Chocolate works!

 Christmas is near.  I love Christmas!  However, it always gets too hectic, too fast.  This year I was all caught up in preparations for the Quilting Friends party in November, then Thanksgiving, then the annual Busch Gardens Florida trip.  I got so concerned about time and money, that I thought about not going to Florida.  David would have none of that, and had already purchased my ticket.

 The Quilting Friends Show and Tell Party was great!  Everyone had a fabulous time.  Lani had worked so hard for a long time.  I had actually remembered to bring my camera for once.  However, I forgot to take it out and use it.

Thanksgiving was a delight!  I managed to find all the recipes, even a great, new one for pecan pie (I am always experimenting with pecan pie!).  Everyone ate well and often.

There was a lot of playing in the leaves. 

Emma, Dan, Elena and Kevin were here, as well as Bethany, so we had lots of help.  Elena was great at making dinner rolls!  It was a good, long weekend.  Christmas Town at Busch Gardens was a delight!  I spent the second and third hours at church in the nursery with Elena and Kevin.  Elena likes our ward's nursery and Kevin had a great, first time.

Then we went to Florida.  Southwest Air has an airport promotion of free holiday pictures with Santa.  Dad and I took great pictures!  They will be our Christmas cards.  I had a relaxing afternoon in the hotel, while David did rehearsals at Busch Gardens.  The next day, Friday, David went to the park early; he had 5 shows.  I took the hotel shuttle and thoroughly enjoyed the day - and David's show.  We had a great evening roaming the park and having dinner.

The next day we drove our funky little rental car, a green Kia Soul, to Orlando and Universal Studios theme park.  The first thing we headed for was the "Wizarding World of Harry Potter" and it was FABULOUS!  We went on the ride first.  It puts other simulation rides to shame.  Thank goodness for Dramamine!  The whole park was great, but we were especially impressed with Hogwarts castle and the village of Hogsmeade.  Butterbeer was delicious!  And it was easy to find our car in the parking garage.

Sunday we got home in time to go to a later Sacrament Meeting, late to choir practice, then the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, before our phone calls from the kiddos.

Monday, the Disons came back to visit!  Dan had an interview at EVMS/CHKD on Tuesday and we got to enjoy the family for the week.  The grandchildren were each sick at different times during the visit, but we had a lot of fun.   I started to get concerned about having time to get everything done before Christmas, with good reason:  when Emma, Dan and the children left Friday, I was starting to get sick.

We went to see the new Harry Potter movie that afternoon and I made my treats (a delicious new recipe) for the annual cookie exchange on Saturday morning.  By the time I made my appearance there, I knew I was sick.  I spent the rest of the day moaning, coughing and napping on the couch.  Sunday and Monday were much the same.  I actually showered and dressed Monday afternoon.  It snowed most of the day.  My concern for finding time to get everything done for the holidays is turning into despair.  Or maybe I'm just sick.


Tuesday, Dec. 14th, I was feeling about 75 - 80%.  I got all dressed and even put on makeup.  I got some things done in the house.  The RS Christmas social, a dinner and service auction, was in the evening at 6:30, and Cub Scout Roundtable was at 7pm.  David had already delivered one on my items for the auction, a white baby afghan, but I hoped to get there late.

When Roundtable ended, I skipped the refreshment table which had a bowl of m&ms, and rushed out only to wait forever at the parking lot light.  Then I had to wait at the left turn signal behind an ambulance to get on the expressway.  The ambulance was in no hurry.  I finally got to the church at 8:17pm and rushed in.  A sister was coming out of the MPR as I entered the building and said to me "You're late!  It's all over!"   She said the auction was completed and everything was gone.  Lots of food left, though.  I started to cry.  She hugged me.  I turned around and went back out the door.  I sat in the parking lot for a little while crying and then drove home.  I really wanted to be part of the RS evening.  I had been excited to see how the Service Auction went and to be supportive.  As a RSP I had always been concerned when previous RS leaders didn't come to events.  I love Relief Society and desperately wanted to still belong.

When I got in the door of the house, I went frantically looking for the reserved Christmas candy and grabbed a bag of m&ms.  By the time I ate half the bag I didn't feel like crying anymore.

Hence the title of this entry.

I'll add more pictures soon.

More Summer fun!

In the Enchanted Forest at the Norfolk Botanical Garden we saw the houses of the Three Little Pigs...

...the house of the Old Woman who lived in the shoe...

... and Tom Sawyer's raft.

Elena loved this tire swing horse at Old MacDonald's farm!

We went to the garden with my friend, Lani, and Elena's friend, Lynnea.  I couldn't take pictures of Kevin playing because I didn't have a free hand when he was out of the stroller; he was still a new walker!  The garden has great water elements too.  Kevin had a ball!  Again, I couldn't take the camera into the splash zone.

Three mermaids!

After a week Kevin was ready to pack the car and get back to his mom and dad!

A BIG Birthday!

David's birthday just happened to fall on a day when he had to teach from 8:30am to 10pm. We couldn't let a major event like a 60th birthday to go unmarked, so we brought a surprise birthday party to him and his 6pm class! It was the week that Emma was a Girls' Camp and Elena and Kevin were staying in Virginia Beach. They were big hits at the party. Bethany helped so much with the kiddos and helping us to get to the school with all the birthday paraphernalia.

Even his students wanted pictures of the big event!

I had a birthday, too!

Elena and Emma made chocolate cupcakes for my birthday!

 And a couple of days before, I had a visit from an old friend that I share my birthday with: Suzanne Saatkamp!

Summer fun

It was great having Elena and Kevin here for a week! They experienced their first ever visit to Chuck E. Cheese!

Long time, no post!

Wow, it really has been a long time since I have posted anything here. Life is busy as usual and we try to stay out of trouble.

I could spend a few hours updating, but I want to get to bed. So I will focus on the most important things from this week:

TWO wonderful babies turned ONE!

...going for the candle

Kevin on June 28

Such a girl, even her eyebrow is pink!

Ariana on June 30

And they both really like cake!

Valentines' Day

I don't know if I will have time to post this weekend. So here is a picture of our Valentines' Day dessert: Raspberry Lime cheesecake. It took a couple of hours to make, but it was worth it. It was fabulous!!

Snow again?

Not too much exciting happened this week. The snow melted and we got some new, very temporary, snow. Now they are saying it will snow again today or tomorrow.

I bought some lamps for the family room. It took a couple of tries to get a set without scratches, but the extra trip to the store allowed me to shop baby clearance racks! We love the way the lamps look. Now we don't always have to have the overhead light on. There are four lamps to the set: two table lamps, a floor lamp (over by the family room window) and a small table lamp that looks lovely on the sideboard in the dining room by the computer. So we don't have to have the dining room chandelier on all the time either! I was even a good girl and put CFLs in all of them. With the updated kitchen it is a nice, grownup look. As if the house has finally matured from its college student/cinderblock bookshelf years. :)

What do you think?

I have been very domestic lately cooped up because of the cold weather. I've been sewing blocks for various quilts, crocheting and planning household organization. I'll let you know how that goes!

Snow Day(s)

It has been so gorgeous here with a 6 inch snowfall. Everything is canceled, including church. We watched "Music and the Spoken Word" on BYU TV and read a lot. There was a great quote by Teddy Roosevelt on the broadcast: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." That just seemed to fit today. David spent a good portion of the day shoveling almost all the driveways on the street. I made chocolate chip cookies and hot cocoa for my hero. The snow came all day Saturday and the sun came out on Sunday. Outside is a glittering wonderland!

Everything is canceled for Monday as well. I'm sure it will be almost gone by Tuesday, when it is supposed to be in the 40's.

Elena is 3!

We were back in NC for Elena's birthday weekend. It was great! She had all her friends over for a pajama party and birthday brunch. It was so cute. Kevin had his first chocolate in the form of a muffin. One of Elena's fun gifts was a princess dress! All the children liked the "pin the star in the sky" game.





Instead of cake Elena wanted a cupcake tower. She helped her mom decorate the cupcakes with stars. All the little kiddos were darling. The pinata smash-up was amazing and took much too much time and effort to get in one video! A good time was had by all.



Among assorted toys we got her an easel from IKEA. Here she is in her new Christmas outfit from her aunt and uncle looking adorable.

Table for Two

After Christmas we went on a field trip to northern VA to IKEA! It was a fun, exhausting day. The thing we really wanted to get was a smaller table for our "new" kitchen. Of course, there were a few other impulse buys, but ... we love our new table! It makes the kitchen look even bigger, and there will still be enough room for the kiddos when they come to visit. Watch the videos!

Christmas!

Christmas, as always, was incredible! Such fun, good food, cookies, caroling, and especially family!

Our son's family was supposed to arrived late night Christmas Eve, but weather postponed that a day. So we made cookies and went out singing with, at various times, sister missionaries and ward friends or our own little band of minstrels. When the sister missionaries first came over, they looked over at the tree and started oohing and ahhing. I thought it was about how unique our tree is. It turned out they were admiring our stereo turntable, something neither of them had ever seen before! Makes one feel a little old.

It was a fun evening and we all came home with smiles on our faces. Christmas morning we slept in and then opened one gift apiece. We decided to delay Christmas a day to wait for our 3 special guests to arrive.

Everything went wonderfully on the 26th. It is so much fun opening presents with babies! Six months seems to be the perfect age to really get into tearing paper!

Here are some pictures of wonderful, happy people who don't mind having their pictures on the web!

Amazing!

Christmas Town

I took a video of the giant Christmas tree in front of the Fest Haus in Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, but it plays sideways. I held the camera that way to get the whole thing, but watching it is very annoying. Suffice it to say we went to Christmas Town twice this season and loved it. I also purchased some of the best wassail spices there!

Amazing as it is, we visited FOUR different theme parks in the month of December! That must be some kind of record for us, even for David!

It's over

We drove home from Early Christmas in NC and went directly to the church because I had Ward Council meeting prior to our 3pm Sacrament Meeting on Dec. 20th. After Ward Council the bishop asked me to stay behind and told me I was going to be released as Relief Society President the next week. I was kind of taken aback. I still had so much to do, so many goals. But, I guess 6 years (and 2 weeks) is long enough to hog one calling!

That week was going to be my catchup week to get all the last minute things done before Christmas, but instead I spent 4+ hours going through my files and binders, 3 hours cleaning out the RS closet, and about 3 hours meeting with the new RS president. I didn't realize how long our meeting was; I really should have given her lunch! David was a wonder, as usual, running errands everywhere, baking, shopping, making deliveries, etc.

It was such an honor to be RS President in this ward. The sisters are so wonderful, caring, loving and spiritual. I have worked with three incredible bishops and so many great women. People have said some really nice things to me. The thing that touched me the most that day was when the previous bishop came up to me said, "Congratulations, I guess. I'm sure glad it didn't happen on my watch."

Relief Society (link to a fabulous 3 minute video) is an inspired organization. It is so important for the women of church to embrace it and be embraced by the spirit of Relief Society. There are so many opportunities for spiritual growth and loving service, and numerous examples of them in this ward. So many sisters are constantly giving and serving. The president doesn't do it alone. I wish I had done more. Somehow, six years wasn't long enough. Watch the video.

Early White Christmas

We celebrated Christmas a little early to see our NC grandbabies (and their parents) before they went to California for the holidays. It was a lot of fun and we even had SNOW! There was about six inches. It made for great snowpeople and even some backyard sledding.

They started out with two cute little snowpeople - look down on the deck.

Then, it kept snowing, and sledding with the wading pool became the sport of the day.

By evening the snowpeople had gotten much bigger and taken over Granddad and Elena's hats!

Kevin, a champion drooler, proved to be an electronics whiz as well with a new Christmas toy.

Annual Theme Park Weekend

Every year in December David does Physics shows at Busch Gardens in Tampa Florida. I almost always go with him! It's hectic and fun and we make a weekend out of it, usually attending an additional theme park on Saturday. This year we went to both Sea World and Disney World, thanks to a pass from our son. We also attended church in Florida with the teenage daughter of one of David's home teaching families. The weather was great, the hotel room was fabulous and we enjoyed the time together. I think the rental car was nice also, but I'm not sure. Thanks to my motion sickness medication I fell asleep everytime I got into it.

We loved the baby frogs at the Busch animal nursery station.

These leafy seahorses are the craziest looking things.

My favorite sea creature!

I know I posted a video like this from the Osbourne Family Lights at DisneyWorld once before, but I had to bring the Christmas songs back now that my Elf Yourself videos have expired. :( I didn't realize that would happen.

Here we are with DiAnna at her grandparents' backyard in Florida - the world's longest home teaching visit!

Thanksgiving

This was the best picture to show off our pretty table settings. Sorry, BB, about the closed eyes!

We have so much to be thankful for - especially our family! Thanksgiving was great! The food was plentiful and we kept eating all weekend. It was so much fun to have our girls here cooking together in our "new" kitchen. Our grandbabies made the weekend perfect.

Elena enjoyed the crystal napkin rings.

Kevin had fun with a spoon and was very careful with the china.