Advancing

It's a new year, and my three children took that as an excuse to continue growing as relentlessly as ever. That's not true; they ramped up the intensity like they're determined to be full grown by the end of January or something. All three kids have grown an entire INCH in height in the two months since November. Jay actually grew close to an inch and a half in 2 months. Jay is now almost 5'10''. Rose is 5'7.5'', and Amber is 4'7''. No wonder I have had to double our grocery budget in the past year! 

As startling as the kids' height gains are each time we measure (and we need to measure more often), they do not feel as sudden as the advancements that the kids underwent at church in the new year:

• Jay became a teacher in the Aaronic priesthood since he's turning 14 this year. 
• Rose graduated from Primary and moved up to the Young Women's organization since she's turning 12 this year.
• Amber moved up a class in Primary since she's turning 9 this year. 

2023 Intensity

2023 began with roads too slick and fog too thick for Jay to travel to his first stake dance, the New Year's Eve dance. None of us were very sad about it--Jeff because he was a driver, me because Jeff was a driver, and Jay because he's an introverted 13 year old. So all five of us stayed home together and did our traditional New Year's Eve activities: snacks for dinner, games, movies, and special sunrise drinks. Staying up till midnight was a beast for me, so I spent the last few minutes of 2022 brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed so when the clock struck midnight, I cheered with my family, hugged my kids, kissed my husband, and then went straight to bed.

On New Year's Day, I wrote this in my journal: "Why does life have to be so busy? It's hard to slow down long enough appreciate the little everyday moments when schedules and calendars are blasting along full steam ahead. And it's not just my kids' schedules; it's my Relief Society calling... and keeping up with family and close friends and doing our monthly budget, planning, buying, and cooking enough food for the teenage appetites in my family, keeping our house in relative order, staying on top of family scripture study and other quality family time, being a dependable, intentional parent, pursuing my own interests, etc. etc. etc. It is a lot!"

Christmas 2022

Since Christmas was on Sunday and we didn't want to delay or rush our favorite leisurely way to spend Christmas morning with church in the mix, and since local family was clamoring for our attendance at a Christmas lunch in Grandview, we decided to ignore the calendar and celebrate Christmas in our house on December 24th. That shifted Christmas Eve to Friday, December 23rd. We were all ready! We were all home! Why delay? Liberating myself from the constraints of the calendar is always a light happy feeling. Bring it on, Christmas!

Cold and Sweet

The first day of Christmas break was on the winter solstice: Wednesday, December 21st. But before we reached that happy day, we had two days of Normal School Routine to crawl through. Monday was incredibly busy with errands, appointments, and obligations. I barely sat down at all, all day long. It was also cold cold cold. 20° at most in the middle of the day. My face ached for the first quarter of my run in the morning, and going in and out of cars and buildings all day made my body clench up, even with all of my wool apparel. Amber had her annual doctor checkup in the middle of the day, so we had a brief hour together before I took her back to school. 

Then came the errands: Dollar Tree for stocking stuffers, Walmart for funeral meal supplies, Les Schwab for air in the van tires, and the post office to pick up a package that for an inexplicable reason would not be delivered, even though other packages were delivered to our house all week long. I ended the long, tiring day with 3 hours of work at a funeral meal at the church. Most of that time was spent chatting with friends in the kitchen while we waited for the people to eat, but it was still a night time outing and I was socially fried when I got home after 8pm that night.

"One more day till Christmas break!" I told myself. 

Onesies and Cookies

I. Onesies

Last year the kids loved wearing onesie pajamas, so when Jay grew out of his old fleece onesie, I decided to get Christmas onesies for everyone. I wanted everyone to have their own color, and Old Navy had exactly five patterns available in our sizes when I was online, so I ordered one of each. Jeff got stuck in the heart onesie because it was the only one in his size. Jay's onesie is the same size as mine. The snow and gloom has hung around so long that I decided to get a family onesie picture in the stark winter landscape. 

A concert and a cage

Jeff kicked off our winter season of sickness two weeks ago when he was slammed by another round of Covid. This week, it was the kids' turn to get sick--not sure what they had, but it was sniffly and achy and feverish. Amber came home from school on Tuesday afternoon with sick eyes--that glazed tragic look that young kids get whenever they have a fever. Before she eve said "I don't feel good," I knew she was sick. She stayed home for the rest of the week with a fever, congestion, and a cough. Jay didn't feel great and stayed home on Wednesday and Thursday, but felt well enough to go back to school on Friday. 

The cage of winter...when my body cashes in on all of the aches and injuries accumulated throughout the year and I am cornered into resting more. It's not a bad thing to slow down; it's just different and sometimes makes me feel a bit caged in. And cold. This chain link fence was almost completely coated in jagged shards of thick frost.

White Week

It was a very white week in Sunnyside. Winter came early! The ground was covered in snow all week long, with another layer falling partway through the week to freshen it up. Monday was a snow day. Tuesday and Wednesday were school days. Thursday and Friday there was no school due to elementary parent teacher conferences. Suffice it to say, it was a weird wintry white week! 

Jeff was mostly recovered from Covid by Monday, but he still had Monday and Tuesday at home to finish his five day quarantine. So we had some rare one-on-one time during the middle of the day together. We started talking and ended up planning our whole summer, seven months early. 

Other things that happened this week:

A Snowy Sunday

We had a snowy Sunday. It snowed pretty much all day on Sunday. We stayed home from church due to Jeff's Covid making me paranoid at every scratchy throat and sniffle. When the snow started right around when we normally leave for church, I felt even better about our decision to all stay home. I strongly dislike driving in winter weather conditions, especially since our city does not plow the roads. So we had a cozy snowy Sunday at home together. Every time I looked out the window, I felt like I was living in a snow globe!

Skating and Parading

Saturday (December 3rd) was full of wintry Christmasy magic. After a face-freezing five mile run, I climbed down into the canal to check the firmness of the ice. It was thick and and slick. Time to get out the ice skates! A little while later, Rose, Amber, and I lugged our gear down into the canal for some ice skating.

The girls' feet grew so much that we had to do some ice skate shuffling with our three pairs of skates: I wore Jeff's size 12 skates, Rose wore mine, and Amber wore Rose's size 8s. Only Rose had skates that weren't too big, but Amber and I made do with our extra roomy ice skates just fine. Amber picked up on skating almost instantly this year! She flew all around the canal, and we had so much fun skating together. She even tried skating backwards with me. She fell down a good amount, but she was so happy and enjoying herself. I love doing mutually enjoyable activities with my kids!

Weekly Album

A photo album from our week: 

School pick-up. Ideally, Jay and Rose would ride home from school with Jeff, but he started coaching high school swim team a week after cross country season ended, and schedules have been all irregular ever since. For the past few weeks, Jay and Rose have gone running on the track after school before calling me to come pick them up afterwards. My fit diligent children!

Christmas Tree Quest 2022

The day after Thanksgiving is our traditional get-a-Christmas-tree day, and it is an all day event! From leaving to get the tree to hanging the last ornament took almost 8 hours. We left at 8:30am and drove an hour and a half to the mountains on Friday, November 25th. Jeff tried driving up our favorite forest service road a ways, and I had to clench my jaw to keep from verbally freaking out. The road was was too steep and icy, and our van started sliding! I am still so amazed and proud of myself for NOT saying anything or even making any noise at all as our van slid sideways and Jeff worked to get us turned back around on the narrow tree-lined icy gravel mountain road. Thankfully we were moving slowly and we kind of just slid through a 4-ish point turn till we could drive back down the road and park in the first clearing. This year our friends the Kannelys couldn't come on the same day as us and until we were on our own I didn't realize how much reassurance it gave me to have another vehicle, more people, and especially a second strong, winter-savvy man in our group. A year or two ago, we had six or more of us pushing the van from behind while Jeff drove it out of the snow. Shudder.

September & October Books

Whew, I'm squeezing this post in at the last minute right before November ends! My two month total for books read in September and October was 11 books. While I only really loved one of the new-to-me fiction books I read on this list, I very much enjoyed both of the nonfiction books I read in September and October. I'm not fast at reading nonfiction, but I enjoy finding a book about an interesting topic, and diving in. I usually read a little nonfiction each day while I eat lunch. This is a no-frills, no-quotes post, since I was not in quote-saving mode during cross country season.