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!

Living Nativity and other things

Okay here we are on my attempt to catch this blog up on all our December things before Christmas happens. This post is about the second week of December. The big thing was the Living Nativity, but we had something scheduled for every night. So let's get all caught up

Sunday December 7 - I already posted about me and Derrick working on his dinosaur posters. Here they are hung up in his room. 

Monday was a pretty normal day. At work I met with a lady named Hanah. She is the daughter in law of Elder and Sister Coombs who were the military relations missionaries extraordinaire when we lived in Texas. They live in Idaho Falls so we've been able to see them many times over the years since we moved to Idaho. Hanah and her husband live in Twin Falls. Hanah is going to school to be a social worker. Elder Coombs kept telling her to reach out to me because I had connections to the mental health world. So she did that several months ago. I got her connected to my boss. And he was able to connect her with Foundation for Lighting up the Dark (FLUD) which is a local organization helping people access mental health resources. She's doing her internship with them. We talked and she wanted to see the billing side of things so she came and sat with me for a few hours. 

She arrived before our receptionist did so I sent her this picture of what my office looks like from the lobby so she could find me.  Here's the picture.

After school on Monday we went to Britt's barn to pick up costumes for the Living Nativity. I had two adopted daughters this year. One was our friend Addie. Her mom is my friend Megan. Addie is Charlotte and Lydia's age. She really wanted to be in the living nativity, but none of her family wanted to so I told Megan that Addie would just be our adopted daughter. We picked Addie up on the way to the barn. 

My other adopted daughter was my friend Marianne's daughter Lainey. Lainey was in Cinderella with us and is a little younger than Charlotte and Lydia. Marianne brought Lainey to the barn to meet up with us for costumes. 

Brandon also met us there after work. So we were quite the crew of people descending on Britt's barn. Britt had all the costumes put together and hanging on her clothing racks. We just had to come in and pick out what we wanted. Charlotte found her usual costume right off. Lydia picked out a new costume. We found Veronica's old poncho, but the skirt part of the outfit looked too short. It was long enough for Lainey though. So Lainey took that. 

I couldn't find my usual costume so I found a different one. And we found one that would work for Veronica and another one for Brandon. I think Addie took the longest, but she found one she liked. 

Britt was outside getting the booths ready. So we went and talked to her for a little while. She is so fun!

Brandon took Veronica to theatre for rehearsal and I took Addie home and then we went home. 

Monday was the only night all week that we didn't have anywhere to be at night. I have no memory of what we did. 

 

I do know that I stayed up way too late reading. I was reading "Sunrise on the Reaping" which is a prequel to the Hunger Games. I hadn't liked the other prequel "The Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds" so I hadn't planned to read this one. But then I saw a preview for the movie and that made me want to read the book. I'd got the book from the library and had been reading it before falling asleep each night. 

On Monday night I was about halfway though the book. I thought I'd read until I got sleepy. But then the story got crazy intense and I couldn't put it down. I stayed up reading until 1:00 and finished the book. I think this is my second favorite Hunger Games book. My most favorite is Catching Fire. 

On Tuesday I was so tired from staying up late reading. Fortunately, I had NOTHING planned for the morning. No doctors appts, no orthodontist appts, no extra work things, nothing. So I dropped all the kids off at school and then came home and went back to sleep for a while. That was so nice. Like so nice. 

Then I went to work in the afternoon and got a lot done there. 

In the evening we went to see the lights at the Orton Botanical Garden. I'd invited Jori's family along. Here's Brandon in his "Uncle Brandon" role with one of Jori's kids. 

All week we had unseasonably warm weather. The LOW for this night was supposed to be something like 46 degrees or something crazy like that. So it was the perfect night to go look at lights. 

We had a good time doing that. 

The kids posed by this wreath. 

And then figured out how they could all be in the picture. 

I'd had a good time, but I also could feel myself coming down with a little cold. So I took NyQuil that night and slept really well. 

On Wednesday December 10th I had an important meeting with Chris Ayers. Chris is the guy who owns Twin Falls Theatre Collective which just did The Hello Girls. He's also the guy who does the Curtain Call Awards. AND he's the current board president for Jump Company which is one of the children's theatre groups here in Twin Falls. (And let's all take a moment to appreciate the fact that Twin Falls has TWO children's theatre groups.)  Way way way back in April he'd talked to me about the possibility of me coming on as the bookkeeper for Jump. I told him I was interested and told him my hourly rate. And then I heard nothing until December 8th when he messaged me and asked if I wanted to meet with him about it. 

I told Brandon, "I think I accidently got another job."

So Wednesday morning I drove out to his building in Filer and we talked about the job and what it would involve. The trickiest part is that I'd have to learn an old version of Quickbooks. But that's just a matter of learning to system and I can do that. This job will be about an hour a month during regular months. But during show months it will be more hours. And I get to count cash donations that come in during shows. I LOVE counting cash so that's like a major perk for me. 

So I have yet another billing client. But I'm actually not too worried about this one. Jump is an organization and not someone's sole source of financial revenue like my insurance billing clients. So this will be a lot less stressful for me. And Chris Ayers is one of those cool people that just does cool stuff. I'm kind of fascinated by him so I'm excited to work with him. 

Back at home I took care of a lot of small things. Things like doing dishes and taking out the recycling. I was trying to get ahead of things before the Living Nativity took over our lives for the weekend. 

Then I did the October and November audit for the Exponent organization. Sometimes all my little side projects are kind of overwhelming. But I also love things like this. I love going over a bank statement and making sure that everything makes sense. I don't know if anyone else finds accounting to be delightful, but I do. 

We had a busy evening in store for us that night. Veronica had theatre from 4:30 to 6:00. Charlotte and Lydia had an orchestra concert that they needed to be at by 6:30. And Derrick had young mens that started at 7:00 which was the same time the Orchestra concert was going to start. 

I took care of Veronica. Derrick was going to go to Young Mens with his friend Finn, but Finn got sick. So I asked Megan if Derrick could go with her son Ty. I took Derrick there after bringing Veronica home so she could eat. And Brandon took Charlotte and Lydia to the concert. 

There were a lot of moving parts and so it really wasn't a surprise when something went wrong. Derrick was supposed to go back home with Ty after young mens. But we'd never really told Derrick, or Ty, or the leaders that. Also the activity ended about 15 minutes early. So one of Derrick's leaders took Derrick home  - to our empty house. And then Megan arrived at the church at 8:00 and was like, "Where's Derrick?"

There were quite a few anxious texts back and forth for a while. In the end Derrick was fine, he knew where our spare key was and had got into the house with no problems. But I'd been picturing him getting colder and colder on our patio. Megan went to pick him up and brought him to the auditorium. 

So yeah it was fine, but also not fine. This was the latest in a LOOOOOONNNNNNNNNGGGGG string of bad communication from the Young Men leaders. The Relief Society President, who also has a son in the Deacon's quorum, texted me separately and said she was going to bring this up in Ward Council. And Ty's dad is the Elders Quorum President and also planned to bring it up in Ward Council. I was glad to have the backing, but I also had the sense that by the time this was brought up in Ward Council too much time would have passed. 

So on Thursday morning I wrote a detailed email to the bishop. I outlined what had happened, and then asked for better communication from the young men leaders. I cc'd Brandon, the Relief Society president, and the Elders quorum president. Later the Elders Quorum president told me that it was an excellent email. (If there's one thing I know how to do it's write.)

The Bishop responded within a few hours and said that he would be having a meeting with the Young Men Leaders to discuss safety procedures and better communication about whether or not parents should pick up the boys or if the leaders will bring them home. I was happy the ball was rolling on this topic well before Ward Council on Sunday. So yeah, all that happened. 

But let's talk about the concert itself. It was delightful! 

It was combined with the band. The concert band started out the program. Then the jazz band played off to the side while the concert orchestra came on the stage. Charlotte and Lydia are in this group. They played in the Bleak Midwinter and then a song called Santa The Barbarian. The middle school intermediate group had played a different Santa the Barbarian song. Mr Shipply explained, "this is actually the third installment in the Santa the Barbarian Multiverse." That made me laugh. 

Here's the song. In it Santa is trying to turn all the seasons into Winter.

And here's a still picture. 

Here's Charlotte's side. She's wearing a Santa had. 

And here's Lydia's side. She is also wearing a Santa hat. 

When the concert orchestra was done it was time for the Chamber Orchestra. They played the Home Alone Suite. (Which was ironic, because this is when we started getting all the texts about Derrick being home alone.)

Then it was time for some combined songs with the band and chamber orchestra. They played Sleigh Ride and had the school principal do the slapstick because she is good at "cracking the whip" around the school. Hearing Sleigh Ride live always takes me back to the first time I heard it. I was little and heard it at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake. 

And then the concert was over. Brandon and the twins picked up ice cream on the way home and we ate that at home. 

Thursday was a busy day. Thursday is the day I make sure all payments have been received for all my billing clients.  We are nearing the end of the year so I'm trying to get 2025 as tidy as possible before we move into 2026. Everyone is in good shape, but Castle Therapy is probably in the best shape. We had a lot of billing issues earlier in the year, but they have all been resolved and there aren't any outstanding claims older than 2 months ago. And most aren't older than 1 month. That's where I like things to be. 

The real news from Thursday though was the Living Nativity. So forget about all that boring billing stuff. Let's look at costumes!

Here's Veronica's. Despite our best efforts we'd still picked out a costume that was too short. Fortunately, Brandon's costume came with an extra robe or something so we pinned that around Veronica as a long skirt. I love her bright scarf. 

Here's Lydia. She loves blue. 

And here's Charlotte in the most darling little dress with her beloved wool robe. 

Here's Brandon. 

And here's me in my latest shapeless blob of a dress. I've given up on these ever being flattering. But Charlotte said the colors were beautiful so I liked that. 

Addie does early morning seminary so she didn't want to do the Living Nativity on Thursday night. But every member of my family was like, "Where's Addie? Don't we need to get Addie?"  So she was missed. Lainey was dropped off and met up with us. 

Brandon was the fish salesman again so we went to his booth area first.  Lydia would spend the whole night there with Brandon. 

Charlotte was extremely sad that there wouldn't be any goats at the nativity this year. (Apparently the Jerome Stake was doing something similar and all Britt's animal people had committed their animals to the Jerome thing.) But there were chickens from Britt coop. So Charlotte went and got one of those chickens. 

I don't have an official booth that I take care of. I'm a self appointed float. I just jump into whatever booth looks like it needs someone. As we got closer to 6:30 I realized that no one was in the chicken booth at the front of the marketplace. I took over that booth with Charlotte and Lainey. Another girl named Camila joined us. Veronica took over the pots and pans booth next door. Our friend James (who we've used as "Fake Derrick" for pictures once or twice) called himself the Chicken Whisperer and came around a few times.  

Here's Brandon getting his booth ready. 

And here he is with Lydia. 

Here I am trying to get a cute picture of my headwrap. 

And here I am with Veronica. 

My friend Hanah (a different Hanah) was in the bread booth a little ways down from chickens. She has a real life sour dough business and wanted to give out samples. So I'd connected her with Britt. She was giving out bread all night and was a huge hit. 

A ways down from her was the cheese booth. My friends Karin (remember pronounced like Corrine) and Chris were assigned that booth. I just love them to pieces so I was happy to see them. This was their first year at the Living Nativity. Usually they are involved with the December play so they've never been able to do this. But they were free this year. 

Here's a whole group of teenagers who were at the wool booth next to cheese. One of these is Amelia. Years ago she fell in love with a chicken at the living nativity. I'd watched her carry it around in a basket, a wagon, and various other things all night. Now she has her own chicken and brought her to the Living Nativity.  

Veronica took over the pots and pans booth and put her own spin on it. At first she was just "selling" them. But after a while she started saying, "Five Pots and Pans for 20 sheckles or I'll tell you a joke for free." So many people asked for the joke. She told lots of her jokes and people laughed. She loved it!

Here's our family picture we took this at the end of the night. 

Here's Veronica with a chicken. 

Marianne came through with her family and took this picture of me and Lainey. Lainey was so funny to work with. She was appalled at my lack of creativity and imagination. People would ask me things like, "are these eggs real?"  And I'd be like, "No."  Lainey told me that I couldn't say things like that. She told me to "just stand there and look pretty." It was very funny. 

Later she got tired of holding her chicken and handed it to me. Charlotte was like, "Mom, you are holding a chicken????"  I was like, "Lainey told me to."

This was another unseasonably warm night. So even though the Nativity officially ended at 8:30 there were still visitors milling around at 8:45. When the nights are cold people hurry home. But on warm nights they stay around a lot longer. 

We didn't get out of there until about 9:00. Marianne met us at our house to pick up Lainey. She hadn't wanted to deal with the traffic at the nativity. 

We had school and work the next day so everyone got ready for bed and we went to bed pretty quick. 

I was so tired on Friday. I went grocery shopping before work and I felt like I didn't have any social ability. I ran into my friend Sami and was like, "Hi" and then just kind of mumbled and wandered off. About 5 minutes later I realized how weird that was and then was muttering to myself, "That was really weird."  Which then I realized probably looked pretty weird itself. 

When I came home with the groceries I mixed up a Celcius drink and drank that and that helped me at least feel like a normal-ish human while I was at work. 

In the evening we got back into our costumes. We dropped Derrick off at my friend Kori's house for the night. Her son Cayson is Derrick's age, but her younger son Ryker is about 6 and adores Derrick. He was so excited for Derrick to come over. 

Then we drove to Addie's and picked her up. I dropped everyone off at the Nativity and then drove all the way across town to get Lainey. Marianne was solo parenting and couldn't get Lainey there and make dinner at the same time that night. Since I don't have a real booth job it was no big deal for me to come get her. We got back to the nativity around 6:15. The chicken booth was still unmanned so we took over it again. Here's Charlotte with two chickens on her shoulder. 

Here's my head wrap for the evening I did it slightly different this time. 

The teenagers had a pretty good handle on the chicken booth and I noticed that the booth next to us was empty. This one had the prop wool on a big spindle so I went over and took care of that booth. I've ALWAYS wanted to unwind this and wind it back up so that's what I did. Megan came by with her kids and took this picture of me. 

Later Karin found these pictures online and sent them to me. This might be my favorite picture of me at the Living Nativity. 

But this one is great too. Maybe those outfits aren't that terrible afterall. 

Here's a picture Megan took of Veronica and a girl I don't recognize. 

I was pretty worn out on Friday so I spent a lot of time winding and unwinding the wool and then just kind of sat there and smiled and people watched for a long time. They were trying to have a traffic pattern with the guests for the first time so my booth was the very last stop for everyone. I didn't feel a lot of pressure to interact. Veronica got tired of her booth and came over and sat with me. She laid her head on my knee. 

This was another warm night. I think we had people coming into the area until 8:45 and it took a long time for them to leave. It was well after 9:00 by the time we left. We dropped Addie off first. Then we picked up Derrick. He got in the car and was like, "Why does it smell like smoke!"  I dropped all my family people off at home and then drove Lainey home. It was after 10:00 by the time I got home. I went right to bed. 

On Saturday I didn't get out of bed for a while. I was simultaneously recuperating from Friday night and also storing up energy for later in the day. I'd been battling a cold all week. It was such an odd little sickness. Like I wasn't very sick. I could still function. But I was sneezing quite a bit and had a runny nose. I was taking Dayquil just to keep the sneezing down and to keep my nose clear. At night I was taking Nyquil to keep my nose under control so I could breath while sleeping. 

I'd been able to keep up with everything even though I was a little sick, but it was so nice to take a break on Saturday morning. The break was worth it because I had a really great afternoon and evening. 

First up was a work party for Aspen Grove. We went bowling at Tiger Zone in Jerome. Here I am looking all festive. My friend Olyvia game me this shirt for my birthday, but this was the first time I've every really worn it. 

Here's a view of everyone who was bowling. 

My kids had a really fun time. We love bowling as a family, but it's been really expensive in Twin Falls so we don't do it as much as we would like. 

Here are our scores at the end of the first game. I did really well. 

We had time for another round. The company was paying for the games, but we were on our own for food. We ordered a pepperoni pizza and ate that as we played the second round. 

This time Derrick and Veronica really hit their groove and scored really well. 

We got home and had only a little bit of time before it was time to get into costumes again. Here I am with my first century selfies. 

This time Derrick was going to Megan's house. So we dropped him off and picked up Addie at the same time. Derrick made such a good impression on Megan's whole family. Apparently her preschooler listened to him when he wouldn't listen to anyone else. He was also training their dog. 

Marianne brought Lainey so she met us there. Here's a picture of her at the chicken booth. 

My friend Whitney was filming the nativity for this years movie. I'd only recently seen her video from last year. Brandon's face made it in. And I could see body parts for all the girls. Here's the video.  That's my friend Raylene and her husband playing Mary and Joseph. 

I've given up on ever being in this movie so I wasn't to committed to getting there on time. But everyone else wanted to be in it so we were there at 5:30. Addie needed help with her head scarf so I helped wrap it for her. Amelia also needed help because her mom wasn't there this night. I was happy to be able to help these girls. 

Hanah couldn't make it this night so I'd taken over her booth. Brandon and I took home her bread on Friday night and then brough it back on Saturday.  I had 12 of her loaves of sour dough bread and I gave it all away that night. I cut it into small pieces and offered samples to people. My joke that I said a million times was "Welcome to Bethlehem Costco. We have samples." I quickly learned that people LOVE the bread booth. Everyone was so happy to find out they got free samples of bread. I've worked a lot of the booths, but none have ever been as fun as this one. I did feel bad for stealing Hanah's glory so whenever anyone asked, "Did you make this bread?" I was quick to say, "No my friend Hanah did."  One lady even came back to ask how to get more of Hanah's bread. I directed her to her instagram. 

Chris came over and took this picture of me at the bread booth. 

He and Karin were also giving out samples this night. They'd bought mozzarella and had it in little pieces and were giving it out. 

One of my favorite moments of the night happened before we opened. A teenager saw Chris and said, "Hey were you the general in Hello Girls?" Chris said yes, and the kid was like, "You were really good."

Chris also took this picture of Lydia at the fish booth. 

And this picture of Brandon with his fish. Oh and you might be wondering, "where was the other fish guy? Why haven't you mentioned Ivan?"  Well Ivan was doing a little thing called STARING in White Christmas at the Orpheum. So he couldn't do Living Nativity. He was missed. 

I took this picture of the Roman Soldiers on horseback before any of the crowds came in. 

And here's Charlotte with two chickens. 

Since we were all there at 5:30 for the movie we were all ready by 6:15 and Britt made the decision to open the Nativity 15 minutes early. So Mitch came over the microphone and reminded us where the fire extinguishers were located and said the prayer like he always does at the beginning of each night and then the Roman guards let the people in at 6:15. There was a steady stream of people coming in from then until about 8:15. 

Whitney was still going around getting as much footage as she could. She came to my booth and asked me to accept coins from her helper and then give him a loaf of bread. Everything was just focused on our hands, but I made it into the movie!  YAY! She had us to two takes and after the first take I joked, "Give me a minute, I need to get in character again."

I was cutting bread into slices and then pieces all night. It was so fun. I definitely want to help with bread whenever I can from now on. 

Later when things settled down I took this picture of my lamp next to the "prop bread."

People were still coming into the area all the way up until about 8:45. But I gave up on my stand at 8:30. I cut the last loaf of bread into big pieces and gave them out to cast members. Then I started cleaning up my booth. 

Around 9:00 everyone really started cleaning. Britt had remembered to ask everyone to carry as much as they could up to the barn before they left. So we were moving chairs, tables, props, everything that wasn't too heavy got moved. This was great because it meant that my family wouldn't have to do it on Monday as has been our tradition. 

It was kind of sad to see it all get taken down though. This is such a fun thing to do every year. I'd had the idea to go around to every booth and ask people to tell me their "Living Nativity Story."  I always make a big deal out of how we met Ivan here and it changed our lives. But this year I was like, "Wait, who else is here? I want to get to know everyone. Why do they do this? What has it meant to them?"  I'd wanted to do that this night, but I'd also wanted to claim the bread booth. So that idea is going to have to wait until next year. 

We took Addie home and picked up Derrick. Then we went home. Marianne came to pick up Lainey. Brandon put out a laundry basket for the kids to put their costumes into. I started the first load of costume laundry. 

And that was the end of the Living Nativity for 2025.

Sunday was very uneventful compared to Saturday. The most exciting thing was we lit the third candle for Advent. It was the Joy candle. 

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

Thanks for reading!