We survived the first week of December

Oh dear, I didn't plan to end up behind on this blog. I had very good intentions of staying caught up. But well here we are on December 16th and I have two weeks worth of posts to catch up on. 

The good news is that I'm behind because December is going really really well. We've had a lot of fun things happen and are making lots of good memories. So let's look back at all those great memories.  

Monday December 1st. In my opinion the Monday after Thanksgiving is the worst day of the year. It's just too hard to readjust to real life after the Thanksgiving break. But after all these years I know that. So I have low expectations for the day and some tricks for managing getting through it. 

So we all stumbled through the day. And when the kids were home from school I didn't expect ANYTHING from them. (Though Veronica still had to go to theatre.) And then we had Little Caesars Pizza for dinner. And we survived the day. 

Here's a picture of our tree that night. Isn't it pretty?

Tuesday December 2 was one of those days where I was like "who was in charge of scheduling appointments? Because she did a terrible job." Charlotte and Lydia had their well child checkups at 10:40 and I had a dentist appt at 2:00. Not sure when I expected to be able to work. 

As it turned out I went to work for about an hour after dropping Derrick off at school. Then I picked the girls up from the high school and took them to their doctor's appt. They were super lucky and were able to get the flu mist instead of a shot. But I still took them to McDonald's for ice cream cones afterward. 

I dropped them off and was back at work in time for admin meeting at 12:00. I worked for about another half an hour and then went home for a minute before heading over to the dentist. 

 On Wednesday December 3 Veronica had therapy at 12:00 and that really affected my whole day. I was able to get some billing stuff done in the morning before her appointment. After her appointment I came home and watched the second half of Hamilton while sorting papers. I'd watched Act 1 weeks ago and I finally had time to watch Act II. 

I also took pictures of the larkspur flowers that are freaking BLOOMING in December. We've had a mild winter. But there were some freezing nights and those did not stop this flower. 

That night Veronica had an orchestra concert. It was so special to see her on stage with a string bass. 

Here she is with all of the beginning orchestra. I call them the "baby orchestra." This was their first concert - ever. 

They played really simple and short songs. My favorite one is "Jingle Bows."  Each of the girls has played this when they were in the "baby class." And it's my favorite every year. Each musician has a bell on their bow. They wave the bow around during parts of the song so it will jingle. Here's a video of it. 

And here are more pictures of Veronica. We could hear her really well. Maybe I'm just biased, but I think we could hear her better than other bass players other years. 

And here's everyone standing up for bows at the end. 

I love seeing Veronica's face peeking over the bass. 

She's just so good looking. 

We stayed to hear the intermediate orchestra play. They were really good. 

There was this photo area in the lobby and Veronica obliged me with a picture. 

We picked up ice cream on the way home and then had that at home. Derrick had been at young mens (they had gone laser tagging). He was dropped off at our house and had ice cream with us. 

Thursday the 4th was a busy day with lots of work. But the evening was the best part. Jori and Tim had a work dinner for Tim's work. They asked us to watch their four girls. And I wanted to watch Muppet Christmas Carol with them. 

This was so much fun. The girls had seen Muppet Christmas Carol before, but it had been a while. They were really into the movie. I hadn't really found my Christmas Spirit yet. But I found a little bit of it in the movie. I was swaying along to the songs and Derrick said, "Mom, here's your Christmas Cheer."

When the movie was over Derrick and Jori's oldest daughter spent a lot of time talking about the human body. Derrick even got out "Mr Body" and was talking about all the organs. Jori's oldest is 10 and in some ways Derrick is about 10. So they were having a great time sharing what they knew. 

At some point that week Brandon and I had finished reading Into Thin Air. This had been a great book to read together. It's such a compelling story. And I really liked doing a re-read because there were so many moving parts to the story that it helped to read it again. 

On Friday December 5 I had my first ever annual review with my boss. It only took 6 years. And really it wasn't so much as a review as a check in. Michael wanted to make sure everyone had signed an up to date employment agreement. It's good he was checking. I didn't even have an employment agreement! Can you tell I was the second employee or what?

We also talked about my goals for the future. Mostly my goals are "keep up."  Remember, I was the second employee - there are now like 26 of us.  But we did talk about whether or not I want to branch off and become a 3rd party biller. The answer to that is "Not Yet."  But I'm so happy to be working somewhere where my boss values my career growth. 

That evening my family went to the Twin Falls parade. I was so happy when we saw that Mary Alice Park was open. This is my favorite place to watch the parade.  

Derrick went to run the trains with Art. 

The trains had logs on them. 

I think Derrick was running this train. 

Charlotte and Lydia played chess. 

As you can see, there was no snow. But there was rain! Here I am under the umbrella watching the parade. 

I actually gave up on the parade for a long time and went to sit by the fire in the park. 

I could see the floats from where I was sitting. 

Best view along the whole route. 

But after a while I decided to go hang out with the family. 

The kids were braving the rain so they could get candy. 

They got a lot. 

I remarked at how different this year was compared to last year. Brandon had been unemployed for over 2 months when we were at this play last year. He'd been watching the floats for each company go by and had been thinking "maybe I should apply there?" at some of them. This year we were just like, "YAY floats!" 

The parade started at 7:00 and the last float went by at 8:00. It was a fire truck. The kids had been getting all the big trucks to honk for them all night. When the fire truck went by they yelled, "Siren Siren Siren"  The firemen heard that and turned on the siren. It was such a fun way to end the night. We went home and the kids looked over their loot. 

Brandon said a guy in a Grinch Suit came by and gave them an onion. I thought hat was so funny. Here's the onion from the Grinch. 

Look at all of Lydia's candy. 

We went down stairs and watched Home Alone all together. That was fun. 

On Saturday December 6th we did the "Sibling Shopping" at Hobby Lobby. The kids each get a sibling to buy a gift for. I set the budget at $15-$20. I also let the kids each pick out a roll of rapping paper. We did that 2 years ago and had so much wrapping paper that we didn't have to buy any last year. (Which was good because Brandon was unemployed so we didn't really have money for more wrapping paper.) I also let Charlotte spent about $50 on various decorations. Our current decorations didn't fully fill the new shelves. So we needed more - and this was also kind of a make up for not having a lot of extra money last year. 

Back at home I had the kids come into my room one on one and wrap their sibling gift. 

And then we put them under the tree. I love that the kids' presents to each other are always the first gifts under the tree. The big red and white one is my gift to Brandon. It is the ONE present I bought this year. ONE! It was just easier for Brandon to buy his own gifts while shopping for me and the kids. So he told me to just get him one gift as a surprise for him. Usually I'm doing all the shopping so I'm loving this arrangement. And Brandon rarely gets to spend the money he earns so he is loving this too. 

Here are our shelves with some of the new decorations. 

Here's the other shelf. In addition to what she bought at Hobby Lobby Charlotte also found stuff at Goodwill. 

And here are our stockings. 

Lydia bought red velvet fabric and made her own Santa hat with some fur someone gave her. It looks great!

That night Brandon and I introduced the kids to Die Hard. They were a little unsure about it at first, but they caught on quick and loved it. Then we watched the Dude Dad video where he uses Elf on the Shelf to recreate Die Hard. The kids laughed so hard. 

The next day Brandon gave me an advent calendar of Hans Gruber falling off Nakatomi Tower. Every day you move him closer to the ground. It was so funny and so perfect. And the kids all knew what it was. 

Sunday December 7th was a nice day. We slept in and then went to church. I hung out in the foyer during Sunday School. I was getting ready for my Bible Study on the 12 minor prophets for 2026. I was going over the Book of Joel with my new NRSV Translation of the Bible. I had been really struggling with my ESV translation because the commentary assumes Biblical Inerrancy so a lot of the terrible things in the Bible are explained as like, "Well it's in the Bible and so God must have wanted this to happen to teach the people a lesson." And I was getting to the point where I was like, "So we are all in an abusive relationship with God?"  

I figured my issue was with the commentary. I was already planning to get another translation so I made sure to get one that Pete Enns from "The Bible for Normal People" podcast recommends. I got the "New Interpreter's Study Bible New Revised Standard Version."  I was already liking the commentary so much better. It was more like, "This author interprets this terrible thing as from God for these reasons." I'd read the later books of the 12 minor prophets over the last few months, but this was my first time circling back around to Joel. 

And this time through was AMAZING. Joel quotes from a lot of other biblical authors so I was looking up all those scriptures and seeing how they tied together. It was so informative. One thing I loved was a quotation from Exodus. It talks about how God's wrath extends only 3 or 4 generations while in contrast his mercy extents thousands of generations. 

I was already committed to doing this bible study, but this was the first time I felt like this was actually going to work. Like I actually could teach this. 

That afternoon Brandon took the twins driving. I sat down with Derrick to work on his dinosaur poster. But I was so tired. I went and took a nap. Later after dinner we were able to get back to work on it and worked on it for hours. Here we are. 

Lydia and Charlotte both needed to do presentations for their speech classes. The presentation had to be about to do something they knew how to do. Lydia's was on crocheting. She took pictures of her process and then put them in a slide show. She worked on that in the living room. 

Charlotte's was on how to make a Christmas tree card. She worked on hers at the kitchen table next to me and Derrick. 

We had Christmas music playing and it was fun to all hang out doing stuff together. 

Here's Derrick's poster all done. This was the second poster because he didn't think there was enough room on the original poster for all the herbivores that would be in the Late Cretaceous. He was right. 

And that gets us caught up on the first week of December. 

Hopefully the second week isn't too far behind. 

Thanks for reading.