Week of 11-24-19

RELIEF SOCIETY- SPIRITUAL CAPACITY
I really loved Jami’s lesson this week. She did good and it was a topic I was needing to think about. I made a comment about how I’ve gained back all the weight I lost and felt stupid about it ever since, but I really liked the lesson. 11-24-19

9TH DAY OF MY BIRTHDAY
I got such a surprise when Erika brought in my gift with a card from Emily!!! Yep, Emily Maughan is now in on this ツ. Her card was so sweet! She’s always so articulate. It came with a bath bomb. 11-24-19

JOY
So after a really nice sacrament meeting and then coming upon several talks about joy and then Becky’s talk recommendation, I was thinking it would be good to have a study time lesson on joy. Well wouldn’t ya know- that was the first section in the come follow me book! So we had a nice discussion about it as a family 11-25-19

SNOW!
We got our first real snow of the season! Molly was super excited. She looked outside and said, “It’s going to taste so good outside!” She loves eating snow. So funny. She got Brad to go out and play with her after Kelly got her all bundled up. They made a couple cute little snowmans and then when Luke and Erika got out there they made a snow castle! So much fun!! 11-25-19

MOLLY
We heard Kelly come in from school for lunch, and run upstairs. We were in the kitchen so I said, “ope! There’s Kelly!” And Molly says, “better be Kelly!” Made me laugh. 11-25-19

10TH DAY OF MY BIRTHDAY
Tonight it was these amazing socks/slippers. And a letter from Kim Ball!! How cool is that!! It’s really sweet too of course! So fun!! 11-25-19

DOWN
Tuesday was kind of a down day and I’m not really sure why. We’d had a lesson on joy on Monday (Sunday too) and I’d been feeling like a million bucks all day Monday, but something happened. It was a total bummer that I let myself get like that. It’s Thursday and I’m still trying to recover. I’m sure I’ll make it out alive, just kind of annoying. 11-26-19

11TH DAY OF MY BIRTHDAY
Tonight I got these cute bowls I’d been admiring at Costco the other day ツ. And a very sweet letter from Sarah. I am so lucky Brent found someone who I love so much. I really feel very blessed to have the relationship I do with her!  11-26-19

FIRST DAY OF FALL BREAK
We had a great first day! Played some games, played out in the snow! Watched more Disney+, and even napped a little ツ. Fun day! We topped it off with a late night trip to the store with the whole family. Minus Charity, Brad, and Luke who went to friends’ houses. It was a rough evening for Nate and I- he had missed out on sleep after the mid and I am just grumpy sometimes. But we pulled through! Picked out our gingerbread house stuff, ran into Iferg’s parents. It was an okay night. Nate needed food and so he stopped at Wendy’s and got everyone Frostys! Then we tried watching pirates of the Caribbean and ended up turning it off and watching Newsies instead. I’m glad our kids have such sensitive spirits. We never watch things we shouldn’t with them around. 11-27-19

12TH DAY OF MY BIRTHDAY
Tonight I got some playing cards! Two decks! AND an awesome letter from my cousin Becky. Made my day!! She’s always so good to me!! 11-27-19

THANKSGIVING DAY!!!
We had a nice Thanksgiving day! With the snowstorm all night and freshly fallen five or so inches of snow, we opted out of Jen’s turkey trot. Kind of a bummer, but Nate and I had both met our match this week and were really running on empty. Actual running, on empty, not so good. And running with an infected toe isn’t so good either, so we stayed home for the morning and focused on the turkey and not dying 😁. Everyone played and bummed around. When it finally came time to go we weren’t really prepared so it was kind of a mad dash making frosting real quick, which I did wrong and had to add double the powdered sugar. I can use the recipe from 2013 but I need to fluff up the egg whites first I think. So anyway. We headed out. Made sure we had everyone first ツ. Becky had reserved her church building which was so nice!! I was really happy about that actually. We got there and I think Nate and the kids helped unload cars, set up tables, and prep food. I was in the mother’s lounge with Sadie taking a nap. I was not feeling real great. Chills and aches. Not fun. But we tried to touch it out. It was fun talking with Dan and Adele and Maryn. Then Becky and Nancy and Meg later. The kids all played basketball the ENTIRE time! Well, except when they were helping, eating, playing in Grandma’s snowball fight (to win first in line at the dessert table), doing crafts, or doing the mind puzzles. They also took a little break to make their gingerbread houses. I brought the glue gun again and hot glued the Grahams on the stage for them ツ. Except Noah made his own this year! Pretty cool! We had enough bags of frosting for everyone to have their own and TONS and aTONS of candy to decorate! The frosted mini wheat roofs were a popular thing. I loved how Kelly fanned out the green roll wrappers on the stacked rolos to look like a tree. Super cool! Everyone did a great job! Even Molly’s was hard to tell apart from the rest. I had made an extra house because Catherine, Malisa’s daughter had wanted one but then she left so Nate decorated the extra one ツ. Turned out pretty cute! With a skinny doorway for him to go inside ツ. Kind of a bachelor pad ツ. Nancy passed out stockings for everyone to take to fill for each other! I’m loving that idea. She said that’s what they did when they were kids. Super cool! I think that would be fun to do when everyone gets older. So we will get our assigned people soon. The food was great too! Almost forgot about that! Nate’s turkey turned out SO UNBELIEVABLY MOIST!!!  He did so good! It was way better than Lynn’s dry turkey, no offense. I was proud of him! He’s really getting good. I couldn’t help but notice that even on thanksgiving my picky eaters only had cheese and crackers on their plates. The stinkers. Molly did branch out and eat some olives. It was a lot of fun! I had a great time even though Sadie and I made a few trips to the mother’s lounge for mommy juice and diaper changes. She’s such a sweetie usually, but wasn’t loving being passed around that day. Silly girl. When we got home we decided it was time to watch a Christmas movie!! So Home Alone it was!! Not as funny as the second one as was evidenced by Jack’s laughter. Good times!! Time for Christmas!! 11-28-19

13TH DAY OF MY BIRTHDAY
Tonight’s letter was from Annie! Love that girl!! And some Ferrero Rochet chocolates!! 11-28-19

WHITE FRIDAY, RICE TOWN WITH GRANDPA AND STEVE, and OOPS FORGOT OUR TREE
The day after Turkey Day was a lot of fun too! We spontaneously made plans with my dad to hang out with him while Nate, Kelly, Brad, and Luke went to the temple. Then, since it was snowing pretty heavily again and not wanting to stay up on the hill much longer, we all met up at Panda Express for some lunch. That was fun! Then we said goodbye to grandpa and Steve and white knuckled it all the way home!! Nate took a bunch of the kids in his car to go get some basketball shoes with the Black Friday deals, and Erika some pants. I was happy to get home and didn’t leave the house again thankfully! I don’t love driving in the snow. We had a relaxing afternoon/evening. Watched movies, played games, some of the kids had fun out in the snow. We’re still not all geared up for winter, some kids still need boots. Then my mom and Porter came and she laid down some pretty heavy news. It’s too bad there’s nothing we can do to help. Hopefully someday soon. We helped Porter make his own little gingerbread house. We watched Alice in Wonderland that night. Then lots of leepovers after. Molly still obsessed over sleeping over with Charity and Kelly. So funny. We realized that we’d missed our planned time to go buy our tree. With the kids’ basketball practices on Monday nights we figured we’d do our putting up Christmas a different day and had to split it up to make enough time for it with everyone having plans with friends and stuff. So anyway- guess we’ll revamp that plan!!  11-29-19

14TH DAY OF MY BIRTHDAY
I got a letter from Claire tonight! So sweet. I’m getting the days all mixed up because I’ve failed at documenting things, but I think this was the gloves night! 11-29-19

PICKING OUT OUR TREE
We went to this cute little lot in the Winco parking lot that we saw a couple nights before. They had the kind we like. We all walked around looking for the perfect, short enough, not too wide, tree. And we did eventually find it! It looked kind of small on our giant van after the guy helped us tie it on. But fit perfectly and looked great in our family room! When we got home Charity had to leave for work and so after some deliberation we decided to postpone ornaments til Charity could be there. We’re planning to do it during family council. But we got the lights on it, set up my nativities, and I even set up my pencil tree! Which looks so cute with my adorable pearl lights and the ornaments that make up our advent calendar! Yay! I finally did one!!  11-30-19

15TH DAY OF MY BIRTHDAY
Tonight I got a cute plaque with a quote that says, “Grow through what you go through” way cute!! I’m  with a letter from Andrea! 11-30-19