Yes, I Still Blog...

I'm not sure how it's STILL January for a few more hours?  This month is interminable!  And nary a snow storm to make it fun/winterwonderland/cozy by the fire.  Ugh.  Last night our kids were all taking turns being pretty bratty to me and once I was in bed with Craig and complaining about their behavior he just shrugged, "It's January.  It's a slog and they're all feeling it."  We're all feeling it.

Anyway, I know we've done fun things, it's just hard to even remember.  Good thing we take pictures, huh?

Ryder has been making elephant toothpaste for the science fair...  It took me a long time to finally gather all the ingredients for him, but thank goodness for Amazon, I guess?

Kendra has been taking guitar at school, so we got to go to her concert!  (See here there in the middle???)

Ryder took his duty as Deacons Quorum president very seriously as he welcomed new members to his quorum.  Yay for him not being the only deacon any more!

We made Oreo truffles one night (this was supposed to be a NYE thing, but we ran out of time)

I bought some new clothes for Camille, and she had to try them on in the weirdest way possible...

I recently got a couple pictures framed and was excited to get them on the walls once the Christmas decorations were all put away!  In the center, Fallen Monarchs, which hangs at the BYU Art Museum, and on the right Night Blooms by Melissa Tshikamba, who also painted my beloved Land and Water...  I do enjoy beautiful things...

I finally convinced Craig to get his old suits tailored so they actually fit him properly!

On one of those rare warm days, we just HAVE to go to the park!

Adam was getting new deck furniture, so I was very happy to take his old stuff off his hands for him!

I always figured deck furniture was a waste of money because we don't spend much time out there, but it turns out, if you have comfy furniture you DO hang out there!  So we've been enjoying the deck a lot more now!

We also really enjoyed the neighborhood tree burn!  (This is much more impressive if you look at the people in the background and realize just how big those flames were!)

The youth had a baptism trip

It turned out that the Stake Youth Standards night was the same day, so they stopped for the biggest pizzas ever in between the temple and the stake center...

We've been getting geared up to paint my kitchen.  After MANY paint samples, we finally picked one (the top green).  It turns out it's really hard to get exactly the right shade of grey green that isn't just grey, just green, or, weirdly enough, blue.  All the first colors I chose just turned blue on that wall...  I'm not still convinced that I don't like the more olive green in the middle, but I worried it would be too dark, so I let Craig have his way.  I do like the name-- Wedding Mint!  Anyway, Craig will start painting whenever we get a snow day!  Oh, boy!

Bentley has been watching TikTok videos about how to make the perfect hamburger, so he needed to actually try it out.  HE ATE ALL OF THAT!  Two double patties!  Teenagers are something else...!  (Also, there's a little doodad hanging on the door behind him-- that's not his hair sticking up!) (Also, when we didn't have buns, I told him he could just go to the nearby grocery store and buy some.  And he said, "Will they have hamburger buns?"  😂 He has so much to learn!)

Ryder, Colton, and Camille all have fun, wacky slippers, so we needed pictures of them together.  Two monsters, and, in the middle, alligators eating your feet!

Cuties

Nothing quite like napping on Daddy on a Sunday afternoon!

FiA celebrated its 10th birthday, so we had one of those parties where they show you how to paint a picture-- I absolutely LOVE stuff like this!  But I never would have gone to Pikasso Swig without someone forcing me to go there, so this was perfect!

Since we don't have an IKEA anywhere nearby, I finally broke down and made Swedish meatballs all by myself!  You know I'm pretty proud of myself if I take a picture of my food!  What am I, a millennial?

They had a primary activity Saturday morning, so the kids had a fun time running around with their friends.  Here we have William, Akston, Colton, and Gideon

And Camille with her bestie, Peter

And all our other activities are keeping on...  I work out every other morning with FiA, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Craig and I run together.  This morning it was 45 degrees and we agreed that that was about the perfect temperature for a run.  Newlywed us wouldn't even recognize the people we've turned into...  I'm still trying to juggle my two jobs-- I keep thinking the law firm one will fizzle out so I can focus on wedding planning, but then my neighbor/boss announced she was leaving for another firm, so now we're busy closing ALL her files (and really, my only job there is closing files, so this is my jam!).  But maybe once she's finished I'll pay more attention to the weddings...  And, of course, I'm still doing choir and the music in primary.  And I run the book club.  I have a lot of balls in the air!

Bentley has been busy trying to figure out Spanish and studying for the SATs.  I'm enjoying him having a driver's license so I don't have to drive him to the gym or pick him up from school any more!

As soon as marching band season ended, Kendra joined indoor drumline, so that's keeping her busy.  (If, like me, you'd never heard of indoor drumline, here's a really cool video of a professional group doing it!  It's pretty impressive stuff!)  Kendra plays keyboard for her group.

And Craig is still bishoping.  It's nice to have tithing settlement declaration all done!  Hopefully only two more of those to go!  The other kids continue to just be crazy!

Come on, February!

NYE

I ended up driving up to the temple with a few friends on New Year's Eve.  It was a gross rainy day, so I was glad that Anita volunteered to drive.  Brittney and Brianne were nice and let me ride shotgun, which is good for my motion sickness, so it doesn't get much better than that!  We didn't hit any traffic (wha--???) and got there pretty early, something Craig and I rarely manage to do, so we didn't need to freak out rushing around!  And that meant I had time to take this great picture:

Ghost Temple

I ran into my friend Betsy from Manassas, so that was really fun-- Betsy was the first person I met when we moved to Virginia!  She was the Relief Society president, and she and her husband Rick bought us dinner at Bob Evans and then ward members came to our new apartment to help us unload our U-Haul.  I was 7 months pregnant with Bentley and so relieved to be done with my master's thesis and to get moved in and settled.  I look back now on that tiny apartment and our meager possessions (mostly we had a bed, a table with only two chairs, and a really crappy couch) and what a wild ride that was and I can hardly believe how far I've come!

Anyway.  Sorry for that little trip down memory lane!  It was great seeing Betsy again and made that temple trip even more special!  Betsy shared this picture she'd gotten from earlier in the morning:

I do love the DC temple.  But I sure will be excited when I can drive just an hour to Richmond!

Anyway!  Our session was lovely.  And Kate joined us, too, which was great.  She's the one who teaches my kids' seminary class in our basement these days, and I joke that she's holding our ward together: she's also a temple worker and plays the organ whenever needed, and occasionally steps in as pianist in primary.  AND she knows my friend Nancy Minster-- it's such a small world in the church!

After the temple we all had lunch at Cafe Rio, and planned to stop at the Moo-Thru, too, but it was closed for the holiday.  Boo.  Craig got me big metal straws so I can actually drink my super-thick milkshakes, so I was excited to test drive one!  But not that night.

By the time I got home, around 5pm, I was so exhausted I headed straight to my room and took a 20 minute nap.  THEN I was ready to have NYE fun with the kids.  We did our usual fondue (bless Craig, he'd chopped everything up so all we had to do next was mostly melt the cheese) and then shortly after that chocolate fondue, too.  In between, we screencast pictures from the year on the TV so we could all remember everything we'd done in 2022.

Kendra had gone to a party, so she missed out on fondue.  But since the mom at the party is a professional baker, I'm pretty sure she got some good stuff, too.  (Bentley was also invited to the party, but he'd gone to a dance the night before with all these kids and decided that was enough for him.)

There she is with her back to the camera, along with Madeline, Emily, Ben, Topher, Brogan, and Joe

We pretty much went to bed right after midnight.  Church was coming early the next morning, and with it, a new batch of sunbeams in my primary!  And that's plenty of excitement for me!

Christmas Break Projects

In addition to setting up the air hockey table, Craig also got to work building shelves in the basement-- in one of the closets that has been stuffed with toys since we moved here, and also in his workshop.  This will be great once it's finished, but in the meantime, it's meant moving everything out of those spaces.  So the basement is a disaster.  But we'll get it cleaned up.  Eventually.  

Craig thought he could improve on this...

And this...

So now the closet has these shelves:

And the corner of his workshop has this:

He spent all day yesterday organizing everything and throwing away a TON of stuff.  So now his workshop looks like this:

A huge improvement!

On a different note, the old fridge in our garage (which came free with the house) finally died on New Year's Eve.  Well.  It probably died a few days before that, but it was NYE when I realized that none of the food inside was evenly remotely cold.  The good news is that most of the stuff in there was all leftovers from Christmas, so it was about time we threw them out anyway.  Everything else I crammed into our regular fridge and hoped it would be okay.  (Butter should be fine, right?  It's too expensive to throw away!)

I got on Craigslist that very night and found someone nearby selling a fridge for $400.  It sure was handy having a truck to load it onto, and a wonderful neighbor was willing to come along and help with the heavy lifting.  So we had a new (to us) fridge in less than 24 hours!  Go, me!  (And go Craig and Joel, who did the actual physical labor!)

It's nice having a newer model-- maybe this one will be able to keep the freezer working even in extreme cold weather?  The new one is also significantly bigger, so that will be great.

Craig was able to get the old fridge onto the truck, along with all that stuff he was throwing away, and haul everything to the dump this morning.  I LOVE getting rid of trash.  And I love having more room in my house (or in my fridge, as the case may be)!

Happy New Year, indeed!

Christmas Day 2022

I actually got up early on Christmas morning and showered and did my hair and makeup (such as it is).  So I was just sitting in bed waiting when the kids knocked on our door at 7am.  We turned on Christmas lights and let the kids come down the stairs to see if Santa had come:

And then we let the kids open their stockings, which had a few presents (including socks, which each kid was very excited about) and a lot of candy.  Craig got his cinnamon rolls in the oven and once the kids had gotten dressed for church, we enjoyed those immensely.  And then it was time to go to church!  

Since it was about 20 degrees outside, naturally the heat had stopped working (again).  We at least knew this and brought blankets and coats and were properly bundled up.  Poor Adam was shivering and then had to play piano and it was so cold THE KEYS WERE STICKING.  A couple women were playing a flute duet, and they spent the entire time blowing air through their flutes trying to keep them warm and in tune.  So ridiculous.  For all his natural Christmas cheer, Craig was furious.  He's been fighting for three years now to get our HVAC replaced, and as soon as the weather gets more moderate, they claim it's working, but as soon as it's either really hot or really cold, nothing works.  Ugh!

After a quick, one-hour meeting, we hurried home and put our jammies back on and got to WORK opening all those Christmas presents!  😂 The kids were really great and took turns.  They were gracious about everything they got, and they tried to encourage each other to open so they wouldn't burn through their gifts before everyone else.  They were great.  It took us so long to open everything that we had to take a break while Craig got the turkey in the oven.

This is an axolotl onesie 😆

This was one of the big ones: Bentley got his driver's license!!!  We'd managed to get it all done ahead of time without telling him so it was valid on Christmas Day-- how exciting!

Their final present was very tiny and was for everyone and once they opened it, they found a clue.  So we had them running around the house on a treasure hunt.  

I think they ran to our room, then to the basement, then out to Craig's truck, and then back to the basement where they finally discovered an enormous present in the guest room.  They ripped off the wrapping paper and Ryder began literally screaming with joy: they'd gotten an air hockey table!  There was much excitement and rejoicing!  

The next day Craig made the kids put it together.  This is the sort of thing that if I did, it would basically be me screaming at the kids and all of them crying.  But when Craig does it, they all have a great time and the table got put together beautifully.  I don't know how he does that?

So now we have an air hockey table! It's been a week and the kids aren't sick of it yet, so that's a win!  

The rest of the day was spent cooking and eating and just enjoying life.  It was all so very merry!

Christmas Eve

Thursday night, after such a sad day, it was nice to drive around as a family and deliver MORE plates of cookies to everyone who lived in Keswick and Lake Monticello.  We had way better luck, too, in that every single house we stopped at (all six of them) had people at home!  A Christmas miracle indeed!  I love making that drive, keeping a lookout for good Christmas lights, and listening to all the Christmas music.  It was a really fun.  It was also insanely cold, around 9 degrees?, so I sat in the car with the heat running while everyone else did the actual door delivering.  This was doubly perfect, because no one wanted to chat long with it being so cold, but I can never end a conversation; they would have HATED me if I'd stood there rambling on while all their heat wafted out their open front doors!  So I was doing everyone a favor by staying in the (warm) car.

The next morning, Christmas Eve, was too cold to run.  But I did get all bundled up and walked a few houses down the street just to see what that felt like.  My face wasn't covered, and as soon as it started feeling numb, I headed back inside.  We did a quick, frantic clean up before Grandma and Grandpa arrived, and then I hopped into the shower.  Even from in there, I could suddenly hear my kids thundering around downstairs and knew that noise heralded the arrival of their grandparents.  Oh, the excitement!

While Grandpa kept the kids busy playing games, Grandma and Craig did a lot of cooking that day.  They got the turkey brining, made a caramel pie, cinnamon rolls, and boiled sweet potatoes.  I worked on making my grandma's green jello salad.  I think I napped in there, somewhere, too.  And, knowing me, I probably did laundry.  (Someone has to keep the rest of the house running!)  And after the little kids were in bed, we made an apple crumble.  

We got our usual Christmas Eve pizza-- this time from the new Christian's Pizza that opened up near us.  (When we moved to Charlottesville our realtor bought us pizza from the Christian's Pizza on the downtown mall-- it's a C-ville thing, so having another one even closer was exciting!)  Then I practiced piano for a bit while the kids showered, and then we drove around looking at Christmas lights.  Our favorite tacky house was NOT lit up (although it had lights in place, they just weren't turned on???  maybe the owners were out of town that day...?), so that was disappointing, but Craig found out about a farm that some guy sets up to be a free drive-through light show, so that made up for it!  Who does awesome things like that???  I love that there are people out there like that!

Then we sang Christmas carols, with each of the kids doing their best on the piano...

Here we are having a lovely time singing and Bentley pulls his muppet face

So Craig was like, SMILE!  And he did!

We read Luke 2, and opened up our jammies from my parents.  This year's set was pretty fun:

I thought these shirts were pretty hilarious, and I loved that each kids' was a little different!

And we wrapped up with me reading The Night Before Christmas to everyone before they went to bed!

Despite all my nagging, Colton and Camille's room is a mess

I can only assume that visions of sugar plums danced in their heads.  Craig and I enjoyed the chance to finally sit down for a bit and just enjoyed the peace and quiet while we looked at our Christmas tree.  I think Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year.  You gotta love all that joy and anticipation!