Christmas and after christmas and New Year

Christmas Day was only two weeks ago, but it feels like I've lived 7 lives since then. I was really busy with work over Christmas break. And when I wasn't working I was either doing stuff with the family or I was in very low power mode. So this blog was neglected.

But I want to get it updated because already the week after Christmas feels like a complete blur and I don't want to forget any more of it. So let's get going on this thing starting with Christmas Eve. 

Oh wait, maybe not. Another reason I haven't really updated this blog is that I'm still trying to figure out what happened Christmas Eve Day. 

You don't need all the details, but basically I got super angry at my mother in law for something that was actually very trivial. Our relationship over the past few years has been okay, but it's all built on top of the quicksand of the fact that it was AWFUL living with her 7 years ago. So I guess the trivial thing was the thing that made the whole structure sink into the quicksand.  

I was not spending any more time in her house than I had to. So I ended up going to my sister Emily's house for several hours. I needed to do some quick sewing on some popped seams on the sleepers, but I was NOT going to ask my mother in law for even a needle and a thread so I brought those to Emily's. I also showered at Emily's for the same reason. 

Emily was great. She made me feel welcome and fed me left over food from a party she'd hosted for David's family the night before. She let me use her sewing machine and a needle and thread. And I took a long shower at her house. It was good to have somewhere to go. I told her I wished she'd lived here when I was with my in-laws 7 years ago. I probably would have been in a way better headspace if I'd had somewhere to escape to back then. (But then maybe we wouldn't have moved to Yellowstone to get away so there's that.) 

Charlotte came with me and she had a fun time playing with Juniper. In hindsight I should have brought Lydia too, but I wasn't thinking very logically when I left. Actually in hindsight I should have planned something on Christmas Eve Day with Emily's family anyway. But I was thinking it would be fun for my kids to be at my in-laws that whole day. 

I didn't really think about what would be enjoyable for me. 

And that's really what's at the heart of all this. I've thought about the whole thing A LOT since then and I've realized that I'm an almost 39 year old woman still playing the daughter in law role that I took on at 22. I haven't let my role grow up with me. I'm still acting like it's just fine to spend my whole weekend/major holiday staying at my in-laws. Maybe that was fine in my 20's and early 30's but it's not feeling as fine anymore.

Anyway, there's more but that's all I really feel like sharing right now. 

I didn't really want to go back to my in-laws, but I did want to spend Christmas Eve with Brandon and the kids. So I went back.  

I was in a MOOD and somehow got my hair and make up to reflect that. I could not believe how good everything turned out. 

Like seriously, this was the confidence booster I needed. Oh and check out the cross I'm wearing. This cross belonged to my mom's Great Grandma. My mom had it my whole life, but a few years ago I asked if I could have it. I've been wearing it on Sundays off and on for a while. Christmas Eve was a Sunday so I wore it. 

Here I am with Brandon. 

He was sporting his Christmas Tree goatee. It was so funny.

Derrick was so excited for the Christmas Eve party. We'd made a list of all the things that would happen that evening. Here he is at the top of the stairs looking at the tree. 

We had dinner with lots of good food like always. 

Here are Charlotte and Lydia getting the desserts. 

Charlotte and Lydia brought their instruments so they could play them during the little talent show portion of the night.

    

Then it was time for chimes. Derrick was ready!

Here are all four kids with their chimes. 

After chimes we moved the furniture so we could dance around the tree. Derrick couldn't wait. He was side skipping around the tree.

I wanted to take a picture with him because he was so much fun.

I also got everyone to line up for a family picture. 

Everyone held hands and walked around the tree while singing Christmas Carols. 

Steve had printed out the words to the Norwegian song we always sing. Derrick was very interested.

We sang that song and acted out the actions. Then it was time for presents for the grand kids. I sat by Veronica. I wanted a picture with her so I smiled and took a picture. 

Then she said we needed to do serious faces. This picture shows my inner mood because this was really how I was feeling about some things. (Not all the things, but some of the things.)

We opened presents. Most of the grandkids are old enough that they just get cash. But even that was wrapped in fun ways like spread out like a pizza in a pizza box. Derrick had wanted a nerf gun. This is what he got. He had a lot of fun with it the next day.

Veronica got LED lights and a little plush toy. This is her "I'm trying to pretend to be happy" face. She'd wanted the lights, but they didn't look very fun in the box. After I took this picture I helped her open the box and she saw the lights and the remote that came with them. She thought they were pretty cool. Then Brandon helped her turn them on and she LOVED them.

Lydia got some jewerly

And so did Charlotte (not sure what this face is about.)

And that was the end of the official party. These parties used to start at 6:00, but my inlaws are worried about us driving back in the dark so the party had started at 4:00. Now it was about 7:00 and it was dark. (I was like, um it's a three hour drive. If you were worried about the dark we'd have to start this party at like 2:00.) Anyway, we weren't in any hurry to leave so everyone just chatted for a while. 

My kids all changed into their sleepers. Charlotte and Lydia snuggled up together in the recliner and watched something on our tablet. 

Around 8:00 we packed up the car and started heading home. The drive home was pretty uneventful. There was no snow. That's always a relief. 

We got home around 11:00 and the kids were all still awake. Usually they are already asleep or pretty sleepy, but this time they were still really alert. Everyone helped unpack the car and then the kids went to bed. 

I'd made plans to go to Midnight Mass with my friend Jori so I hung out with Brandon and helped with a few Christmas-y things and then said good bye to him. He still had a bunch of things to do - including wrapping my presents so he was just fine with me leaving. 

Jori lives one street behind me so I drove over to her house and picked her up and then drove us to St Edwards. Jori had never been to Midnight Mass and I did a terrible job at prepping her, but she did okay and liked it. Since Christmas Eve was a Sunday this year the church was PACKED. We had seats on the back row. We could barely hear anything. But I did catch a few words of the Homily. The Priest said something about reading the books that no one else reads and doing the things that no one else does and I thought about my Scripture Study Group. 

Mass was over at 1:00 and I was dropping Jori off at her house at 1:15 and then we started talking, and talking, and talking, and all of a sudden it was 2:24 and Brandon was texting me to make sure I was okay. 

So Jori and I wrapped things up and I went home. It took me a long time to fall asleep. I'd had such a fun time talking with her. 

In the morning the kids woke up around 7:30 and sat in the living room quietly admiring the tree and presents until Brandon and I woke up around 7:50.

Here's the tree - with all the presents that Brandon had put around it. 

I had the kids come pose in front of it. 

And here are the stockings. 

The presents were set out in a way so that the train could still go through them.

Then we started taking turns opening presents. I loved seeing Charlotte and Lydia in their sleepers. 

Here's Derrick. He was so excited.

And Veronica. 

Marcia got a new chew toy and loved it very much from the first moment.

I didn't take pictures of the kids opening presents. But here's the aftermath. Veronica is playing on her drum practice pad. She didn't ask for this. But Santa knew she'd love it. 

Charlotte and Lydia were playing with their lego sets. 

Here's Veronica drumming again.

Brandon made me a replica of an advent calendar tree I had when I was growing up. It's not done yet, but it's getting there. 

Here I am. I spent most of the morning laying on the couch reading, "A brief theological introduction to Mosiah." See what I mean about reading the books no one reads. 

Most of us just vegged out and relaxed all day. It was lovely to have no where to go, nothing to do, and nobody to see. Every so often I'd have the kids pick up some of the trash from the living room. But that was pretty much the extent of the expectations for the day.

Here's the advent wreath burning down throughout the day.

Here's Derrick and Brandon playing the game Operation. Derrick really liked this present.

They also worked for HOURS on a lego RC car. 

Here's Lydia with her art set.

Here's Charlotte with her lego model of the house from Up.

Veronica got a bunch of gems and rocks. Some were rough and some had been polished. She and I looked at them for a very long time. 

The kids also got some I-spy books and Hey Seymore. Those were really fun to look at. 

Here are the kids starting to sort things into the Lego brick holders. 

Brandon helped Veronica put up the LED lights in her room. She could change the colors with her remote. She was so happy.

Brandon bought the family a fun sand thing. My grandparents had something like this when I was really little and I'd loved it. So I was super excited to get one as an adult. I spent something like a hour and a half playing with this thing on the first day.

It's kind of hard to see in this picture, but Charlotte is playing with Lydia's new lego set. It was Hagrid's hut. 

Here's Lydia drawing. 

I think this is a picture of Veronica playing with Derrick's popper gun.

Here's Brandon hard at work on something. 

Me, doing nothing. 

Here's Veronica's lego set. It was actually an off brand set so it was a little hard to build. But it looks super cute. 

Playing with the sand thing. It was mesmerizing. (This toy is another reason I haven't updated the blog.) 

At some point we watched Brandon's new movies, Crockadile Dundee 1 and 2. I slept through almost all the first one. 

I'm trying to remember if we ever had an official meal. I think we just ate leftovers. 

At some point Charlotte and Lydia filmed their lego Christmas Village. 

Here's Veronica with her drum set again. It had ear plugs so she could hear the drum sounds, but we couldn't. 

Here are all the lego sets together. 

Hagrids hut.

 Veronica's rock kit had come with an activity chart. You put it on the table and then sorted the rocks onto the correct sections. 

She and I had a really good time doing that together. 

Here's Derrick with the helicopter Lydia had bought him at Hobby Lobby. He was excited about it, but it actually didn't work that well so we ended up returning it a day or two later. 

And that was Christmas Day. It had been nice, but I was honestly glad it was over. Christmas is a lot of work, and it was good to have it done so I could move on with my life. 

Brandon had the day off on Tuesday. So that's the day I planned to move my office stuff to the new building. It's also the day that my boss would be moving a lot of the furniture. It's also the day we had a SURPRISE snow storm. This was the only picture I took of the whole moving process because most of the time I was really busy.

I helped pack up all the office supplies and then Brandon and I took a load of boxes to the new office. It was good we had the minivan. My boss just had his truck and that wasn't going to help with keeping the snow off the boxes. We dropped the boxes off and went back for all my furniture. The only thing we couldn't fit was my futon. On the way to the office that second time we saw like three almost accidents and one for real accident. Brandon helped get my furniture in place and set up my computer. Then we went home and stayed there. 

Well sort of. I'd checked the mail and there were checks so I did the deposit at home. But the deposit slips were still packed. I realized I had no idea what the account number was. That afternoon I drove over to the bank and sheepishly asked for them to look up the account number. That was kind of funny.

The kids stayed home and watched movies and played with toys. I think Brandon and I spent most of the afternoon sleeping. Christmas had worn us all down. 

Wednesday was kind of a crazy morning. Charlotte had a wire poking inside her mouth and Derrick had bit into a Candy cane and popped one of his braces brackets off. So I called the orthodontist and made an appointment to get those looked at.  That was at 11:30 and Veronica had an appointment with her therapist at 12:00. So I took everyone to the orthodontist and planned to take everyone to Veronica's appointment. But the orthodontist t was actually really quick. The real orthodontist wasn't working. It was just an assistant. So all she could do was clip the wires and then make an appointment for getting brackets on later. 

So there was time to take everyone home and then just take Veronica to her appointment. 

That afternoon I went to work at the new office for the first time. I did a lot of work stuff, but I also I spent some time getting my office looking somewhat good. 

It's in the corner of the building next to the hallway that everyone has to walk down. So I wanted to make sure that it looking good from the doorway. 

Here's what the whole thing looked like. 

Here's my desk area. 

And another view. 

You can see the lobby out my door. 

I wasn't sure what to do with this blank wall yet. 

My coworkers were also working on their offices. It was so fun to see all the cool ways they were decorating. Every room was like a little oasis. 

Thursday was another day of work. But this one was completely different. I hardly saw any of my other coworkers. Even my boss was only there for a little while. 

In the afternoon Brandon and I took the kids to the college science museum. We've been here a lot, but really this was just an excuse to get out of the house. 

I love that this is free. 

I sat and admired this display for a while. They did a really good job on these rocks.

Here's Charlotte building. 

That evening we went to another "get out of the house" activity. The library was hosting a "Between the Eve's Party."  Charlotte and Lydia were there long enough to get free popcorn and snowcones and then they went grocery shopping with Brandon. 

The party was "Lilo and Stitch" themed. Veronica spent a lot of the time watching the movie, but Derrick wanted to do all the activities. This was a big I-spy board. 

There was a treasure hunt of sorts. Derrick was so into it.

Friday was another day that I needed to work. This time I saw no one else in the building. The only reason I was working was so that I could have things ready for the new year. 

At home Derrick was really into playing with his new styrofoam airplane. He'd bought this at Hobby Lobby with his own money when we went to return the helicopter. It was like $3.98 and was small enough he could throw it in the house. He played with it for a long time. 

I played with the sand toy.

That afternoon we really wanted to get away from Twin Falls for a little bit. So we drove out to Rupert so the kids could skate at the rink out there. 

Part of this rink used to belong to Twin Falls and we only skated on it once when it was close to our house, but for some reason it seemed like a good idea to go skate in Rupert 40 minutes away.

Actually I think price had something to do with it. The only time we skated in Twin Falls was when it was free. I think regular price was something like $7.50. In Rupert it was only $5. 

Brandon doesn't like ice skating because he slipped on ice and broke his wrist when he was 11. So he doesn't like feeling unstable. I didn't think my knee or my ankles would appreciate ice skating. Or rather, falling while ice skating. I watched my kids land in some crazy positions that I knew would dislocated my kneecap again. 

Rupert does a big "Sugar Beet Drop" on New Years Eve. Here's the sugar beet. They hoist it up with a crane on New Years. 

Derrick was probably the best skater out of the kids. He was doing really well after only a little while. 

Here's Lydia. She did okay.

And Charlotte.

The three older kids did really well. Veronica struggled a bit, but did okay.

Here's me and Brandon. He'd shaved the Christmas Tree Goatee before work on Wednesday.

Here are the kids.

Veronica was having fun. But she held onto the railing most of the time.

Charlotte and Lydia going past. 

Isn't this whole set up so cute? Twin Falls' rink wasn't this cute. 

And I just love how it looks with the Wilson theature next to it. 

Skating was fun. But soon the kids heard the siren call of the giant snow pile behind the rental shed. 

At first it was just Derrick, then Veronica joined him. 

They kicked a big boulder off. 

Here's the view from behind the sheds.

And soon all four kids were on the snow pile. 

Lydia built a little snow man.

Veronica sat in the snow - good thing it was like 40 degrees.

I got the kids to pose for me with this raindeer display.

Aren't they cute?

Really this whole area was cute. Part of me was tempted to come back here for New Years. But I wasn't exactly excited about the whole, freezing temperatures after dark thing. 

We walked over to the city park and Derrick brought his airplane to play with. 

that was really fun, until it got suck in a tree. We tried to get it out, but it was just too high. So we had to leave it.  Good thing it was only $3.98. We went to Hobby Lobby and bought a new one that evening. 

When we got home I had a package waiting for me. It was a wrapping paper storage box/bag. I think this might have been my favorite Christmas thing this year. Everything fit so well with room to spare. 

On Saturday we cleaned the house really well. It felt good to get back on top of that again. While we were cleaning I was trying to put away the socks and the winter gear and I realized our current system was just awful. 

We had a bin for sock, and a bin for gloves, hats, and scarfs. The two bins were supposed to go on top of our shoe rack in the closet, but they didn't both fit up there at the same time. So they were always falling down. And I had no where to put the snow pants. 

I decided that what we really needed was a dresser. And I realized that we had a pretty good one in the craftroom that wasn't doing a good job of storing the craft supplies. So I emptied that dresser out. (It wasn't even half full) and brought it up stairs. 

I put the socks in the top drawer. The gloves in the second. The Hats and scarves in the third, the kids snowsuits in the fourth drawer. And Brandon and my snowsuits in the fifth drawer. I realized that half the shoes on the shoe wrack were either too small, or trashed so I threw away the broken shoes and put the others in the donate pile. The remaining ones went on the top. 

The whole situation is so much better. Here's Lydia doing a demonstration of how nice it is to get socks now a days. 

That afternoon Brandon took Charlotte and Lydia on a bike ride in the canyon. I took Derrick and Veronica over to the school so Derrick could play with his plane away from trees. 

Derrick and Veronica had a really fun time playing. 

When we were getting ready to leave I told Derrick to stop throwing the airplane. He threw it one more time and it went into a TREE. Fortunately it came out pretty easy. I told him not to throw it again. But he did and this time it flew into my face. 

After that I carried the airplane home. 

I have no memory of anything of any importance happening the rest of the day. 

Sunday was new years eve. We had high hopes of making it to church on Sunday. But those evaporated when we woke up at 8:14. The kids hadn't been out of bed before 9:00 all week (aside from Christmas morning, but that doesn't count.) I didn't have any desire to try to pull them out of bed and get them ready in less than 30 minutes. So Brandon stayed home with the kids and I went to church. 

We were all so happy to know that we'd be moving to the 10:30 schedule the next year. My family is just not built for early Sunday mornings. 

I spent a lot of the afternoon prepping for my Scripture Study Group. I got the lesson plan figured out for my introductory lesson. 

Brandon spent all afternoon prepping food. I'd bought him a mocktail book for Christmas and he had 3 different recipes he wanted to try out. 

We were planning to watch the Oceans movies as our trilogy. I'd done the math and all three movies would be about 6 hours. We wanted time for breaks so that meant we needed to start watching them at 5:00.  So around 4:00 we started putting out the food. 

Brandon and Veronica also worked on making a fire. 

Since Brandon was working on the fire I took care of the charcutierie. I'm not as talented at Brandon, but I think I did a good job. 

Here's Brandon making some punch.

Here's the spread. This is actually kind of restrained compared to other years. Last year there were 3 cheese balls. And one year there was a whole pie!

Let's admire it from another angle. 

Lydia was painting. 

Or actually she was using Charlotte's new markers. Charlotte got like 3 set of markers for Christmas. 

Veronica decided that she needed to alphabetize the kids DVD's. Is this my kid or what?

Here's the first of Brandon's drinks. It was sort of like a smoothy.

It was really good. 

Here's the fire. 

Oh and that's the end of the pictures. I was hungry so as soon as everything was ready we started eating and then started the first movie. 

The kids have seen Oceans 11 before so they were a little board. But they liked the end. Oceans 12 was met with mixed reviews. I told the kids they had to watch it so they'd know who some of the characters were. Oceans 13 was the kids favorite. They LOVED the ending. This was actually a really good trilogy for New Years. A lot of times we watch trilogies that get worse with every movie. Like when we watched Karate Kid I was trying to stay awake through the third one. But with Oceans the movies actually get more fun as you go along. 

All the kids were still awake at midnight. (They'd probably stayed up till midnight half the winter break.) We went outside and watched the fireworks that neighbors on other streets were setting off. Then we went inside and toasted to the new year with 7 UP.

Everyone was still really awake so I think it wasn't until about 12:45 that anyone went to bed. 

And that's where we'll stop for now.  Thanks for reading.