Also Before Christmas

We also had a very sad thing happen this last week, Kendra's sweet bunny Oreo died.  We'd noticed about a month ago that she suddenly smelled very bad.  I read up on Google and it sounded like maybe she just had some clogged scent glands.  But since I can't even manage to trim her nails, I figured we needed a vet to take care of this.  I called around and got her an appointment, but when we finally brought her in, the vet dismissed this concern and said she probably either had a GI problem or cancer.  She wanted to do an x-ray, but it was a lot of money to spend just to get a diagnosis, especially since I figured any treatment from there would cost even more.

We took her home and hoped she might just get better (and stop smelling so bad).  But she didn't.

And then, after a few more days, she just looked like she was in pain.  That hadn't been the case before, so I hadn't been too concerned.  But now she was just laying on her side, staring at the wall, and occasionally would try to get her feet under herself, but would kind of flail around.  It didn't look good.

We talked to Kendra about what we should do, and what she would want us to do if Oreo died.  She was very sad, but also very mature about the whole thing.  She told us she didn't want to see Oreo suffering like that, and asked that if she was still alive in the morning, could we please take her to the vet to have her put down.  Kendra also asked that we cremate her, rather than burying her in the backyard.  She was worried a fox might dig her back up (which is a legit concern around here).  Kendra spent extra time that evening petting her bunny and making sure she felt loved.  

I got up early the next morning to exercise and didn't hear Oreo moving around.  So I feared the worst.  Usually she would hear me putting on my shoes and hop around her cage.  When I got back, I actually turned on the lights, and it was very obvious that she was gone.  I felt so bad for our poor bunny.  I woke up Craig and he put her in a shoebox so the kids wouldn't have to see her like that.  We told the kids and everyone spent some time crying. 

Very sad snuggles

Once I felt like we'd gotten to the point of just wallowing, I put on Miracle on 34th Street to distract everyone and Craig made French toast.  He was able to take her to the vet to be cremated later in the morning.  And he and Kendra took down her cage and cleaned all around where it had been.  

When I peeled carrots on Christmas Day and realized I couldn't feed the peelings to our bunny, I nearly cried.  We had her for almost five years and she was such a sweet little pet.

{Sigh.}  Rest in peace, little bunny.

Before Christmas

With school done and all the concerts finished, I felt like we could take the week before Christmas and just RELAX a bit!  I was so happy!  And Craig was using vacation time to just stay home and be with us-- what more could I ask for?

Craig, of course, relaxes by baking up a storm, so he spent Monday in the kitchen.  He made spritz cookies, triple chunk cookies, salted caramel Rice Krispie treats, and peppermint bark.  I made Oreo fudge (not as good as marshmallow peppermint fudge, but we didn't want to overdo it with the peppermint) and those pretzels where you melt a Rolo onto them?  I did the easy stuff.  The kids either helped Craig in the kitchen, or wandered around wearing Halloween costumes they'd pulled out of the basement closet.  Because they're weird like that...

Colton the ninja!  Ryder behind him is making spritz!

A good time was had by all!

Tuesday morning Craig and I went running.  But not together.  We slept in and it was light outside, so I left a minute or two after Craig and then ran suuuuuper slow.  And I was quite happy.  And made it much further than I can usually go!  (Well, I was about as happy as I ever am while running.  You know.)  It was nice not having to try and keep up with Craig.

Back at the house, we were talking about whatever else we were going to do with our day when I got a text from our tenants informing us that their (month old) water heater was leaking.  A lot.  So much for our plans!  Craig spent the next day and a half fixing a plumbing problem I'd never even heard of, and doing it quite well.  Craig never ceases to amaze me.  (If you're ever at a party with him and you run out of things to talk about, definitely feel free to ask him about this.  I am NOT going to get into it on this little old blog.  Sorrynotsorry.)  So he did that.  The kids and I took all those plates of cookies around to various neighbors and ward members in the area.

It wasn't quite what we'd had in mind for those days.  But I kept reminding myself that at least it didn't start leaking on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day!  

TOSVA Christmas Concerts

 The 17th was the day for the Oratorio Society's two Christmas concerts!

If you really zoom in, you can see me!  I had a light shining on me the entire time, so I was quite visible!

They both went really well.  The only real problem occurred during the first concert.  We were singing one of the songs from Rachmaninoff's Vespers (which is a cappella) and there's a moment where all the voices drop out except the basses, which hold one extremely low note for a few beats before everyone else joins back in.  It's very cool.  But during this moment, a gang of Harleys or something went by the theater and it felt like the whole place was vibrating, it was so weird.  No one knew what was happening-- I wondered if we were having an earthquake-- and it threw us all off a bit.  So that was a shame.  It was a relief when that didn't happen for the second concert!  (Even then, some sort of siren went shrieking by, but we heard it before the song started, so we just waited a bit!)

The second concert felt just about perfect, and we managed to keep our energy up for both, which is hard to do.  I was really happy about it all.  Craig and Tom & Donna had brought all the kids to the afternoon concert and it's always fun to greet them afterwards.  They all went to dinner

Colton is very excited any time he can get a soda

and I stayed home and ate a bagel and enjoyed a little peace and quiet before I headed back to the theater.  

After the second concert, Leah and I changed out of our ugly (and by this time smelly!) concert dresses and got ice cream at Chaps, which has sort of become our tradition, post-Christmas concert.  Then we headed to the after-party at Kim Lauter's house.  This was the first time she'd held it since Covid, so that was exciting.  I don't usually love parties like this (I have finally figured out that I am very awkward at mingling with large groups that are standing around-- I do better with smaller groups, and I prefer to be sitting.  Otherwise, I spend the whole time worrying that people are probably trying to get away from me), but I figured I'd at least make an appearance.

After finally finding street parking, I headed inside and grabbed some snacks.  Once I'd found Leah I made a beeline for her.  She was talking to Michael and a few other people.  When Michael saw me, he laughed, "These two!  You can't separate them!  The world might explode!" and that was his joke the rest of the evening.  I was worried that maybe I'd latched too hard onto Leah, so a couple days later I texted her something about how Michael might have exaggerated how attached at the hip we are, just a bit, and she wrote back, "I know, that was funny.  We do have to sit next to each other though."  And that made me happy.

The party ended up being more fun than I'd anticipated.  I chatted with Holly (Michael's wife) quite a bit (she's a lawyer and knew my neighbor Rachel) and then Michael started playing Christmas carols on the piano and everyone joined in singing.  And let me tell you-- this was much better quality than your usual drunken party singing!  Unfortunately I checked the time then and it was nearly 11:30 and I had to do primary music at church the next morning, so I finally ducked out.  But I was glad I'd gone and relieved that I'd actually had fun.

I can do hard things.  Like going to parties! 😂

Christmas Concerts, Parties, and General Festiveness!

I'm not sure who decided that every musical group must have a Christmas concert, but we are in the THROES of Christmas concert season!  It's a LOT, to be honest, but I love Christmas music so much, I can't help but love it all, even if I'm also so burned out and completely exhausted.  And, of course, we're also decorating and doing all the other seasonal fun, too...  Let's see what I can find pictures of...

Here we have Kendra helping Craig put lights around the outside of the house...

She really liked sitting out there.  Apparently she has Craig's non-fear of heights!

And they did such a great job!

The house looks festive, inside and out!

This decoration makes me laugh

Colton and Camille were so cute and set up the tree in the basement for the seminary students!

Tuesday was Ryder's first band concert and he was so excited!  He just started learning trombone this year, and every day when he goes to school, if it's a day when he has band, he tells me it's going to be a good day.  He was sitting up so straight and proud:

I'm always impressed that a teacher can take all those students and teach them all these different instruments at the same time!  They did great.  Ryder's concert was the same day as UVA's Messiah Sing-In which I LOVE (and which hadn't happened since 2019), so as soon as the 6th grade band finished, I slipped out and raced to the grounds to sing with my Oratorio buddy, Leah.  We had THE best time-- I couldn't stop smiling the entire concert!

Grabbing some fresh air during the intermission, before we shoved our way to the table with cookies and cider!

I was leading FiA the next morning, though, so I had to stay up even later that night planning my workout once I was home.  That about killed me.

I made us run to the other end of the mall and back so we could see the tree!  And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I wore my ankle weights.  That was dumb of me.

Friday was our ward Christmas party.  Craig and Adam had been at the church late on Wednesday setting up the tables and putting greenery on them (while I was having a marvelous time at book club).  The primary was doing a nativity, so I tried to improvise a shepherd's costume...  Colton might look a little more Scottish than Israeli, here...

I am so bad at this stuff.

And then it turned out they HAD costumes, so Colton (on the left) looked great!  Phew!

And Camille got to be an angel!

The whole thing was short and barely practiced and lovely-- I like it when we don't take ourselves too seriously!

After the nativity, the kids got to go meet Santa and do some crafts while the grown-ups got to hang out (and eat more).  This was especially awesome because my friend Josephine managed to come to the party from Powhattan, so I was excited to get to catch up with her!

Bentley was only willing to visit Santa because he could get a candy cane.  Santa got him laughing and I just love this picture so much.

Topher, Joe and Kendra help Camille with the crafting!

At the end, when everything was cleaned up, the kids slid around in their socks "ice skating" while I chatted with my friend Megan.  Everyone was so happy!  This didn't even end with tears-- what are the odds?

The next morning, Craig took Ryder and Colton to get haircuts while Camille and I wandered around the neighborhood delivering Christmas cards.  Then Craig brought Bentley, Kendra, and Ryder to the (mostly empty) mall to help with Charlottesville's toy lift!  The kids were a little unsure what to expect of this, but they ended up having a great time.  The woman running things knew how to keep them busy and kept plying Ryder with snacks-- he says he can't wait to do it again next year!

As soon as they got home we had to hurry and change our clothes because the kids had their piano recital at a church in Crozet!  We took a lot of video of that, but no still pictures, so you'll just have to imagine it.  But there were probably about 13 kids playing piano, and five of them were mine, so that more bang for my buck, as far as I'm concerned.  Tom and Donna met us there and then very kindly took us out to dinner after, so the whole day was a real treat!  We finished it by watching Home Alone as a family.  I love hearing my kids in hysterics as the burglers get clobbered all over at the end of the movie.  Good times, indeed!

And SUNDAY.  After church, I took a nap and woke up just in time to race to the Charlottesville Municipal Band concert!  I have a friend from FiA who plays French horn in the band, so I wanted to cheer her on.  Ryder decided to come along, too, but then the place was so packed, we had to sit apart.  I knew Ryder would be well behaved, though, so I was very proud of him.  And the seat I found just happened to be next to Peg, another friend from Oratorio, so we had fun together!  Her husband plays clarinet in the band.

Craig was awesome and made dinner while we were gone, so we got home, ate, I changed my clothes, and Kendra and I headed to the stake center for our Joy to the World concert!  I stopped singing in this when I joined Oratorio (it just seemed like too much, having choir practice every Sunday AND Monday night), but a couple weeks ago my friend Christine guilted me into coming back.  She said the soprano section was in desperate need of a few more singers.  By then there were only two more rehearsals (one of which was right after stake conference last week) plus the performance (which I was going to anyway), so I figured I could manage.  I would have liked more time to learn the music, but I'm still glad I got to participate.  As always, the Jones Family singers (a truly gifted gospel choir) were the stars of the show-- every time those ladies began belting out their notes, I wish I could sing the way they do-- it's so powerful!  They're the reason I get so excited for this concert.  The SVU a cappella group Accolade was pretty fantastic, too.  (I don't think I've ever been present for live beatboxing, and the guy doing it was INCREDIBLE.)  They did the Pentatonix arrangement of "Away in a Manger" and as soon as they began, my kids got so excited.

Another great evening of amazing music and staying out way too late.

And THEN the next night (last night) was the first of two 3-hour rehearsals with the orchestra for Oratorio, getting all ready for our concerts on Saturday.  And somewhere in there is my neighborhood white elephant party, too.

Truly, this month is INSANE.  But really, could it possibly be any better???  Maybe next week I can try sleeping again...

My Girl Taylor

It started out so slowly...

I remember driving around Manassas and hearing You Belong with Me and thinking to myself, That's pretty catchy-- I like this song!  Love Story kind of irritated me because I worried Taylor Swift (and her target audience) were all too young and stupid to know how Romeo and Juliet actually ended (hint: NOT happily ever after!).  But I could still admit that it's a pretty fun song.  

I remember chatting with Craig on the phone once when he asked if I'd heard the title of Taylor Swift's newest song, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.  We both thought that was pretty hilarious.  And I think I must have heard 22 and definitely I Knew You Were Trouble.  I listened to them if they came on the radio, but other than that I didn't give them a whole lot of thought.  That it was it for the Red album.

When Shake it Off came out, you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing it, and for a while that was great but I got bored with it pretty quickly.  Taylor often seems to have one song on each album that will grab you right away, but then they don't have much staying power.  (See also: Bejeweled, Look What You Made Me Do, and ME!)  But even if I don't want to listen to Shake It Off all the time, I have to admit that the music video for it is HILARIOUS and I never get tired of watching Taylor mess up all the different dance forms she's trying.  Blank Space, on the other hand, has an amazing music video (Taylor pointing out that she can be totally psychotic-- what's not to love???) AND the song has staying power.  Chef's kiss!  I also quite liked Mean, and my kids liked that one, too, so that was fun.  

So, yeah.  By this point, I knew several songs by Taylor Swift that I quite liked.  I wouldn't call myself a big fan or anything, but I was fine with Taylor.  Then my sister Tracy mentioned that she and my cousin Jenna both really liked her 1989 album, and it was free on iTunes (or somewhere? what music streaming did I use then???) so I began listening to the whole thing and it WAS really enjoyable. 

There wasn't a single song that I just hated and would skip when it began playing.  Welcome to New York is a bop (although if that term existed at the time I certainly didn't know it).  Style and Out of the Woods are also really good.  But I think my new favorites were Wildest Dreams and I Know Places.  Those really grabbed me.  

Some time around here I remember visiting with my niece Kamryn.  I was trying to be a cool aunt, and I knew they'd gone to a Taylor Swift concert years earlier, so I asked if she liked her new stuff.  "Not really," Kamryn shrugged (so much for me being cool! 😂), "but," she added, "I really like her song Haunted."  I found it on YouTube and it quickly became one of my favorites.  The way those violins are sawing away, how could you not love it?

When Reputation came out, I was only vaguely aware of it.  I thought the cover was ugly (what is up with her hair in that picture???). 

But eventually I listened to some of it.  Delicate was one of the big releases, and the aforementioned Look What You Made Me Do.  And I liked those just fine.  But this time I found myself listening to Don't Blame Me and I Did Something Bad over and over again.  Don't Blame Me has a really great gospel sound to it that I love.  And in I Did Something Bad, every time she growls, "And I'd do it over and over and over again if I could" and really leans into those R's is just so fun.  And then I pretty much ignored the rest of the album.

I felt slightly embarrassed by the cover art for Lover, the pastels reminded me of the rainbow pages of our Personal Progress books when I was in Young Womens, and the glitter heart on Taylor's face was like a slightly grown up version of the Lisa Frank school supplies my little sister had loved.  Even the name was cringey.  Who uses the word lover any more?  It makes you think of some old, eccentric woman saying it and everyone secretly gagging behind her back.  It was too much.  But.  The actual song Lover was too good!  The lines, "Can I go where you go?  Can we always be this close forever and ever?" and later in the song, "and at every table, I'll save you a seat" are so sweet and exactly how it should feel to be in a happy and whole relationship.  How did she nail it so well in such simple phrases?

And if I liked that song, then I was obsessed with The Archer.  It's the opposite of a bop.  It's hard to even hum the tune, and yet it's so powerful.  When she sings the line, "All of my enemies started out friends" you just want to cry for her.  And even worse, when she's repeating the line, "They see right through me" over and over again and then suddenly it switches to "I see right through me."  Oh, Taylor, you cut yourself down so harshly.  Why, Taylor, why???  I also love her refrain, "Who could ever leave me, darling?  But who could stay?"  I can't even imagine being someone as famous as her.  Who could ever date such a person???  It must be so lonely.

Those weren't the only songs I listened to from that album.  I Forgot That You Existed made me laugh.  You Need to Calm Down was fine, although I thought the music video was obnoxious.  ME is catchy until it becomes annoying.  Paper Rings is a lot of fun.  And once again, those were all I ever listened to from the album.

The pandemic hit and Taylor surprised everyone by releasing two albums, back to back, Folklore and Evermore.  

I honestly couldn't tell you which album contains which songs, but I can tell you that almost ALL of the songs are good.  Like, really good.  At this time, we'd somehow gotten Apple Music for free for a few months, so I took this opportunity to really listen to both albums in their entirety.  And before long, I was loving pretty much all of the songs on them.  It would actually be easier to tell you the few songs I don't like than to list what I love.  (But that's too negative, so I won't.  Absolute top songs would be (from Folklore) cardigan, hoax, the last great american dynasty, exile, this is me trying, epiphany, (and from Evermore) willow, champagne problems, gold rush, no body no crime, ivy, evermore, it's time to go.  And my absolute favorite from the two is right where you left me.  I had no idea I enjoyed listening to the banjo so much.)  The only problem with these albums is that it's like Taylor finally discovered the f-word, and used it in the middle of a bunch of songs I otherwise really liked.  BUT THEN I LEARNED THAT I COULD GET THEM CLEANED UP!  

And if I'd been a haphazard fan before, now I was full steam ahead fangirling Taylor Swift.

By the time our free subscription ran out, I knew I needed a way to keep this music in my life.  And that's when Bentley persuaded to us to share his Spotify account with him.  He showed me how you could search for playlists and I found one of clean Taylor Swift songs that had 13.5 hours of music (!!!!).  I listened to it on long road trips and began learning all her older songs that I'd never bothered with.  Eventually I compiled my own playlist of the new ones I now loved.  My playlist (as of this writing) is only 8 hours, so it's not like I like ALL of her songs.  Just, you know, a lot.  Around the same time, I also stumbled upon a Rolling Stone article where the author ranked all of her music (ALL HER MUSIC).  I don't agree with a lot of his opinions, but it was fun to see his thoughts and compare how I felt.  There were a few that he ranked WAY up there that I hadn't bothered with, so I made sure to give those another try.  It was this list that finally got me really listening to the 10-minute version of All Too Well.  That was her #1 song according to him (out of 229 songs!!!!).  The first time I heard it I was like, What's the big deal?  But he was so effusive I figured I needed to hear it a few more times (which is how I am for all new music-- I hardly ever like anything the first time I hear it, or if I do like a lot the first go-round, odds are good that it doesn't have much staying power).  And oh was he was RIGHT.  Now it's my favorite, too.  And it's really hard to even explain what it is about this song that makes it so glorious, but it is.  It just is.  Fans know it (all too well).  (Of course I had to.)

Among other songs, these two compilations really got me loving the following: I Bet You Think About Me; Afterglow; Dear John; Cruel Summer; Death By a Thousand Cuts; Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince; Daylight; The Story of Us; We Were Happy (truly one of the saddest songs ever); Come Back... Be Here; Nothing New; Forever & Always (a delightfully angry song, despite the cheerful-sounding title!)...  I also really liked the quiet haunting sound of Carolina, which she wrote for Where the Crawdads Sing.  That is in NO WAY a complete list.  Just some of my newest absolute favorites.  

All this to say, I've been SO excited for Midnights to come out. 

This is probably the first time I've ever paid attention to an artist releasing an album and anticipated its arrival.  The first thing I did that morning was begin downloading all the songs and looking for cleaned up versions of the explicit ones.  It took me a few times listening through it, but I finally have a pretty good idea of how I rank the songs on that album.  There are a few I don't really care for (Paris Karma, and Vigilante S***); a lot of the songs are great, and if anyone else released them, I'd be super impressed, but they get sort of drowned in the rest of Swift's oeuvre.  And then, as I hoped, there are a few that are absolute killers.  My sister Rachael clued me in that fans are speculating that Bigger Than the Whole Sky could be about a miscarriage, and when I listened to it with that interpretation in mind, it actually made me tear up.  The Great War is amazing.  Snow on the Beach is so good (and the opening bars sound vaguely Christmassy, which I appreciate).  You're On Your Own, Kid is fantastic.  But I think the best song, the one that absolutely slays me, is Would've, Could've, Should've.  When she cries out, "Living for the thrill of hitting you where it hurts, Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first" I want to sob for her and whatever messes she's lived through to get to where she is.  Being famous must be awful.  But she sure has given us a huge gift with all this music I love so much.

Anyway.  At the end of the year, Spotify gives you stats about what you listened to and all that.  Mine was messed up a bit because the kids were all using my account for months before Craig finally set up accounts for each of them (it turns out, when you're vacuuming listening to music and it suddenly stops because Ryder is playing AJR on his echo dot, it's really frustrating!).  But even with all that, it put me in the top of 0.05% of Taylor Swift fans.

So that's where I am now.

A really freaking huge fan of Taylor.

And what a journey it's been.

Ryder is 12! (And Also-- Thanksgiving!)

 Craig did his best to keep me from stressing out over Thanksgiving.  Well done, Craig!  I was mostly quite successful, but when the long weekend ended and half our kids had colds and couldn't go back to school, I will admit that I was a bit bummed and ready to get my house back to feeling like it wasn't a disaster again.  But we got there eventually.

Thanksgiving dinner!

All around that, we've been celebrating Ryder's birthday!  We had dinner and presents with grandparents ahead of the holiday:

Loving life at the Mellow Mushroom

Ending the day with doughnuts

Unfortunately, poor Ryder was sick on his actual birthday.  So that was kind of lame.  I didn't really think he'd want cake or the dinner he'd chosen, so we put those off and I just made Dutch babies instead.  Just as much sugar as cake, but we get to eat it for dinner!  Ryder thought that was a good compromise.  And the good news is that he was all better in time for his birthday party (which was probably more important to him anyway).  For that, I picked him and his friends up after the school dance, enjoyed listening to their banter in the car (my favorite was one kid who said he got in trouble if his grades slipped because he was being "a goofy goober"), and then let them watch a movie and eat pizza and cake.  Everyone had a good time!

The first thing they did was drag the love sac up from the basement.  It vaguely reminded me of this famous picture...

Enjoying pizza

Amos is a very good sport about giving Camille piggyback rides!

So it was a good week, especially once everyone was healthy again.  And watching Ryder growing up is an absolute delight!

Autumn Miscellany

 Here's a bunch of stuff that didn't make it onto the blog yet, and since I'd hate to forget about it...

We had a stake youth activity that involved painting rocks, so Craig told these guys to find some rocks in our yard and wash them.  They had such a great time!

Whenever he can get his hands on my phone, Bentley likes to take weird selfies.  Kendra is usually a very willing accomplice.

Some of the neighborhood kids (Sydney, Alma, Scarlett, and Abel)

I just loved this cheerful little gingko tree at the entrance to my neighborhood!

I've gotten to babysit Zevi a few times this year...!

Camille finds a more fun use for the leafblower

Lego Night at Young Mens!

It's nice to have the DC temple open and functioning again!

Little kids are so cute when they're sick!  (Don't worry, she's all better now!)

Pretty sky while we wait for the bus

One morning as I crept quietly back into the house after my early-morning workout, Camille went thundering past me, carrying her unicorn on her back and yelling, "OPPOSITES!"  Never a dull moment around here.

My FiA group decided this would be the CD cover for our 90s band called The Complainers