Let's talk about Christmas!
First up we need to look at more pictures from the Good Looking 4th Wall Night on Saturday the 20th. In hindsight this was my favorite event of the whole Christmas Season. It was so fun to get dressed up and hang out with our friends. There wasn't a lot of pressure on me to make it magical or anything. I just had to be there and enjoy the night.
Here's the group picture we took with a bunch of us who wanted to show off our fun Christmas outfits. I was in the back with Brandon. I was standing on my toes to make sure that my head showed up over Chance's.
This is a picture of Uriah and Sarah and Tim and Rebekkah. Sarah created this event and organizes it each time. I once told her, "Thanks for always planning our date nights." Tim has been part of everything I've done on the Orpheum Stage. He was in Cinderella, he was the Emcee for the Curtain Call Awards, and he was in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. He'll be directing Young Frankenstein in 2026. None of the plays for 2026 interested Brandon until Young Frankenstein was announced. He wants to do that one. I told him, "If you don't do it, I will. I LOVE working with Tim."
Here are Brandon and I. This is the picture Brent took of us. I love Brent's work.
Here's Chris and Karin. They'd added the fabric decorations to Chris's jacket to make it all holidayish.
Here's another one Brent took of me and Brandon. But I don't like my hair in this one.
Here's our table. (Brent didn't give a lot of warning.) We were sitting with Chris and Karin on one side. Chance and Aeyden were on the other side. They were recently engaged. Chance is the guy who killed Brandon in Treasure Island. Next to them is my new friend Skila. She's Aeyden's mom. She was the only one at our table who had been in White Christmas. It was her first play since Middle School and she did great.
Here are the stars of White Christmas. Tyler, Brooke, Sara, and Ivan. They all did so well.
Here our our friends Dale and Amy. Dale proposed to Amy on stage at the end of White Christmas that night. Brandon and I weren't there, but people who were there told us about it almost as soon as we walked in. Amy had been called up on stage to receive an award for being a devoted fan of the theatre or something like that. Jared gave her flowers and then said, wait there is one more thing. Then Dale came out and proposed to her. When Amy and Dale walked into the Redhawk everyone cheered for them.
Here's the cast photo. There are so many awesome people in this picture.
We got home a little after midnight so Sunday morning was very laid back. Brandon and I decided to wear our 4th wall outfits to church. I put a sweater on over mine. When we walked up to church everyone was like, "Oh wow! A top hat!" Brandon didn't wear it in the church, but he was still in his suit and looked AMAZING.
Church was only Sacrament Meeting. The ward choir sang about 4 songs, the there was a piano duet with 4 piano players on 2 pianos, and the congregation sang some songs too. The Young Women also sang a song. My girls didn't participate because they don't like singing in church. We joke that our family doesn't like to sing "when the lights are on." Veronica also says she only sings if people can clap at the end.
It was a really nice program, but the best part was after when everyone talked for about 10 minutes. I always think we need some sort of linger longer after the Christmas Sacrament Meeting. Next year we'll be the last ward in the building so I was telling one of my friends, "we should talk to someone about making sure the linger longer happens next year." And then later I realized Brandon is literally the Elder's Quorum activities leader. He told me, "Oh I'm already planning on it. I'll make it happen."
The rest of Sunday was pretty chill. That night we watched The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. It was super cute. I've read the story to the kids, but Veronica didn't remember it at all. She was dying of second hand embarrassment as the Herdmans were taking over the Christmas Pageant and asking all sorts of questions.
Monday was the kids first day that they didn't have to go to school. I celebrated that by sleeping in. But I eventually made it into work and was there for over 3 hours. I knew this was my last day where I'd be really focused so I made myself take care of a lot of things.
I came home and immediately switched gears to get ready for the gingerbread house making party we were having that afternoon.
I'd bought a lot of candy and other things. I divided up the candy into 8 ziplock bags so each kid could have a like their own "kit."
Charlotte had plans for an amazing gingerbread house. She and Brandon had made gingerbread dough on Saturday and cooked it on Sunday. So she started working on her house while I was still getting things ready for the other kids. She took Jolly Ranchers and crushed them up. then she put them in the windows of her house and melted them in the oven. They turned out so cool.
I mixed up royal icing and she went to work decorating her house. She decorated the sides of the house and let everything dry. Then she put it all together.
Derrick's friend Max came over at 3:30. He get's overwhelmed by noise so we had him come over about 90 minutes ahead of the teenage girls. (The girls were so noisy last year.) Both boys had fun making their houses.
Here's Derrick's. He put his together with like 0 hesitation. He just went to work. Every once in a while that "most creative builder" award he won last year makes sense.
Here's Max's house. I was impressed that it stayed standing.
Aurora and Gwen came over at 5:00. You can see that Charlotte is still working on decorating the individual pieces of her gingerbread house.
Max and Derrick had been playing in the basement. I took this picture of the kids all together.
This was Gwen's house. She said Santa got stranded on the roof. His reindeer left him.
She even put things in the attic.
Here's Aurora's. She always does her's really quick.
And here is Lydia's. We used graham crackers this year because I couldn't find a little kit. I think these worked out better anyway.
Hadley was a little late so Max had already left by the time she arrived so we never did get a full group picture, but that's okay. She and Veronica were in the living room while the other girls were in the kitchen.
Hadley made a manger scene.
Veronica's was similar. I think she wanted to see how much candy she could sweeze on.
And Charlotte was still working on her gingerbread house. She put cans around the walls to help them stay up while the icing dried.
Here's the little village of houses.
And Charlotte's mansion.
She'd even put fairy lights inside the house so the windows lit up.
The roof is made out of cinnamon toast crunch cereal.
I love this little front door. She had started working on the house at 2:30. She finished a little before 7:00.
Hadley wanted to go a little after her house was done so I took her home. Aurora and Gwen wanted to watch Arthur Christmas so they stuck around. They watched most of the movie while Charlotte was still working on the house.
After the movie was over they came upstairs and waited for their mom to come get them. Brandon and our niece Brealynn had some sort of deal that he would have pink toe nails the next time he saw her. So Lydia painted his toe nails so they could be ready for Christmas Eve. Brandon was being really funny and talking in his "gay voice." Gwen though it was so funny. She laughed at everything he said.
The twins left and that was the end of the second annual gingerfriend night. It had been really fun.
Tuesday was the 23rd. We were going to Utah that night after Brandon got off work, but there were like a million things to do to get ready.
First I had to go to work. I'd planned on being there for about 3 hours. But after about 90 minutes I was like, "this was good enough." There was just too much to do at home to justify staying longer.
Brandon had gone grocery shopping after the party on Monday night. He'd separated all the groceries into bags labeled things like, "dry Emily and David" or "Fridge Bestemor and Bestefar." He also had a list of all the things I needed to pack. That made it really easy for me to get all the food ready to go. He'd also already made the two cheese balls for Christmas Eve at his parents. I have no idea how late he was up on Monday night, but I think it was something like 1:00.
The kids and I packed our clothes. In some way this was a really easy trip to pack for because it was just overnight. But I made sure the kids had something nice-ish to wear to the Christmas Eve party.
I also found time to pot the random rose that we've had growing in a vase. Brandon got this rose from someone after one of the Sweeny Todd shows. He brought it home and put it in a vase. With everything going on we just kind of forgot about it. After several weeks we noticed that the rose wasn't fully dead yet. In fact it seemed to be growing roots and had a little sprout. I kept saying I should put it in some potting soil, but I hadn't had a chance yet. So I finally did it.
Look at that little sprout. I've never seen this happen before.
I also took more pictures of Charlotte's gingerbread house.
This is my favorite side. I love how the pretzel shutters look so fancy.
She did such a good job with the roof.
This side is really cute too.
And here is a close up of the door.
We got everything packed into the van. We had a lot more room than we did when we drove down for Christmas. I realized that was because for Christmas we'd also travelled with a whole platter or roles and a bunch of pies.
Brandon came home and we were on the road by 4:00. Traffic had been crazy all day and I didn't feel comfortable with the twins driving. So I drove. Brandon had downloaded A Christmas Carol from audible so we listened to that on the way down.
Around 7:00 we arrived at our hotel in downtown Ogden. I was in one room with Derrick and Veronica. Brandon and the twins were in another room a floor above us. The rooms were small and overlooked the back of the hotel, but I was still so happy to be there. And the lobby was really pretty. We dropped off our stuff and then met up in the lobby.
Here's Derrick figuring out how to change the channel on the lobby TV.
We walked a few blocks to
Rovali's Ristorante Italiano on 25th street. We've come here around Christmas for many years. I had reservations for us at 7:45 and that's basically when we arrived. We waited a minute for them to finish clearing off a table and then we were seated.
We ordered three pizzas. Brandon got one with peppers on it for me and him.
Here are Charlotte and Lydia.
And Derrick and Veronica.
And Brandon and Charlotte.
We were there for a long time just talking and eating. We had a really great time. Through poor planning this was the 3rd time 4 days that we had pizza for dinner. The first time had been Saturday when Jori's brought us pizza when we watched her kids. The second time was pizza we had while doing gingerbread houses. And the 3rd time was this night. So we maybe didn't eat as much as we would have. We got to go boxes. Derrick finished off the rest of the pepperoni pizza in our hotel room that night.
We walked up 25th street to the Christmas Village.
It was so pretty. But crowded.
It was hard to move around as a group of 6 and the kids weren't very interested anyway. So we took them back to the hotel. Here's Derrick and Veronica walking together.
We left the kids watching TV in the hotel rooms and Brandon and I went back out to enjoy the lights. The weather was still unseasonably warm. I was wearing a sweatshirt with two layers so I didn't need a jacket or anything. Brandon was in a sweatshirt. We were perfectly warm. I don't think I've ever been this warm at the Christmas Village. It was really nice. But I think the weather contributed to the number of people there were. It was after 9:00 and there were still people everywhere.
We looked in a few of the windows. This one with skeletons from the Radiology department was funny.
Mostly we just walked around and enjoyed the vibes.
My favorite part was the guy who was dressed as Santa and playing music. I've been listening to a lot of Bruce Springsteen because I've been reading his memoir. I was walking around humming "I'm on Fire" half the night. The street musician was playing a lot of Christmas songs and then went into playing, "Walk of Life" by Dire Straights. The way it starts is really similar to a lot of Bruce Springsteen songs so I was thrilled. It was so fun to listen to that song with a crowd of other people.
Later we walked by the singing Santa again. He was playing something slower and I put my head on Brandon's chest while we stood and listened. That was my favorite moment this Christmas.
Around 10:00 a wind started picking up. And a little after 10:00 all the lights turned off. I don't know if that had to do with the wind or if it had to do with the time. The lights were still on up and down 25th street so we walked up and down 25th street before heading back to the Hotel. I'm glad we were staying downtown so we could have this little impromptu date.
Derrick and Veronica had just finished a movie and were starting to watch Bluey when I got back. They were laughing a lot at that show. I read for a long time until they were done with TV.
Wednesday was Christmas Eve. We woke up in the hotel and got ready for the day. We met up downstairs for breakfast. We could have eaten in the nice lobby, but all the kids wanted waffles so we ate in the room with the breakfast buffet so the kids could keep an eye on the waffle makers.
Here's the pretty lobby.
We went back to our rooms and the kids watched move TV. It was so nice to have a lazy morning on Christmas Eve.
At 10:30 we checked out of the hotel and then drove to Layton to visit my sister Emily. Derrick had a rip in his nice sweater. Emily sat down and sewed it up for him.
Brandon and I brought everything to make a charcuterie board. So we set that up. I thought I took a picture of it, but I guess not.
We had a nice time visiting with Emily for a few hours. Then it was time to move onto the next party. I changed into my party dress and we drove up to Brandon's parent's house.
Brandon was wearing his top hat again. It was fun to be dressed up.
The party was fun as always. Derrick had been talking it over with me for the past several weeks. He likes that the same things always happen. Dinner, Chimes, Dancing around the Tree, and then presents.
Here we are doing chimes.
Here's Veronica and Lydia.
Derrick wanted to sing a silly song after chimes. It was like two lines from something from Garfield's Christmas. It was fun to see him so comfortable in front of everyone.
Earlier in the day I'd been complaining about how Brandon's dad always stopped the singing around the tree to try to explain the words to the Norwegian Christmas song. I was like, it's just him trying to tell us stuff and no one is really listening and he always get's kind of confused halfway through and has to start over. I wish the words were already written out. That night, in a Christmas Miracle, Justin found the words to the song in the box with the chimes. I was like, "We'd had these the whole time?!?"
We did the dancing and then it was time for Dessert. here are the three girls with various goodies.
Jacque and Steve passed around presents. Everyone got money this year. Everyone also got a little 3D printed toy. Here's Derrick's.
And Veronica's.
And Lydia's. Charlotte's was an orange dragon, but I never got a picture of it.
The scheduled part of the party was over, but no one was ready to go yet. I ended up on the couch with Derrick and Charlotte. Derrick took my phone and I fell asleep. Lydia was asleep in the arm chair. And Veronica was nearly asleep on the love seat. Brandon took this picture of the 5 of us. I call this, "two parties in one day."
I eventually woke up and spent another hour talking with the other adults. Around 8:30 we started getting ready to go. We were on the road a little before 9:00.
We drove home without incident. I don't think we even stopped for a bathroom break.
Everyone was still awake when we got home just before midnight. Everyone brought in their stuff and helped unpack the van all the way. Then the kids went to bed.
At 12:30 I got up and helped Brandon put presents around the tree. I told him, "I have about 10 minutes left in me." And that's about how long it took to get everything in from the garage and then put around the tree. Brandon was like, "I'll take care of the stockings. You go to bed." And I was just fine with that idea. I'd forgot that stockings even existed.
Here's the tree before I went to bed.
We'd all agreed that 8:00 was the latest we could sleep in. I woke up at 7:52. The kids were already in the living room sitting on the couches waiting for me and Brandon.
Everything looked really pretty.
We sat around the tree and took turns opening presents. It was a good morning.
Brandon was just throwing wrapping paper into the kitchen as the kids finished opening presents. We had quite the pile by the time we were done.
Here are Charlotte and Lydia with some of their presents in the back ground. Lydia got a big canvas as her present from Derrick. We'd known it would be obvious what it was so we'd hidden that present in the garage and put a decoy present under the tree. That decoy present just had a button in it. Lydia was so confused every time she shook it. When she was finally able to open it there was a note that said to look behind the couch. And behind the couch was a giant canvas. She went "OOOHHHHHH" when she saw it.
Here's another view of the wrapping paper pile.
Marcia got a new collar and an antler. She really liked chewing the antler.
When the presents were opened I was just kind of standing in the middle of the living room with a blank face. Brandon asked me what was wrong. I was like, "Nothing, I'm just really tired." So he told me to go back to bed. I did and slept for another hour and a half. After that I had more of a personality.
Here's Lydia showing me the hunting knife she got.
She also asked for a hoop skirt. So here she is modeling her hoop skirt and hunting knife together.
Derrick got a little hot wheels RV car and had fun driving that around.
He put it in a loop and made it go really fast.
The day was pretty unstructured. We'd planned orange chicken and egg rolls for dinner. But Brandon had put out a lot of the left overs and so we just ate those.
Brandon was exhausted so he took a nap from like 1:00 to 5:00. He really needed that after many late nights.
At 3:00 Veronica and I went over to Chandler's and Cort's house. Veronica would be watching their dog for the next week so we went there to learn where they keep the dog food and things like that. We are used to never seeing anyone on Christmas Day is it was kind of odd to actually go to someone's house.
Two of my presents were Mission Impossible 7 and 8. So that evening we watched Mission Impossible 8. Derrick watched the whole thing and really liked it. Veronica watched the submarrine part and was like, "Well that was intense enough for me. I don't want to watch any more of that" and went upstairs. Charlotte and Lydia didn't watch it at all.
At some point during the day Charlotte asked me, "Hey mom, what if Dad took me and Lydia on a road trip this weekend so we can get more driving hours?" And I was like, "sure." So they started planning an impromptu road trip around Nevada.
So on Friday they packed up their stuff and bought food. Then they left on their road trip. Brandon already had the day off. We'd tentatively planned to go to the Ice Skating rink in Rupert and/or the straw maze in Burley. But the weather had turned rainy and none of those activities sounded fun to do in the rain. So it was just fine for the plans to get cancelled in place of this road trip.
I was considering working from home, but my living room was so messy that it was actually easier to just go to work and ignore the wreak of my house for a little while. I made sure that all the electronic payments had been applied correctly. And then I went home. No one else was in the office the whole time I was there.
Back at home Derrick, Veronica, and I were in really low power mode. We didn't do much at all. I'd promised Derrick we'd watch Jurassic Park Dominion together. So we did that. But I kept falling asleep. We did make it to the crystal store in the mall so Veronica could use her Christmas money to buy a big quartz crystal. The mall was full of people. I think it was the busiest I've ever seen it.
Veronica had received a wooden chest from Lydia for Christmas. She painted it and put her artist brand on it.
It's her initials VI together.
On Saturday we were slightly more productive. I woke Veronica up early so she could take care of the neighbors dog. As we were driving back from their house my van hit 298000 miles.
I asked the kids what they wanted for dinner and the kids suggested waffles with whipped cream. So we went to the store to buy milk, eggs, and whipped cream. Derrick made the waffles nearly by himself.
We watched The War With Grandpa because we'd had it from the library for a few weeks and needed to give it back.
Brandon was texting me with some updates through out the weekend. They were having a really good time.
I stayed up late reading "Into the Clouds" about three different groups who tried to climb the second highest mountain in the world - K2. I'd recommended Into Thing Air to my sister Lindsey. She read it and then read like 4 more books about climbing Everest and other high mountains. One of those was Into the Clouds and she recommended it to me. It was a really good book. She and I joke that our favorite thing is to read about people freezing in the snow while we are snuggled warm in our beds.
On Sunday Derrick and Veronica and I went to church. But we only went for one hour. It was kind of a big deal that 1. I remembered it was Sunday. And 2. We all put on nice clothes.
Derrick didn't want to pass the sacrament without Brandon and we didn't have to get their early for a big bench so we got there about 5 minutes before sacrament meeting started.
After church I sat down with Derrick and my computer and we worked on a project we'd started on Saturday. Derrick loves to tell me dinosaur statistics, but it can get really boring to just listen to him. We'd already finished our project of putting the dinosaurs into their geographic eras. Now I wanted to make charts of how big the dinosaurs were.
I thought about doing this by hand with graph paper, but I decided we should do it on the computer instead. So I made a simple chart in google sheets and started filling in the data. I added a graph to populate as we filled in the data on the chart. On Saturday we'd done all the herbivores.
Derrick was fascinated. He loved seeing how big each dinosaur was compared to the others. We were tracking the height, length, and weight. We also put in Derrick's height, length, and weight for comparison. (He weights 0.09119999968 of a ton.)
Then we sorted all the data from smallest to largest. Derrick called the result, "making ladders." He loved it.
So on Sunday we started working on the herbivores. We worked on it for about an hour. Derrick would pull up the dinosaur stats on his tablet. Then he'd tell me the dinosaur name and the stats. I'd fill them in on the chart. After about an hour I got tired. But Derrick wanted to keep going. So he took over the data entry while I took a nap. He worked on this for another hour and finished all the herbivores. I was so impressed!
I walked him through sorting the data, creating a PDF of the chart, and printing. He'd learned it all by the time we were done.
Brandon and the twins came home around this time. Brandon was pretty impressed by Derrick's new skill. Brandon didn't even know you could insert a graph with Google sheets.
We had the orange chicken and egg rolls for dinner. Brandon and the twins told us all about their trip. On Friday night they'd slept in a tent and woke up covered in snow. On Saturday night they just slept in a parking lot. They'd had a great time. And both twins added about 10 hours to their driving time. Now they both need less than 10 more and they will have the required 50 hours to get their driver's licenses.
Brandon had told a friend that he would take care of his chickens for a day or two so Brandon took Charlotte over there to show her what to do. While they were there Brandon locked himself out of the car. They were able to get the car open again. Brandon told the Pilot, "You can die in the driveway, I can handle it if you stop working in the driveway."
And well, the car took that literally. When Brandon went to start it for work on Monday the pilot didn't start at all. I took him to work and we both were so so so so grateful that the car hadn't died on the middle of Nevada.
We thought it was just a dead battery. But it was actually the starter. That was still an easy fix so the Pilot is running again. But that was an interesting way to start the last week of the year.
Anyway, that's how our Christmas went this year.
Thanks for reading.
