If You Give Lara a Blog

Hello, hello!  It's me, your friendly neighborhood blogger trying to get this little blog all caught up again.   

Should I blog about the amazing trip we took back in September?  Yes, yes, I should.   But my brain isn't quite there yet, so that will have to wait for another day.  

That also means that I'm not blogging about politics, my philosophy on shoes, nor an in depth look at the life cycle of bananas.  But, who am I kidding?   If I ever post anything remotely political on here, you'll know that this blog has been hacked.  It's not that I don't have strong opinions on many political issues, but I feel zero need to ever pontificate on them in public forums.  I like keeping my friends.   My philosophy on shoes may be mildly interesting to a few of you, so perhaps I'll put that in my idea list for another day far far in the future.  And don't ask me where I came up with blogging about the life cycle of a banana, but stay tuned...that might be fun.   

So what can my brain handle blogging about right now? 
 
A good go-to light topic is the weather, so perhaps we'll start there and see where it goes...

  The first part of October was quite rainy by Utah standards (something we quite enjoyed since it generally only ever drizzles here), then on Adam's birthday we woke up to snow!   Yes, I was about as happy about snow in mid-October as you can imagine, but you'll be happy to know that I didn't cry.  I may have been a little grumpy about it, but no tears were shed.  Yay me. 

Thankfully I survived and the weather has redeemed itself since then.  The last couple of weeks have been breathtakingly beautiful and I am spending as much time outside as humanly possible (which is less than I'd like).     This was a glimpse of our walk this afternoon along the Provo River Trail... 

The weather was perfection, the surroundings lovely, and the company excellent!  

We've been spending A LOT of time in Provo lately with our new calling, but the  reason why we were hiking in Provo today (instead of closer to home) was super exciting.  We had a convert baptism in our BYU ward this morning!  M. is a new freshman from the mid-west who had a lot of LDS friends in high school, which influenced her decision to attend BYU as a nonmember.  It's been an absolute delight to watch her testimony grow over the last couple months and we loved celebrating this special day with her.    I made the programs...of course!  

Last Saturday we also spent the day in Provo for another exciting, but much, much different event than a baptism....the BYU vs Utah football game.    Rather than getting season tickets for BYU football, Glen likes picking one game a season to attend and this was the one he picked.   We spent the afternoon tailgating with a bunch of Glen's work colleagues (and Adam)...

Then we headed in to watch the game, which ended exactly the way we hoped it would!   

Speaking of  excitement...I get to go play with these cutie pies soon and I'm so stinking excited I can barely stand it.   

Life has been so busy and, honestly pretty heavy lately, and I am very much looking forward to slowing down and enjoying some Lucie and Oliver time soon.   Oh, and I guess hanging out with Cam, Garrett, and Ems will be pretty awesome too.  

That's all I have for now, but before I sign off for the night, let me leave you with a glimpse at the glorious sunrise this morning.    

It made our entire room glow and it was a beautiful start to a beautiful day.   

Have a wonderful week!  💗

The Bad, The Good, The Funny, and the Tender Mercies

I'm slowly making my way through writing up about our amazing trip, but it's slow going and I didn't want to forget any of the details of our Thanksgiving Week, so I thought I'd do a little recap here before diving into our travel posts.  

THE BAD:

1. Our car totally went kaput driving 70mph down the freeway while driving my brother, Matt, to the airport.  I was barely able to maneuver off the freeway to a parking lot, where my brother had to Uber the rest of the way and I had to call someone to rescue me.  (see below for more details)

2.  I got a full-blown stomach bug on Thanksgiving Day and spent the entire day in bed with zero appetite and feeling miserable.

3.  They fixed our car for a somewhat reasonable amount, told us it was ready to pick up, then called us back a while later, and said, "never mind, it's still being weird."   We still haven't heard the new verdict.

THE GOOD: 

1.  My sister, Kristina, and her family (husband and 5 kids), plus my brothers, Nate and Matt,  came to visit.  They came to town for the BYU-OU football game (a game my Dad would have LOVED) and Kristina and Nate stayed for Thanksgiving.  

2.  Ellie and Emma came home from Rexburg and Provo, and Cami and Lucie flew in from Alabama for Thanksgiving, so  we had everyone home but Adam (still on his mission) and Garrett (who was working crazy shifts at the hospital and couldn't get off). 

3.  We had a lot of fun baking and just hanging out together.   We also visited the Orem Temple open house, went to Luminaria at Thanksgiving Point, and got several inches of snow. 

4.  My nephews, Manuel and Isaiah, got baptized while they were here.   They are a year apart in age, but the older one was pretty nervous and wanted to wait for his brother to do it at the same time.    

5. No one else (except Lucie and me) got the stomach bug and thankfully it was only a one-day thing. 

6.  Lucie stayed behind when Cami flew home and I get a bonus week of Gigi time!  

THE FUNNY: 

My nephews' baptism was definitely the most entertaining and memorable baptism I'd ever been to in my entire life.  They were both a bit nervous about getting baptized and that nervousness translated into extreme silliness.  There was potty humor, there was giggling, they screamed as they went underwater, one of them screamed, "I'm blind, I'm blind," as he came up out of the water, and the other kicked his dad in his sensitive parts because he'd been instructed by an older sibling that he may as well, because he'd be forgiven for it anyway.   It was definitely irreverent, but knowing their background of trauma (they were adopted out of the foster care system a few years ago), it was honestly beautiful to see them overcome their fears and embrace it in the best way they knew how.  

THE TENDER MERCIES: 

As inconvenient as it was for the car to break down during a busy holiday week when I had a million places to be, there were so many tender mercies and little miracles that happened with it, that I need to capture them here, so I don't forget. 

Tender Mercy #1. It was me driving it in a populated area, not Glen in the middle of nowhere on his way to Saint George.  He drives that car to Saint George 95% of the time and I only requested it because of Lucie coming to town.  

Tender Mercy #2. I had 3 separate trips to make to SLC that day and the car broke down on the trip when there would be  the fewest people on the road (at 5:30am).  

Tender Mercy #3. It all went down (power steering stopped working and car started losing power) right at an exit, so I was able to maneuver off the freeway quickly and safely. 

Tender Mercy #4.  Our AAA membership is all up to date, so they were able to come tow the car to our mechanic with little stress. 

Tender Mercy #5.  This car literally has 230,000 miles on it and has had very few problems, so honestly it's a tender mercy it's lasted as long as it has.  We clearly need a new car soon, but we  are hoping to get it running again and working well enough to hand off to Adam when he gets back from his mission. 

December 2017 --Baptism, Zombie Problems, and a Chocolate Fast

We started off December with my nephew, Davin's baptism.   He was a cutie pie and it was fun to spend the time with their family.  We also enjoyed running into one of Cami's friends (Elder Duffy), serving a mission in my brother's ward.  

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Don't ask what got into me, but I randomly decided that I was going to make the coolest white elephant gift ever for the high priest group party.   I did some research, made my plans, spent too much money, and put way more effort than I should have to create a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Kit.    

I put in all these fun things (along with a bunch of snacks on the bottom layer)....

I made this Zombie Identification Guide with pictures of men from our ward.    I was totally prepared for it to be the hit gift of the night.  Everyone would laugh and everyone would fight for it. 

That afternoon Glen found out that his job was ending in February.  His super sensitive HR director pulled him out of his work Christmas party to let him know.   

We didn't really feel much like partying at that point, but I had this super cool gift and some fun festive clothes to wear, so we went anyway.  

And it was all a HUGE flop.  The gift was the first one picked of the night and no one paid it one iota of attention.  It never got stolen and the people who got it couldn't have cared less and didn't even laugh at all the funny details I'd added, then they left early.   Combined with finding out about Glen's job, it all felt like a colossal waste of our time and money.  Next year, I'm definitely just going to the thrift store to buy something stupid, because clever/funny seems too elusive for me.

(And apparently I'm still a bit bitter about it six months later)!

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Right at the end of December, I ended my year-long chocolate fast.  It was amazing and I ate waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay  too much of it and made myself sick. 

And here are some more random pictures from December.

Our ugly sweaters....

Our Sunday best....

An epic Scrabble game with my brother Nate.

A new dam shirt my sister got for me...

Cami's best friend Katy got home from her mission....

It's crazy to me how much Ellie looks like her cousin, Bridgette!   

More random pictures....

Before Christmas

What have we been up to this Christmas season?  

We made gingerbread houses (with kits from Wegmans).   

We made homemade cards with residents at the Assisted Living Center and only got threatened with a lawsuit once. A resident told us that it was in her contract that she didn't ever have to see kids and would sue us for being there.    Other than that it was a lovely experience and we enjoyed our time there.   

 I wore my ugly Christmas sweater and Santa hat as often as possible.   I also taught the biology at coop, which meant I ended up with PTC strips in my pocket, so I could go around  testing whether random people have the super taster gene.

We woke up to an ice storm on Saturday, December 17th.  It took us 20 minutes to chip all the ice off of our car.

But it was worth the effort to see this awesome girl (Nicole) get baptized.

 She's Emma's age and has been an awesome addition to our YW.   It's also been fun to have a good excuse to spend more time with the Sister missionaries.   :)

I also tried to put together festive outfits (some more successful than others),

and hit my mid-afternoon slump and collapsed on the floor until someone could help me up (and feed me chocolate)....

The kids enjoyed staying in their pajamas half the day...

 We keep trying to balance out some of the goodies with some wholesome(r) foods, but it's going to be a rough road getting back to healthy eating and exercising once the holidays are over....

Ellie made her own nativity out of cardboard and paper as a gift for her auntie....

Our Elf is losing his zing and would often get stuck in the same place for several days....

We did 12-days of Christmas for someone, but didn't realize until later that they had motion sensored cameras by both of their doors, which meant that our identity wasn't actually a secret.   

They kept playing along though and let us keep delivering despite the fact that we weren't anonymous any longer.   One night they  left a little thank you gift for us, which the kids LOVED.

We hung out with friends!   We made pretzels, played games, and talked!  

And I enjoyed my cute conversations with Briella and Joseph (and their mom, Rachel)! 

Emma returned from England on December 23rd!!!     We are soooooooo happy she's home....

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!   Stay tuned for a full Christmas recap coming soon!