The final push to the end of the semester

Miraculously, I was able to catch up on this blog. This post about the third week of December is coming to you as the fourth week begins - right on schedule. This was helped by the drastic reduction in activities this week compared to the second week. During the second week of December we had something going on nearly every night. During the third week we had more nights at home than nights away from home. That was very nice. 

So here's the recap of the last week of school. 

First a picture I took on Sunday December 14th, of something that had been created on Thursday the 11th. Derrick watched A Christmas Story and paused it so he could write down the code that Ralphie decodes. He was pretty proud of this, and I was too. 

I actually hadn't slept well on Saturday night. I was still battling a little cold, but since I didn't have anything big on Sunday I decided not to take Nyquil before bed. Big mistake. I had trouble breathing all night and didn't sleep well. So I was a zombie for much of Sunday. I was so happy when it was bedtime. 

Monday was a busy day at work. Lately I've started working 5 hour days on Mondays. I get to work at 8:45 after dropping Derrick off at school. I stay until 2:00 when it's time to leave to get the twins. I can get so much done, and I don't have to rush through my work. It's really nice. I also work long days on Fridays. So between Friday and Monday I already had 10 hours of work done. I used to aim for 12 hours total for the week. But those days seem to be long gone. Aspen Grove has just grown so much that there is more for me to do.

After work I picked up all the kids. I start at the High School with Charlotte and Lydia and then I drive across town to get Derrick at his middle school. Brandon normally gets Derrick when he is done with work, but all the schools get out and hour earlier on Mondays. So I'm in charge of Derrick on Mondays. Then we drive home. Veronica walks home from the middle school. She often acts like this is a huge hardship. We do not live far from our middle school. It's about a 15 minute walk. And Veronica loves to stop and pet all the dogs along the way. But she'll still complain about it occasionally. 

I took the girls shopping at Goodwill for "Ugly Sweaters."  But we never really found any truly ugly sweaters. Instead we found some cute shirts and pajamas. 

Veronica had theatre on Monday. It was the second to last rehearsal. They will take a break over Christmas and New Years and then come back and get ready for the show in January. Theatre has been a little bumpy for Veronica lately. She's been really self conscious about her height. She hates that its what EVERYONE brings up about her. And then she's also self conscious about how young she is in this group. This is her first play with the full teenage group. Before she was in the 7-10 group. Over the summer she was in a 7-15 group. And now she's in the 10-18 group. So she's 12 doing a play with full on High School seniors. It's making her feel like she doesn't fit because she's tall, but young. Thankfully this rehearsal was really fun and she felt like she belonged again.

I'd been able to get all our Living Nativity costumes washed and dried. That's no small feat when half the fabric has to be hung dry. I put the costumes back together on their hangars. Derrick helped me take them back to Britt's barn.  

On Tuesday Derrick had an orthodontist appointment. Normally I like to schedule those at 8:30 so we he doesn't miss much school. But this time the only appointment available was at 10:00. That made my morning a little awkward. I could drop him off at school, but there really wasn't time to go to work or go back home. I decided to do some shopping at Walmart. Brandon works at the hospital next to Walmart so I invited him to meet up with me. 

I had to get some boring things like soap and mascara so I found those before Brandon showed up. When he arrived we did the more fun shopping. We bought things for holiday baking and for decorating gingerbread houses. It was fun to do that together. 

At 9:45 I went back to Derrick's school and checked Derrick out for his appointment. His appt was really normal. He is so close to being done, but his back teeth aren't quite as lined up as they need to be. so we are just waiting on that before he get's his braces off. 

I took him back to school and then went  . . . shoot I'm not sure where I went. I know I went grocery shopping and I know I went to work. But I can't remember what order I did that in. Let's assume I went to Winco and bought food. Then I went home and put away the perishable stuff. And then I went to work. I know I was at work in time for Admin meeting at noon. But maybe I went to work and then went grocery shopping? That could have happened too. 

Oh well. 

I'd brought a big box of 60 eggs. But we didn't quite have room for the whole box in the fridge. We divided a lot of it into two 18 count cartons we had, but there were still a lot of eggs. So Brandon made him and me big omelets for dinner. (And we still had a lot of eggs left over.) Brandon makes the best omelets. 

Tuesday kind of felt like the last normal day before we would get caught in a vortex of ever increasing busy-ness that lead to Christmas. I just had a sense that a lot of things needed to happen on Tuesday so that the next few days wouldn't feel as stressful. So that's why I was shopping. I also chose to focus on getting ALL the laundry done. Washing the Living Nativity costumes had taken precedence over our regular laundry.  So we felt a little more behind than usual. I wanted to feel on top of it all again. 

So all night long I made sure the washing machine and dryer were running load after load. I had the kids put away their laundry. I put away my laundry. It felt really good to get on top of that. I kind of wish I took a before and after picture. On Sunday our laundry room had been a mess. There were costume pieces hanging on hangars hooked into nails in the upstairs floor boards. There were laundry baskets with dirty laundry on the floor. And there was a pile of clean laundry on the laundry table. By Wednesday the costumes were gone, the floor was clear, and the laundry table was nearly empty. That felt really good.

I also made some Christmas treats with Charlotte and Veronica. We made pretzel treats with hersheys hugs and M&M's. We also made Muddy Buddies. I'd thought about making treats for the neighbors this year, but food is so darn expensive I just couldn't do it. I told Brandon, "we have our friends and neighbors over for parties all year long. They know we love them." 

On Wednesday I met with a lady named Annie who is the Executive Director of Jump Company. She will be my direct supervisor when I'm doing the book keeping. We had a lovely time talking. She has 7 boys and they have all thrived in theatre. 

The weather had been super weird all day. As I'd driven the kids to school there had been a big black cloud over most of the sky. But the sun would occasionally peek through and blind me out of no where. The wind was blowing like crazy. While I was at Annie's house it started raining really hard and there were big puddles of water on the road as I drove home. 

Later in the day there was news of a tragedy that happened in the morning. Two children had been waiting for their school bus when a giant tree fell over on them! I told the kids about that and Charlotte and Lydia reminded me that we'd seen the life light helicopter flying really low right before I took them to school. That had been at 7:40. It had to have been the helicopter flying to the hospital. When Brandon came home from work he said that the kids had come in to the hospital, but were then taken to Boise. 

On Thursday my friend Cort shared on his Facebook page the link to the Go Fund Me that was set up for the kids medical bills. The two children went to school with Cort's kids. One was a little 6 year old girl. She was hit in the head. Her mom said she was face down when she found her and was unresponsive. She had a broken eye socket and skull fractures. But thankfully her brain seemed to be doing okay. She remembered who people were. Her brother was 10. The tree fell on the lower half of his body. Both his femurs were broken and his pelvis was badly damaged. He would need a hip replacement.  

At the time I first saw the Go Fund Me the goal was set to $22,000 and I think it was already at something like $18000. The kids were like, "Mom, we are donating right?" I already was planning on it, and I made sure to let the kids know. 

That $22,000 goal was met and the organizers increased it again, and then again. The goal is currently $60,000 and $56,691 has been met. It's been incredible to see the community come together over this. 

But I didn't know about all that on Wednesday afternoon. I spent most of the day in the basement. I watched the Era's Tour final concert on Disney plus while sorting through papers. I wanted to get my scrap books up to date. I knew I'd been slacking off for a few years on this, but I was so surprised when I realized I still had loose papers from 2022!  That meant I was sorting out papers into piles for 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. I was able to get them all sorted out, but sometimes it was tricky. For example, I had a ticket stub for the Wilson Wizarding Experience. But all it said was "Thursday October 23rd" or something like that. So I'd have to google, "Thursday October 23rd" and see what year popped up. Then I'd know what pile to put it in. 

By the time I was done I'd been able to get all of 2022 into a binder. There were things from our Spring Break trip to Nevada and Los Vegas, our Lagoon season passes, and things from the Cousin Camp in Eden, Utah. It was nice to get all of that nicely organized. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get the other things organized over winter break. 

I cleaned everything up and then picked the Twins up from school. Veronica had her last theatre rehearsal for the year that night. That was kind of a problem because the ward had planned a temple trip for the exact same time as theatre. They were also going to Pizza Pie Cafe that night. The leaders were very understanding that youth had a lot of different things going on so they said that it was okay to meet up at Pizza Pie Cafe even if you didn't go to the temple. 

Charlotte and Lydia weren't interested in the activity at all. So they didn't do either thing. Derrick was kind of interested in the temple part, but he was more interested in Pizza Pie Cafe. After last weeks drama I really didn't want to have the leaders have to keep an eye on Derrick in the temple so I decided that he'd just skip that part. 

So at 6:00 I took Derrick with me to pick up Veronica and then I took both of them to Pizza Pie Cafe. We got there about 5 minutes before the people from the ward started showing up. Derrick was so excited to see his friends. 

I dropped them off and then came home. Brandon and I had plans to wrap Christmas presents that night. He'd set up a whole wrapping station in the garage. We each had a side of the table with our own scissors and tape. The wrapping paper, tags, ribbons and bows were in the middle. 

Brandon had taken care of buying all the gifts this year. So this was the first time I was seeing the kids' presents. He bought a lot of really cool stuff. I wrapped Derrick and Veronica's gifts while he did Charlotte and Lydia's. 

Derrick and Veronica made it home from the activity and all the kids watched movies or something while we were wrapping. Around 8:00 I got really tired. I sat on the couch while Brandon finished up. (He's more precise at wrapping than me.) He went back over the gifts I wrapped and added fancy ribbons tied in fancy bows to some of them. I'm so lucky to have this guy. 

I was so tired. So at 8:45 I called it a night and went to bed. I've been reading Bruce Springsteen's memoir "Born to Run" every night. Its really good, but on this night I read like maybe a chapter and then fell asleep. 

Thursday was a busy work day. I checked in with all my little billing clients in the morning and made sure their stuff was looking good. Then I went to Aspen Grove in the afternoon. Thursday is the end of the pay period. By the time I clocked out on Thursday I'd worked 16 hours and 20 minutes. The week before I'd worked 14 hours and 51 minutes. Yep my days of 12 hour work weeks for Aspen Grove are long gone. 

Brandon often teases me when I'm like, "UUGH I worked 4 hours today!"  He's like "um hey I'm over here doing 8 hour days and 40 hour work weeks."  But he's just teasing. He knows that I'm also working a second part time job as the kids morning and afternoon chauffer. Before I even get to "work" I've already put in at least 90 minutes of work in making sure the kids get to school. Over a 5 day work week that adds up to 7.5 hours. And then add in all the other little side projects I have going on and I'm definitely working the equivalent of a full time job.

That night Brandon and I went to the Orpheum to see White Christmas. Here's our traditional terrible selfie.

I was very excited to see this show. Mostly because I've never actually seen White Christmas. The play or the movie. Everyone was like, "Oh White Christmas is so amazing." And "I just love White Christmas, don't you?"  And I was like, "Oh sure!" But really I had very little context for this show. I knew the basic idea. A hoofer and a crooner fall in love with a pair of sisters. I knew the song Sisters. And I knew the song White Christmas. But I knew NOTHING else.   So I was ready to finally see White Christmas. 

I also knew like half the cast and was so excited to see them in their roles. The show was absolutely delightful. I'll tell you about it as I show you these pictures that were ripped from the Magic Valley Rep Facebook page. They are in no real order. 

Here are my friends Ivan and Tyler as Phil Davis and Bob Wallace. Ivan has Danny Kaye's role and Tyler was in Bing Crosby's role. They both did fantastic. 

I made this meme based off of an iconic line from Christmas Vacation. 

My friends Rylie and Rachel played a set of twins in Bob and Phil's show. They were Rita and Rhoda. They were hilarious. 

Here's everyone at the end of a dance number near the beginning of the show. 

Here's Rachel and Rylie again. 

The show starts in World War II with a show that Bob and Phil are doing to cheer up the soldiers. My friend Brendan was also playing a soldier. And my friend Kelly was the general. I kept thinking about how I met Kelly for the first time around this time last year. I met him and his wife at the auditions for Cinderella.  

Here's Ivan being Ivan. 

My friends Brooke and Sara were Betty and Judy. They were so great together. 

Here's a scene on a train. 

Honestly, the show was just okay at first. But it really got off the ground when my friend Heather showed up in the role of Martha the hotel concierge.  She was delightful and brough so much energy and humor to the show. 

My dear little Peyton was also a delight to watch. She played Susan the General/hotel owner's grand daughter. This was Peyton's biggest role ever. She was on stage a lot, she had many lines, and she even had a little song. This was also her first time playing a GIRL. She's been Tiny Tim, Grover Dill from A Christmas Story, a troll in Little Women, and the page in Cinderella. She was fabulous as Susan.  

Here she is when Tyler was singing "Counting your blessings instead of Sheep." This is the song that ended up in my head the most. 

My friend Brent played Ezekiel. He was so fun. 

Here's Sara, Brook, and Heather in their trio number. Sara has been in 12 plays with Magic Valley Rep. She's had big roles in three of the plays this year alone. She was one of the leads in Much Ado About Nothing. She played the beggar women in Sweeny Todd. And now she was Judy. I asked her which is harder, being a lead in a musical or in a Shakespeare play. She says they are so different that she really can't compare them. But White Christmas was defiantly more fun. 

Here are Tyler and Ivan doing the Sister's Routine. 

And here is Brook doing a solo act at a New York Night Club. Brook was FABOULOUS in this role. I'm friends with her on Facebook, but I don't know her well. Her brother in is my ward though. I heard that she almost didn't audition for this show. She felt her body was just too big to really get a role. But she was cast as Betty and was incredible!

And here is everyone all happy and in love at the end. 

Brandon had a great time talking with everyone before the show, during intermission, and after the show. Our friends Marianne and Warren ended up in the seats in front of us so it felt like we were on a double date. At intermission Brandon went to the bathroom and then talked to all his friends at the concessions counter for a while. And then after the show we were both in the lobby giving congratulations to the actors for a long time. As we left I joked with Brandon, "you want to go to the after party don't you?"  He was like, "Yah, I'm all wired now."

But that wasn't really an option so we went home. I think Brandon was up until like 12:30. He gets so much energy from being around his theatre friends. 

Thursday had felt like Friday so it felt very unfair when we still had to get up for school and work on real Friday morning. But it was a half day so that was great. 

I got everyone dropped off at school and then went to work. This was my last "real" day of work for the year so I really wanted to get as much done as possible. I'll still work over the break, but my kids will be home so I wont be able to work as much as I have been. I was at work until a little after 1:00. Charlotte and Lydia were out of school at 12:40, but they went home with the other set of twins so I didn't have to worry about getting them. I drove over to Derrick's school and picked him up. Then I drove to Veronica's school to pick her up. She was hoping to take the bass home for the break, but the other kid beat her to it. But she was still happy to get a ride home. 

We got home and I was like, "Ummm, I didn't think we'd make it this far. I don't have anything planned."  So I took a nap. 

Derrick had a few presents from school. One of them was a wooden car. Veronica took it and painted it to look like a reindeer. She even made antlers for it out of hot glue. 

Here's an ornament that Derrick brought home. 

We also took a picture of our Die Hard Advent Calendar because we hadn't taken a picture of it yet. 

Brandon came home and I picked up the twins. Brandon started getting things ready for Christmas Under the Tree. I took this picture because I thought this was all the treats. And then he pulled out like 7 more things. 

Here are our beautiful shelves with lots of Christmas decorations. Earlier in the week Charlotte had taken Marcia on a walk and found a house that was giving away a lot of Christmas Decorations. She picked up a whole Christmas Village and a small leg lamp. 

We'd also found a tree on the curb in front of our neighbors house. The lights didn't work so Charlotte pulled them off. Brandon bought more lights and they strung them on the tree together. It was going to be the basement tree, but Charlotte wanted it up in the living room for Christmas Under the Tree. And now it's just staying there. The living room is starting to look like a forest. 

Here's the view of our snack table after Brandon was done with it. 

We started off Christmas Under the Tree with just kind of a collective sigh of "Oh we made it." I read the Nativity Story and Veronica acted it out with our wooden nativity set. 

Then the kids wanted Brandon to read "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." He was going to do a funny accent and so I decided to record a little bit of it. But then the kids got really into it. Derrick was reciting some of the lines and Veronica was acting out the role of the Grinch. So I just kept recording and recording and recording. 

There was a lot of nonsense and laughter. Here's the result in all it's unedited glory. If you have about 20 minutes you can watch all four of the videos. Or you can just skip this. 

We finished that book and then the kids wanted to do the same thing with The Polar Express. This time Lydia was the conductor, Charlotte was Hero Boy, and Veronica was Santa. 

This one went completely bonkers by the end. Derrick pulled his head into his sleeper and ran around like that. 

And let's take a moment to appreciate the way the internet has improved over the years. When I started this blog in 2008 it was sometimes a struggle to get a few pictures uploaded. And now I just uploaded SEVEN videos to Youtube in a small amount of time. I'm especially impressed by that last 8 minute video. I've always avoided recording things for over 5 minutes because uploading was often impossible - or at least really slow. This one went up with almost no trouble. 

Despite the chaos of the night, out living room was looking very dreamy. Here's a picture. 

Brandon passed out the newest ornament that his mom painted. This one is Three Turtle Doves. On Brandon's birthday Jori had been admiring the tree. She said, "I like these bird ones."  Then she nearly lost her mind when she found out that Brandon's mom hand painted like 90 percent of the ornaments on our tree. She couldn't believe the talent. 

We went downstairs and watched Poky's Christmas which is a cute little video that Brandon's brother made in High School. I set a little Marco Polo to Brandon's family saying that we watch it every year. I showed the kids smiling at the video. Later Bryan responded that he thought it was super cool we still watched that. He said his own kids haven't seen it in years. 

Then we watched Christmas Vacation.

Saturday started out with our ward Christmas Breakfast at 9:00. 

My friend Kori had organized a shadow nativity with some of the kids and teenagers. It turned out really special.

Then it was time to eat. I ended up in line with my friend Nicole. Her husband had to work so she was there by herself with her three kids - and one was a baby. When we went through the line I made sure to help her middle boy. I put food on his plate and carried it to his seat for him. She was really grateful. 

We were at the party for almost 2 hours. It was really fun to talk with friends. 

When it was over we went shopping for a gift for Marcia at PetSmart. 

And then we just hung around the house taking care of little things. Derrick had been wanted to watch a really low budget movie called Alone for Christmas. It was basically Home Alone, but with dogs. So I took one for the team and watched the movie with Derrick. It was so boring and I fell asleep for most of it. But Derrick felt supported. 

Then we watched Home Alone Three. It's not a great Home Alone Movie, but it's an okay movie and it looked like a masterpiece compared to Alone for Christmas. 

Our friend Heather is going to watch Marcia at our house when we are in Utah later next week. So Brandon took her a key. It was easiest to meet up at the theatre. He ran over there for what he thought would be a real quick trip. But it turned into a lot more. (Trips to the theatre often do.)

He ran into my friend Laura. Laura is in charge of getting things organized. She's helping with a lot of the production for Anastasia and she wanted to talk to Brandon about helping with the set. She has a spreadsheet where she is building a database of everyone who is available to help with upcoming productions. So she put Brandon on that and then also added me and the twins in various things we are willing to help with. 

She also has a spreadsheet for every upcoming production. She listed Brandon as a set builder for Anastasia, and Seussical which will be next September. 

Then Brandon talked to Crayson who is directing Anastasia. Crayson went over what he needs Brandon to do with the set. He's going to be in charge of two arches and the train. 

He came home all excited for next year. 

Jori and Tim had another company Christmas party so we watched their girls again. The kids watched Klaus and then K-Pop Demon Hunters. I spent most of the evening blogging. 

Around 8:30 Brandon and I started getting ready for the White Christmas 4th Wall event that night. I realized that Brandon needed a haircut about the time Jori and Tim showed up. So we kind of rushed everyone out the door. I was like, "Thanks for coming. We have to get ready for our thing tonight."  Then I gave Brandon a haircut. 

I got ready for the event and was finally really happy with how my hair curled. 

I was also in LOVE with my dress. I'd tried this on at DI when I'd been looking for my dress for the November 4th Wall. It fit perfectly, but I'd talked myself out of buying it. And then I regretted not buying it. 

I went back about three weeks later when Veronica needed new dress pants. I'd looked for the dress hoping that it would still be there, but I was certain it would already be gone. But it was still there!  I was so happy and bought it right away. It was only $6. I can't believe that I ever talked myself out of buying this dress. 

Brandon was also sporting and awesome look. He'd redone his top hat to be Christmas themed. He looked so good. 

I always love the 4th Wall event. But this one was super special because it was Christmas themed. Everyone was so festive looking. 

I love this event. 

Brandon and I split a burger and fries and fried pickles. Everything was so good. 

Here we are together. 

We sat with Chris and Karin. That was such a treat. I adore them. We also mingled a lot. At one point I told Karin, "I'm just accepted the fact that I'm never leaving this party. Brandon is going to stay as long as he can."

As it was we were there until 11:59. It had been such a fun night. I love our theatre family so much.  

Oh and I might have ended up with ANOTHER side project. Our friend Brian is going to run for Congress. I missed the first part of the conversation so I heard he was running for something, but didn't know what. And without really thinking I was like, "Oh do you need a treasurer for your campaign?"  I don't know if this is a thing in all states, but in Idaho every campaign needs a treasurer. A lot of the political adds even list the treasurer's name in small print. So I knew he would need a treasurer and well I can do that. He was like, "let's talk after the holidays."  It was only later that I put all the pieces together and realized he's running for like the national congress and not just something local. 

He'd mentioned that he needed help getting word about his campaign out to the rest of the state and it dawned on me that I actually can help with that in a small way. I'm Facebook friends with Wendy Norman who ran against Mike Simpson a few years ago. And I know Steve Brown who is a political consultant in Pocatello. So I sent Brian a Facebook message telling him that I was serious about helping with his campaign and offering to connect him with the few people I know. 

So we will see what happens with that. 

Yes I'm fully aware that I am the cause of most of my stress. But helping with a political campaign was already kind of on my bingo card for 2026 - I just didn't know what candidate to help yet. And now I know. 

Anyway, that gets us caught up to today. My next post will be all about Christmas. 

Thanks for reading!