Okay so we left off with Christmas Eve. Let's finish up the rest of Christmas Break. It starts with a visit from Santa Claus.
Back in November I got a call from one of the ladies in our ward Relief Society Presidency. She said that we were on a list for a Secret Santa program in the Ward (or possibly the stake, it never was quite clear) and that our Bishop had asked her to call me so she could find out what our children needed and wanted for Christmas. I wasn't surprised that we were on a list like that - we had received food from the Bishop's Storehouse at the beginning of October so obviously we had some financial needs.
At this point I had my job with the Treasurer's office, but I hadn't been working there very long and so I was very grateful to know that there were people willing to help us out with Christmas. The lady asked what kind of toys the kids liked, what their favorite colors were, and what their clothing sizes were. I'm so glad she asked because my kids aren't exactly your typical kids.
Charlotte and Lydia are "normal" enough and I knew they would love anything. But Derrick and Veronica are tricky. For instance, Derrick doesn't like to wear jeans - he likes pants with elastic waist bands. And Veronica - well Veronica is Veronica. I've struggled for years to know what to give that girl. She plays with the strangest things. For a while her favorite toy was a plastic mug with puzzle pieces and other random things in it.
Thankfully she got really into Moana so I had plans to buy her lots of Moana themed things. But she'd already made it very clear to me that she did NOT want a Moana Doll. So I'm glad I had a chance to let our Secret Santa people know that Veronica was not a typical 4 year old girl. Even when it comes to clothing sizes she's not a typical child. She has a really long torso so she needs 5T shirts. Her legs are probably 4T sized, but she's so muscular that she needs bigger pants than you'd expect. So anyway, I appreciated the phone call.
After I knew that Santa would be helping us out with toys and clothes so when Brandon and I went to buy presents for the kids we focused on getting a few specific things that we knew they wanted in particular.
We didn't hear anything else about the Sub-for-Santa program after that phone call, and part of me wondered if it was still happening for us. I figured we were fine either way. We usually do fairly small Christmas' anyway.
The next time we heard about the Secret Santa was a phone call at about 9:30 on Christmas Eve as we drove back to Pocatello after the party at Brandon's Parent's house. The bishop called me and said that our Secret Santa family wanted to deliver the presents, but they weren't sure if we were home. I told him that we were on our way home and would be there in about 30 minutes. I also told him to tell them a big Thank you.
Part of me expected to find the presents waiting for us on the porch when we got home. But there was nothing there when we pulled up. We put the kids into their beds and started setting out the presents. We'd wrapped all our presents the week before, but we hadn't known where the gift tags were when we did that. We'd sorted each child's presents into piles and put the piles into plastic bags with the kids names on them. On Christmas Eve I spent a little while labeling the gifts. While I was doing that I heard a knock at the door. I went to the door expecting to see the people and be able to thank them in person. But all I found were two HUGE garbage bags full of wrapped presents. I was shocked. Even though I was expecting these presents, it was still so humbling to know that strangers had selflessly picked out gifts for our children.
Years ago when the twins were babies and Brandon and I were struggling financially I'd prayed about why we had to go through such hard financial times. The answer I received was that Heavenly Father wanted us to experience this so that we would know how it felt. And that way, when we were in a position to help people, we would remember what it felt like to have been helped.
I thought about that as I looked at the presents. I don't know when we'll be a financial position to be a Secret Santa family, but I KNOW that we will do it one day. At we will do it happily.
Brandon and I started to put out the new presents with the ones we already had. All the presents were wrapped so nicely. Each one was addressed to our children by name. That was a nice touch. And they were so big. I was curious what was inside of each present. Suddenly there was ANOTHER knock at the door. And ANOTHER large bag full of presents was on the porch. I was just blown away.
In addition to presents for the kids there was a present addressed to "Mom and Dad." There was also a Honey Baked Ham, oranges, potatoes, muffins, a large box of cookies, and home made fudge. Yum!
Brandon and I finished setting out the presents, and filling the stockings. We were looking forward to seeing how excited the kids were as they opened their presents.
Unfortunately that time came a little earlier than we'd hoped. Charlotte, Lydia, and Veronica were upstairs around 4:30. Our room is next to the living room so we knew they were looking at the presents and the tree. I thought it was closer to 7:00 so I told them that we'd open presents in a little bit. But then I realized what time it was and I made them lay down on my floor. Around 5:30 Derrick came into our room talking about the Christmas Tree and we knew it was useless to try to sleep in any later. So they kids rushed out into the living room with Brandon and I groggily following.
Here's Christmas Before
And here's Christmas After
It took us about an hour and a half to open presents. We made the kids sit in a circle and open presents one by one. They were so excited about all the gifts. We'd gone to the dollar store one Saturday in December and I'd taken the kids into the store one by one while Brandon waited in the car with the other kids. They had all been so exited about the gifts they'd picked out for each other. I was touched as I watched them open these simple gifts. They loved them just as much as the more expensive ones.
I won't catalog all the toys they got, but I will mention a few in particular.
One important present was Veronica's Moana Swimming Suit. As I said she's a tricky kid and so I wanted to make sure she got EXACTLY what she wanted. She's not spoiled, she's just super opinionated. I knew if she didn't like a gift she wouldn't do anything with it. So I made sure to ask her very specific questions about her gifts. I even went so far as to show her pictures of different things and ask her if she wanted them. That was a good idea since she would tell me immediately if she didn't want something. She was especially adamant that she did NOT want a Moana Doll. What she did want was a Moana SWIMMING SUIT. She okayed the picture of this suit and I ordered it online. She was so happy to unwrap that gift. She wore her swimming suit the rest of the day.
Another long awaited present was the toy train that went under the tree. From practically the moment we moved into this house, Derrick has been talking about having a "circle train, round and round the Christmas Tree." He and I saw one for a great deal at Smith's Market Place in November and so he'd been asking to "go to the store and buy a train" for weeks. I told him that Santa would bring the train.
He was so excited to see that train. We didn't turn it on until after all the presents were unwrapped which is a good thing because as soon as the train started going in a circle Derrick lost interest in anything else for a while. He loves that train and it's currently in the place of honor on his bedroom floor.
Some of my favorite gifts were these bags that the girls made for each other. I gave the girls sewing lessons for their birthday. Each week we'd sew something different. We did things like pillows and blankets for their barbies. The final two weeks were spent working on these bags. They girls picked everything out on their own and had so much fun keeping the secret of what the bags looked like.
Derrick loved his train, but he was also pretty happy about his other presents, especially this nerf gun. He's always liked the nerf guns at Bestemor and Bestefars house and we knew he'd like one of his own. So we bought a little gun and a large pack of extra ammo. I'm so glad we did that because one of his cousins got the same gun on Christmas Eve and Derrick wanted it so bad. That cousin was very nice to let Derrick play with it for a while, but Derrick was so disappointed when he had to leave it. I told him that Santa would probably bring him one. And Derrick was over joyed to open that present. One of my favorite memories will always be him sitting by the tree laughing hysterically as he shot off darts one after another.
And I have to say that I'm amazed at how well I did with buying gifts for Derrick. He's pretty good at telling me what he wants (over and over again) so it was easy to know what he'd like. But there were some things that I bought that he started asking for AFTER I bought them. For example, he loves the movie Dumbo and we've checked it out multiple times from every library we've ever lived near. Well we can't find it at this library and Derrick has been sad about that. So I decided it was time to buy it. (and the fact that it was $10 on Amazon sweetened the deal.) A few days later Derrick started asking for Dumbo for Christmas. And I was like, "do I know my kid or what?"
My Aunt Lori gave me a bunch of clothes for the girls at Thanksgiving. There were leotards, dance tights, and dance shoes among all the other clothes. Charlotte's wanted a ballerina costume ever since her last one disappeared (I think I gave it away when she outgrew it, but I honestly can't remember) so we bought her a tutu and wrapped the dance things up as a gift from Santa. She was thrilled! She wore this for like 3 days straight.
I had a hard time finding a comparable present for Lydia. We'd bought the twins matching everything else so I knew she'd notice if Charlotte got a present that she didn't get. I asked on Facebook for ideas and came away with a lot. But the best one, that I knew she would love, was a large pad of drawing paper.
She was so excited when she realized that the paper didn't have any lines on it. She actually fell backward and knocked her head on something. So then she cried for a while, but later she was happy about the notebook. She's been drawing very detailed pictures of her story "Lady finds a Dinosaur Egg." As you can guess it's about a lady who finds a dinosaur and all the adventures they have together. This picture shows them doing laundry together.
Our Secret Santa's did a great job with gifts as well. We all got new hats and gloves. The kids got several cute new outfits and warm pajamas. I was especially happy to see several pairs of elastic waistband pants for Derrick. And they gave great toys - including Legos.
Brandon and I have put off buying Legos for the kids for years. We love Lego's but we weren't looking forward to nagging the kids to clean them up. So we waited until we felt the kids were responsible enough. We decided this was the year and bought them a big starter box of basic legos.
Santa took it one step farther and bought them cute little sets. Derrick got a Lightning McQueen set, Veronica got a Batman Set, and Charlotte and Lydia got the cutest little Paris cafe set. They have played with this every day since Christmas.
Brandon and I got presents as well. Back at the beginning of school Brandon showed me a hat with the ISU Bengal Tiger Logo on it. He said he really wanted it. So Veronica and I went and bought it on one of my days off. Brandon was pretty excited to open it up.
I wanted a copy of The Magnolia Story by Chip and Joanna Gains of Fixer Upper fame. So I just went ahead and ordered that on Amazon along with the kids' presents. I also picked out a bunch of makeup for myself. Brandon kept asking me what I wanted for Christmas and I told him that I had what I wanted. But he still made a surprise for me. When I opened it up I had no idea what this funny shaped wooden thing was. Then he reminded me that I'd asked for something that would hook onto the side of our bed to hold my books. My bed is about 8 inches away from the doorway so there is no room for a bedside table. I've been putting my books and glasses on the floor each night. But now I have a nice place to keep all my things. I love it!
Normally we like to have a big breakfast on Christmas, but the kids were so engrossed in their toys that Brandon and I just ate some of the muffins that Santa had left for us. It wasn't until like 4 days later that the kids noticed the rest of the muffins on the fridge and asked me, "when did we get those."
I went back to bed to try to make up for the early morning. Brandon helped the girls with their Paris legos. When I got back up they showed me the cute set up. The rest of the day was spent lounging around playing with toys and watching movies. Derrick wanted to watch Dumbo of course. And then the kids wanted to watch their other movies. We always buy each kid a movie every year. This year we bought TV shows on DVD. Veronica got the first season of Curious George, Lydia got Duck Tales, and Charlotte got Rescue Rangers. The kids had never seen those last two TV shows, but we figured they would like them. We were right! The kids were so engrossed in Rescue Rangers. And Lydia keeps talking about how cool it is that Gadget can fix so many things.
Brandon and I finally got around to putting together Breakfast - at around 3:00 pm. So it was really our dinner. We had french toast, bacon, eggs, juice, and hash browns.
Dinner was followed by more lounging around. I started reading The Magnoila Story and kept reading parts of it outloud to Brandon. It's a really great book. I knew some of Chip and Joanna's story from the Fixer Upper TV show and an article I read in People Magazine, but the book has a lot of hilarious stories and great surprises. And there are some touching spiritual stories too. For instance I always assumed Joanna's first version of the Magnolia Market failed. But really it was very successful. She closed it because she felt God telling her she needed to stay home with her kids when her second baby was born. She had the very distinct impression that if she trusted His will and closed her shop He would still help her with her dreams. And obviously that worked out.
Anyway, it was a great day. One thing that made it extra great was that we were able to spend the whole day on our own. Last year we opened presents with Brandon's parents, and his brother and his family. Followed by driving down to Cedar City to see my sister Lindsey at her In-laws house. And as fun as it was to spend the holiday with family last year it was just really nice to be on our own this year.
The rest of the week was also relaxing. Nobody had school so Brandon and the kids hung out at home every day. I had work, but it wasn't very busy. I came home every day for lunch and it was fun to see everyone having a great day at home.
On the first day after Christmas Brandon took the kids sledding. They were all so happy to do that. We wanted to go again on a day I didn't have work, but the weather got warmer and the snow started melting. So we'll have to wait until a big snow storm to do that. (Personally I'm fine if it never snows again this winter, but that's probably wishful thinking.)
On Saturday Brandon's parents came up to visit. They like to visit all their kids after Christmas to see their grandkids enjoy their presents. The kids had a lot of fun showing off all their gifts. I'd kicked around the idea of all of us going bowling on Saturday, but I hadn't really done anything about it. By the time Brandon called to see if the ISU bowling center was open, they told him that they didn't have any available lanes. Oh well there is always next time.
On New Years Eve Brandon and I spoke in Church. I was assigned the topic "Being in the Service of God." Which should have been an easy topic. What's easier than talking about the importance of giving service? But I felt inspired to talk about all the things I've learned from RECEIVING service. And that's a much more humbling and consequently harder topic. It was a hard talk to write and I spent DAYS on it. (Which is one reason I'm only getting around to catching up on Christmas now)
But all the work was worth it because I was able to give the talk in what seemed an effortless, off the cuff way. I typed it out instead of writing it long hand like I usually do, so there is a chance my talk may end up on the blog one of these days.
After church we started working on our New Years preparations. We like to celebrate New Years by gorging on food and watching movies. This year we'd picked the Kung Fu Panda movies and my friend Katie Jo had been kind enough to lend us the first and second one. I'd tried to find the 3rd, but couldn't.
For food we'd decided to repeat the giant, delicious cheese ball from the Our Best Bites Savoring the Seasons Cookbook. We made it two years ago and were shocked at how big it was. This time Brandon tried half-ing the recipe, so he only did half the cheese, but then he forgot he was half-ing it and did the full amount of vegetables. So structurally the cheese ball had some issues, but flavor-wise it was AMAZING.
I'd been eyeing the Sparkling Celebration Punch from the same cookbook for MONTHS so we made sure to have all the ingredients for that. In fact, I'd bought by mint plant with this drink in mind. The drink was great.
This is the one time a year we splurg and buy shrimp so we made sure to have that as well. And there were lots of other goodies on hand too. Brandon moved some of our benches down stairs and put the food on them.
We had a great time watching the movies and eating the food. After the second movie the kids started getting sleepy. Brandon and I really didn't know what to watch next so we put in Gone in 60 seconds. That turned out the be a pretty apt title since I think Derrick and Veronica were out before the opening credits were over. Lydia hung on for a while, but she fell asleep before the movie ended. Charlotte, AKA the one who is always the last to fall asleep, was still awake.
It was 11:00 and I was TIRED. Brandon and I always say that New Years Eve is the hardest night of the year to stay up until Midnight. I wanted to go to bed. But I figured I could make it another hour. I went upstairs and did dishes in order to keep myself awake. Brandon and Charlotte started watching Galexy Quest. Finally at 11:59 they came upstairs and we counted down to the New Year, drank more punch, and then immediately went to bed. It was a little anti climactic, but by that point none of us cared.
In the morning everyone took a turn shooting off a confetti gun that Brandon had bought.
In the morning I told Brandon, that I want to host a New Years Eve Party next year and invite all our friends. And then I marveled at how I'd just made a plan for something that would happen in a year. We haven't had that luxury in a while.
For the past several years I've liked to come up with a "Word of the Year." It serves as an over arching theme for the year. I got the idea in 2014 from a blogger I admire named Jennifer Fulwiler.
Her word for 2014 was Go. Mine was Sur-thrival because that was the year Brandon was in Korea. The word for 2015 was Maintenance and 2016 was Preparedness. 2017 was so nuts I couldn't come up with a word, but in retrospect either Risk or Recalculating would have been good themes. A few days before the New Year I came up with the word for 2018. It's Stability.
I'm in awe of how much stability we are going to have in 2018. This is a complete list of all the big changes that will happen this year.
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Brandon will go from being a first year student to a second year student.
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Charlotte and Lydia will start 2nd grade and will be baptized when they are 8.
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Derrick will start 1st grade.
And that's it!
For the first time in years we aren't planning on moving sometime in the next year. And Brandon is going to be home all year long.
The kids will stay at the same schools, I'll stay at the same job, and Brandon will stay in the same training program. It's almost mind boggling how stable life will be this year.
And yes, I know there will probably be a few curve balls and some unexpected changes, but I hardly doubt that they will be the same size as living in 4 states in 1 year, or moving our whole family into an RV, or having Brandon deployed to Korea for 9 months.
We are just going to have a nice, stable 12 months.
We spent the morning taking down the Christmas Decorations. I've loved having the tree up this year, but I was happy to get my living room back. We keep our Christmas stuff in a storage area in the basement, and we are a little worried about flooding so we decided it was time to move the Christmas decorations out of cardboard boxes and into plastic tubs. So we packed everything up in those. Then I organized our other decorations. For a while we've had our Easter and Halloween stuff stored in the same box. But I've wanted them separate for a while. I finally did that. I'm so happy with how all the storage turned out. And I'm also happy to know that none of this stuff if going into a moving van anytime soon.
Oh and here is a picture of my amaryllis plant we've been growing this year. It's been so fun to watch it grow. I need to remember to do this every year.
I'd planned on working the day after New Years Day, but when my supervisor and I went over my hours for January we realized that I could have an extra day off. (My job description stipulates that I can't work over 120 hours a month.) So I picked to have that day off be on January 2. It was the last day before the kids had to go back to school so I figured it would be really fun to spend that day as a family.
Brandon's parents gave us some money for a family activity as a Christmas Gift and so I wanted to spend that money. Plus I just felt like we needed to get out of the house. We've been major home bodies ever since we finished our summer in Yellowstone. Relaxing at home has been really nice, but I wanted to get back to exploring at least a little bit more. So I decided we should go check out the Hot Pools at Lava Hot Springs.
So in the morning we got up, packed a lunch, found our swimming suits, and started driving to Lava. It felt good to be heading somewhere new.
A few days earlier, when we'd told the kids our plan, and tried to get them excited about swimming in Hot Springs like what we saw at Yellowstone. Veronica was very upset by that. After a whole summer of safety lectures on the importance of staying out of hot springs she didn't like the idea of swimming in one. So we tried to explain that this water was cooler and that we'd be in man made swimming pools. Not scary geyser pools. She still wasn't convinced so finally I just lied to her and told her we were going to a swimming pool. She liked that idea and was really excited to wear her new Moana Swimming Suit.
We arrived in the little town of Lava Hot Springs and found the Hot Pools place.
We paid for our visit and then Brandon and Derrick went in one locker room while the girls and me went in the other. Everyone changed into swimming suits and then we wrapped ourselves in towels and headed outside to the pools.
The thermomiter in our car had said it was something like 13 degrees outside. So we were pretty eager to get into the 103 degree water. The change from cold to hot was so abrupt that our feet actually hurt.
The water was shallow enough that the kids could stand up in it without any problems. Every one had a good time playing in the water.
Derrick took a while to get used to the water. He didn't want to get into it at first, so I had to "gently force" him to sit on the steps with me and we gradually moved down each step. It took him about 30 minutes before he was really comfortable in the water. But after that he really liked it.
It was so crazy how warm we were and yet how cold the air was. Ice would form in my hair if I kept it out of the water for too long. One of our towels got wet and the water dripping off of it kept forming an icicle. We'd break the icicle off and it would reform.
We arrived right before 10:00 and the sun was still behind a ridge for the first hour or so that we were there. Gradually it started coming up. I could tell the air around us was getting warmer, but it never was above freezing. But we actually started to like getting out of the pool. I was worried about dehydrating so we would take a walk over to the drinking fountain to cool off from the water.
We stayed in the pool for over 2 hours. Honestly I could have stayed there all day, but the kids were getting restless. So it was back to the locker rooms so we coudl change into regular clothes again.
Brandon and I weren't ready to go home yet so we decided eat lunch in the car while driving to Soda Springs which is only 20 miles away from Lava. I'd heard about the geyser there and thought it would be fun to check out.
Derrick was really excited to go see a geyser. He's been asking to go to Yellowstone and I have to keep telling him that we'll go there next summer. I think he thought we were really going back to Yellowstone because while we were driving he asked, "Where are the buffalo?" I laughed at that.
We arrived in the town of Soda Springs and could see the geyser erupting from main street. I was like, "They have that right in the middle of their CITY!" We drove toward it, but the eruption had stopped by the time we pulled up.
The area around the geyser was really snowy, but we wanted to get a better look so up we went.
You could see the travertine terraces created by the geyser run off. And you could see lots of pretty ice structures created by the water that blew off of the geyser.
One part of the trail was covered with ice. We realized how slippery it was when Derrick suddenly slipped and fell flat on his face. His hands had been in his pockets so he hadn't been able to brace himself with anything. His forehead absorbed the whole shock of the fall. I helped him up and saw that he had a cut on his eyebrow. It looked deep so I immediately put my gloved hand over the cut to stop the bleeding. I looked at Brandon and said, "we need to get back to the car now." (This picture was taken second's before he fell.)
The kids were great and immediately turned around without any complaining. Derrick was scared to walk on the path so I carried him most of the way back to the car - while still trying to keep pressure on the cut.
As soon as we were back at the car we assessed Derrick's cut. It wasn't bleeding as bad as I'd thought at first, but it was deep enough that I was certain it would need stitches. So Brandon cleaned Derrick up a bit and I called our dr's office to see if they could set up an appointment for stitches.
This was the first time any of our kids ever needed stitches, which is kind of amazing when you think about all the crazy things. I was really glad this happened when Brandon and I were both around.
Brandon drove us the 45 minutes back to Pocatello and dropped me and Derrick off at the dr's office. He took the kids home and waited for me to tell him to come back and pick us up.
I was really worried about how Derrick would react to getting stitches. He'd spent 30 minutes freaking out about a shallow pool. What would happen when the nurse and doctor started poking his face?
But Derrick surprised me by being perfectly calm about the whole thing. When the nurse called us back Derrick told her "I bonk-a head" when she asked him what happened. Then he laid calmly while she used soap and water to clean his cut. In addition to the cut Derrick had a pretty big goose-egg forming on his cheek. And we were sure he'd get a black eye.
The doctor came in and gave it a look. He recommended stitches. The nurse came back and put a cotton ball soaked in some numbing medicine on the cut. She let Derrick and I hang out in the waiting room with the cool fish tank for 20 minutes while it took effect.
Then the doctor brought us back and started giving Derrick stitches. I thought we'd all have to hold Derrick down for this part, but instead he just giggled while the doctor gave him five stitches. I did have to support his head with my hand so he didn't jerk around too much, but overall he did amazing. I swear this kid is full of surprises.
I worried Derrick would pick at his stitches, but he's been really good about leaving them alone. He did end up getting an epic black eye, and people have definitely been giving him strange looks the past week. But all things considered this wasn't as bad as it could have been.
So I guess we can always say that 2018 started off with a Bang.
Okay, I think that gets us pretty much caught up - FINALLY.
The kids all went back to school on Wednesday and Brandon started his second semester on Monday. It was a little hard getting back into the swing of things, but now that we are used to it again its actually nice to have a routine again.
And hopefully that routine will lead to more consistent blogging. I hate feeling behind.
Thanks for reading!
