rarely get that during the week. It is a wonderful testimony to me that the Lord knows what we need before we know we need it and he GIVES it to us. We just have to take it and make the most of it! Of course going to Relief Society isn't always going to be all about me, but I'm sure enjoying it while I can.

Weekly window: closed.