So Much Christmas Fun!

You are going to be shocked by this, but December so far has been really busy!  We're talking, stuff happening almost every night kind of busy!  I'm sure you're not that busy, right?  Hardly anything happening in your lives during this magical holiday season, amiright?

Okay, okay.  Everyone is busy.  I get it.  We're not that special.  But I still have to document as much as I can!  Because even though I do hate being busy, most of the stuff we've been doing has been pretty darn fun, so I definitely want to remember it all...

This is from the ward Christmas party.  Poor Craig had a rough go of it-- they first picked a date and began announcing it, only to discover that the YSA ward was having their Christmas party that same night!  So he picked a new date and the activity committee posted flyers and... the Spanish Branch had claimed that date!  The third date finally worked, though.  And the activity committee leader's daughter managed to not give birth to her twins until after the party, so it all worked out! 😅 (Use the stake calendar, people!!!)

Kendra is festive for school!

Unfortunately, we had some 24-hour stomach bug go through a few of us-- it started with Camille, and then hit Ryder and Colton a few days later.  Lots of kids up in the night informing me that they'd just thrown up, which is always fun.  Fortunately, most of it was in fairly easy-to-clean places.  Props for that, kids.  Everyone else has stayed healthy so far, knock on wood...

A few weeks ago the weather turned warm again so we dragged Adam to the park with us!  He was much nicer about actually playing with the kids-- I always use that time to read!

Kendra's school put on A Christmas Carol and she got to play Mrs. Cratchit, so that was very fun to see and she did a great job!  I was very impressed with all these students saying these complicated lines through their masks!

Meeting up with her admiring fans after!  (Craig thought to buy her flowers-- what a good dad!)

This is from the ward Christmas party-- I just love this picture!

My choir concerts went off without a hitch and I was very relieved to have them done with!  I did feel bad that Craig and his parents and Kendra couldn't see me at all from where they were sitting-- that was a pretty lame mistake to have made on my part...  It was very nice to be back singing on stage again.  And-- I think thanks to all the weddings I've worked?-- the standing around for hours didn't even bother me!  So that was a nice surprise!

We've started playing "Among Us" live-- where we draw cards to see who the imposter is and that person has to double-tap people to assassinate them.  We turn off most of the lights and its vaguely creepy and VERY fun.  And it's even MORE fun if you wear a whacky hat like in the game!

We got this VERY sweet note from Camille's new teacher.  Her old one quit the week before (which is so completely weird, both because it was two weeks before Christmas break AND because it was only her first year teaching!  There is a big old story there, and I doubt I'll ever know it, and that just kills me....) and she has been loving her new teacher, even though she was sad the other one left.  Anyway, I'm glad her new teacher has picked up on the love Camille showers on everyone around her!

Craig's hairstyle occasionally gets away from him and I LOVE it-- when did big hair become so fun?

Kendra ALSO had her band concert!  The first one in two years!!!  

Our wonderful neighbors, the Palmers, have made it a tradition to take Colton and Camille with them to get hot chocolate at the downtown mall and then have a movie night, so they did that on Monday.  And the rest of us took advantage of C&C being gone to go see the new Spider-Man movie, which I LOVED.  So everyone had a wonderful evening!

And then YESTERDAY, we went to Busch Gardens to see their Christmas Town!  We had a lot of fun, in spite of the cold, and were very grateful that the predicted rain mostly held off!  It was especially fun going to BG because it's quite a bit nicer than Kings Dominion, so we got to enjoy that feeling of being upgraded, along with all the Christmas sights!  We didn't do too many rides-- Craig took the big kids on a roller coaster right away and it left them so freezing, we didn't really make that our priority.  Mostly we tried to hit all the shows that looked interesting, and that turned out to be a great strategy!

Everyone loved this polar bear bench

Kiddie roller coaster in Sesame Street place!

"Celtic Fyre" featured some wonderful Irish dancing-- I was in heaven!

Seeing the famous Anheuser-Busch clydesdales!  They're SO BIG.

This ride wasn't running, but the lights all over it were stunning!

I said it would be too hard to get a decent picture with this tree, so Craig had to prove me wrong

Can you tell that these guys are up WAAAAAAAAY past their bedtime?

And the highlight of the day, for me, was seeing Elvis Stojko perform!  He didn't do any quadruple axels, but I don't think anyone can spin as fast as that man-- it was such a treat to watch him skate live!

We left the park around 10pm, which meant we didn't get home until after midnight, so it was a LONG day.  But I was still good and got up for FiA.  And then I REALLY enjoyed taking a hot shower and going back to sleep for a couple more hours.

Yay for December!

Conversations with Camille, Part II

After trying various schedules that didn't work, we have finally settled into a really nice routine where we have our family's Come, Follow Me lesson first thing in the morning, right between me getting home from FiA and Craig leaving to swim laps.  It's early-- 6:30!-- but it's the only way we can do it consistently, so we're sticking to it.

This week, we've been talking about The Family: A Proclamation to the World, a document which seemed downright silly to me when it was released in 1995 because everything in it was so obvious that I couldn't imagine why anyone needed to SAY this stuff, and now feels almost revolutionary the way it boldly sticks to principles that the rest of the world has walked away from.  How did the world change so much in just 26 years?

Anyway, on Wednesday, I was trying to talk about the joy that having children brings me, and I asked the kids why they thought we had such a big family.  Camille quickly answered, "Well, you do make us clean the house A LOT." and everyone else chimed in that clearly the reason we had so many kids was so I could make them clean the house for me.

I don't think I have EVER laughed so hard at 6:30 in the morning!  

Yup, they figured me out-- the reason I had five kids was so that I could have a super clean house!!! 😂😂😂

Love these guys!  And not just because they keep me laughing!

Back to Oratorio

One of my FAVORITE sounds in the whole world is the sound of an orchestra tuning up.  It's always full of the anticipation of good, beautiful things coming your way.  Is there anything else so reliably hopeful???

My choir is back and rehearsing again this year after being on Zoom all last year (which I did not participate in-- the idea of spending a couple hours in the basement on zoom every week after helping my kids be on zoom all day long was just too soul crushing) and our Christmas concerts are THIS SATURDAY!!!  (For those of you who don't live around here, you can buy tickets to livestream the evening performance, if you're interested!)

Monday we got to rehearse with the orchestra and it was so great.  A three hour rehearsal and I was sad when it ended.  And I'm already excited for our dress rehearsal on Thursday when we'll get to be on the stage at the Paramount for our first concert in two years.  We're singing Vivaldi's Gloria, which is SO FUN, and I think I've finally got my mind wrapped around our two pieces from Rachmaninoff's All Night Vigil.  Any time we split into three-part soprano harmonies it takes me a while to really get it.  It helps a lot that the woman I sit next to is an AMAZING singer (she has one of the solo parts in Gloria, so I'm not exaggerating here) so she's definitely been carrying me along as I was figuring it out.  We also have a piece called "Jingle Bell Hoe Down" that Michael arranged that has lots of Copeland vibes and is a lot of fun-- the violins are really the star of the show for that one and it's fantastic.

I never would have guessed singing with a mask on could still be fun, but it's fine.  They got us special masks that work really well for singing (meaning they don't suck against your face when you take a big breath).  It makes me wonder if they're actually doing any good, but I'm not complaining.  It's nice to feel like I can breathe!

And mask or no mask, that sound of the orchestra tuning up gets me every time.

Conversations with Camille

While my parents were here, Camille took it upon herself to ask my Dad why golfers yell "fore" when they're golfing.  I have absolutely NO IDEA how she knew this-- probably from some random cartoon she's watched?  But the very fact of this question makes me laugh.

So my Dad is explaining golf and how far a professional golfer can hit a ball.  To get them to understand (Colton was here participating in this conversation, too), he asks if they know how big a football field is, and Colton pipes up, "One hundred yards!"  Another thing that shocks me-- how does a child of mine know such a fact?  I probably didn't know that until I was in my 20s...

Anyway, Grandpa responds, "Exactly.  And some golfers can hit their ball 300 yards, so that's like three football fields!  And people can't yell loud enough for their voice to travel that far."

At which point Camille piped up, "I can!"

And honestly.  It's just possible she might!  In any case, she gave Grandpa a good laugh with that.

Love my confident girl!

Google helpfully made this collage of Camille for me.  I guess this is as good a place as any to share it!

Thanksgiving 2021

I was super excited to have my parents and Leah here for Thanksgiving this year!  It's been three years since I got to spend the holidays with anyone from my family, and I was definitely feeling overdue!  I thought with everyone being here for a week we'd have plenty of time to do all the stuff I wanted to do, so it was amazing how hard it was to schedule anything-- first, my kids still had school on Monday and Tuesday, and --naturally-- the best weather best was on Thursday, the one day we weren't going to do anything other than being in the house cooking!  But we still made the most of things and had a TON of fun!

On Monday Leah got up early and did FiA with me, so that was a lot of fun.  Her FiA name is now Seahawk, which was perfect.  And then later in the morning we all went on a short hike at Ragged Mountain while my kids were in school.  It was very exciting to see my Mom just hiking along with her new bionic knees!  The last time she came to Virginia, she really couldn't walk very far at all, but now she can do a couple miles!  Yay for modern medicine!

After our hike, Dad and I went to Costco and got pumpkin pies and a lot of snacky foods for everyone.  Dad was impressed by how not crowded our Costco was-- I don't always appreciate how great it is to NOT be crowded...

Also on Monday, the grown ups got dinner at Five Guys and I made mac'n'cheese for the kids.  It's always exciting to eat out without kids!

And they were thrilled because they got chips with dinner!

Tuesday I mostly was busy making any food that could be made ahead of time.  I got the mashed potatoes and cranberry relish made, and also some homemade ranch dressing just for fun.  I ran to Food Lion for all the stuff I'd forgotten.  And I also made a big pot of chili for everyone for dinner.  And I finished the night by making the turkey brine (which included wandering around in my yard in the freezing cold to pick rosemary!) so it could cool overnight.

Wednesday Leah and I did FiA again except this time Leah led us all in a boxing workout and it was AWESOME!  I was so proud of her for being willing to do something like that.  It was a lot of fun and even though it was 27 ℉ she kept us working up a sweat!

L-R: Raven, Raptor, Baller, Kondo, Soprano, Seahawk!

I REALLY enjoyed going back to bed for a few minutes after that workout while Craig went for his swim and then got the turkey brining.  After all that we rounded everyone up and headed to the Richmond Zoo, which I LOVE.  We hadn't been since 2017, and it was so fun to be back!

Camille makes friends with this little goat!

This tiger statue was a BIG hit!

Riding the safari train

I really love the ski lift over the rhinos...

And seeing this peacock up in a tree just delighted me!

This picture was already pretty fantastic, but then Leah texted me the picture just above this and that made it even better....  YES.  Everything is funnier if it can be tied in to Arrested Development!  (Sorry that the pictures are out of order.  For reasons I will never understand, Blogger is not letting me fix that...)

Rhino selfie!

Turns out portrait mode makes penguins look even cuter!

Dromedary camels are just so cool...

I 💜 goats!

Feeding giraffes is ALSO pretty dang cool

We had such a great time at the zoo!  It was cold outside, but we managed to bundle enough for it to not bother us, so that was a relief!  We got home, ordered pizzas for everyone, and then Craig got to work making pies and my Mom tried to make my Grandma's jello salad, but we had no idea how to make it, so we had to call Rachael for recipe help (which was hilarious since Rachael GOT the recipe from my Mom!).  It was feeling a bit like the technical challenge on GBBO where we were missing half the directions...

On the big day, I immediately got my rolls started, then Leah and I walked our neighborhood 5K with my friend Brandy.  It was beautiful outside-- sunny and warming up, to the point that when we walked past my house, Leah and I threw our vests and gloves into her car so we didn't have to wear or carry them any more!  When we got home, it was to a clean kitchen and Craig and my Mom had washed all the china so that was fantastic.  I was able to get right back to work on my rolls!  Craig acted as my sous chef and he was so helpful.  This recipe has you dipping the dough in melted butter (which is DELICIOUS), so your hands are a big greasy mess and you can't touch anything else.  So it's really nice if you have someone else on deck to grab stuff or melt more butter for you as needed.  

Just waiting for the rest of the food now!

As soon as I'd finished and cleaned off the counters, it was Craig's turn to get the turkey going!  And then we were both cooking pretty much all day.  It was exhausting.  But everything turned out delicious and we had a very happy dinner!

For posterity's sake, the full menu ended up looking like this:

turkey* (C) 12:30Th

stuffing (C) 11:30Th

goat cheese stuffing (A) Th 

rolls (A) 8:30Th

mashed potatoes* (A)T

sweet potatoes* x 3 (C) 3:00Th

broccoli bake x 2 (D) 2:00Th

jello salad* (P)W

creamed corn (L) 12:00Th

gravy (C) 4:00Th

cranberry relish* (P)T

pumpkin pie (Costco, 2)M

apple pie* (C)W

caramel pecan pie* X 2-- one with pecans, one without (C)W

Carrots (D) 2:00Th

Creamed spinach (L) 1:00Th 

So we had a LOT of food.  AND we were aiming to eat at 5:00pm, and it was all ready to go at 4:53, so props to Craig for running an extremely tight ship!

This must be Craig's plate.  I piled a LOT more food than this onto mine...

Brian is an AMAZING photographer, so I think it's hilarious that he got his finger in this picture! 😄

Colton insisted that this year HE get a drumstick!

So that was all wonderful.  I let everyone clean dishes while Craig, Dad, and I went for a quick walk around the neighborhood, and then it was pie time!

Friday was mostly open, so we stopped by Monticello for a few hours.  By the time we managed to get everyone out the door, we had to hurry through everything before heading back for Ryder's escape room, but we still managed to tour the home and hear the actor Mr. Jefferson speak to us, so it was totally worth the trip!

I liked Ryder trying to help Camille keep warm here.  (I told everyone to dress warm, but apparently I was not specific enough!)

This guy was so great!  He was inspirational and educational and I could have stood and listened to him talk for a LONG time, but unfortunately we needed to get going!

The Madden family!

The Smith clan

Kendra matched these walls so perfectly!

The next day we mostly hung out and Leah and Brian were busy packing to head home.  I was sad to see them go, but so glad we had such a fun time together!

How nice that we were all wearing purple and black today!  I don't know why I look HUMUNGOUS but whatever...

Such a happy Thanksgiving holiday!