My Least Favorite Month

 January is not my favorite month of the year.   It's cold.  It's dark.  The holidays are over.  Spencer was diagnosed with leukemia in January, so there's a bit of PTSD I still deal with every year.  And, in general, I experience all sorts of restless feelings this time each year.  So I donate blood every January.  It's definitely become an annual tradition now and it gives me a sense of purpose/giving back in amongst all the angsty feelings.  

I also try to stay very busy.  That also helps.

All in one week in January,  I cleaned out the pantry, put away the Christmas stuff, hosted book group, donated blood, cleaned the house, made a menu, and started going ham on creating the Come Follow Me activity sheets for the upcoming year.  Staying busy is good for my mental state.  

I also finally got all the Christmas Eve pajama photos compiled into one collage, which made me super happy.   When you've got kids all over the country, these kinds of things can take a while!   

So I mentioned above that   I've started creating the Come, Follow Me activity sheets again for this upcoming year.  I discovered the use of AI for creating coloring sheets and it's been a fun resource for me. I'd been using CHATGPT for creating them and they would turn out like this.   Pretty good.   Sometimes with some weird stuff in it, because it's AI, but not terrible in my opinion.   

Then Spencer told me about a new AI platform that he'd heard was really good.  I decided to test it out and I put in the exact same prompt that I'd used on Chat to create the above coloring sheet of Abraham and Sarah from the bible.  This is what it came up with.... 

HAHAHA!  We may have laughed for a very long time about this.   I looked it up and apparently Claude is better for words than images and  I'd have to say that is a massive understatement.  Ha! 

January has also been quite the adventure for getting to know the new members of our BYU ward.   It's a little harder than we expected, because while it was only a fraction of the people than it was in September, it seems like the expectation is higher to learn the names more quickly.  I am still working hard to get there, but  I'm realizing that my brain still needs to meet people a few times before names/faces are really stuck in my brain well!  

And how did we finish my least favorite month off?   

WITH A TRIP TO RHODE ISLAND TO VISIT SOME OF  MY FAVORITE PEEPS!!!! 

Stay tuned for that blogpost coming soon....

A {Mostly} Predictable Christmas

Happy New Year, my friends!    I just dropped Ellie off at the MTC earlier today (and I will post about that later), but first I need a little distraction from my complicated feelings and wanted to do a little recap of our Christmas.   If you've been following along with this blog for very long, you can likely predict that the excitement level of this post will be somewhat low and the content fairly predictable, but I figure if you're still following along with this blog 17 years after I started it, you know what you're getting!  Haha! 

I already posted about our Christmas cards this year, but here is a glimpse of the the other Christmas cards I designed AND had printed (yes, I'm that obsessed).   The top ones were for Cami, who had a pretty crazy Christmas season of Garrett working nights most of the month, combined with a lot of sickness that knocked them out for a while (and required a couple of scary ER visits for poor Oliver with a case of the croup).    She knew there was no way they were getting out before Christmas, so we just embraced the New Year theme! 

I also designed and printed my Mom's cards. I felt a little badly that there were no photos of her with any other grandkids to include, but, to be fair, I asked everyone before throwing in the pictures of my family.  No one else had any to offer, so it is what it is, and my sister, H, and I  are already on a quest to do better this year  taking pictures with the other families when they come to town.  

Christmastime at our house always includes making a lot of goodies, but this year we decided to jump into the whole "neighbor gift" tradition that is very much a thing here in Utah.   We brought goodies to friends in other places, but with our ward being so compact here in Utah, it's much more of a widespread tradition and it's fun to see the creative gifts and treats that people came up with.   We opted for white chocolate toffee popcorn--a recipe I got from my friend, Lona, in PA.  It was easy enough to make in large quantities and we packaged it up cute and made about 25 deliveries on Christmas Eve. 

It was fun to spend an evening with my nieces, Lauren (at BYU-ID) and McKenzie (at BYU), before bringing them to the airport to head home for Christmas break.  They knew it was their last chance to see Ellie for 18ish months, so they enjoyed their time together! 

We almost dispensed with the Christmas Eve pajama tradition this year, but after some persuasive arguments from a couple of the kids, we pulled it together very last minute.  

I think everyone really ended up liking their Snuggies and I will be hard-pressed to dispense with this tradition before Ellie is home, so we will be keeping the tradition alive for another couple years at least! 

We couldn't find baby-size Snuggies, so we sent Lucie and Oliver pajamas in matching colors at least.    Garrett is a big fan of his, while Cami finds hers a little too toasty to wear much. 

To be fair, I can't wear mine to bed for the same reason, but I do enjoy wearing mine in the evenings and especially when I first wake up in the morning when the house is colder.   

I do have to admit that Christmas pajama photos are pretty fun and we've had a lot of epic ones over the years.  This one ranks up there with some of the best!  

After pajama opening, we did our traditional Christmas Eve devotional with songs and scriptures. My Mom, Heather, and Nate joined us for this part of the night.   You can find a printable version of the devotional books we use here.  We usually read all the scriptures and sing just the first verses  of the songs, then Glen finishes off the night with showing us this video and him testifying about how we can let Christ into our lives better. 

On Christmas morning, we made and enjoyed this delicious breakfast....

Emma made a gluten free version of our favorite Orange Breakfast Bread, I made bacon, and Adam and Glen made eggs and got the berries ready.  It was all delicious and I daresay we looked pretty cute eating our Christmas breakfast in our Snuggies!  

Later we opened presents, during which I took almost no photos.  But I did capture the beautiful Scandinavian heart baskets Emma made for us and we smiled seeing this sweet picture of Lucie, so happy that she got the only thing she wanted from Santa...some pink sparkly shoes!  

What else did we do?  

Ellie and I did some shoveling, since Glen is still recovering from his recent appendectomy.   Adam hit up some Christmas parties wearing this epic outfit. 

Speaking of epic outfits....Adam's BYU friend group were all looking pretty snazzy at this party!  

Oh, and this part of the post is all out of order, but I had to throw in something slightly unexpected for you.  This was a glimpse of our Christmas Eve dinner, ordered to-go from Cheesecake Factory.   It may look like alcoholic beverages on our table for the occasion, but, rest assured....

It was just a non-alcoholic butterscotch beer taste testing we decided to try!   It was our first time having butterscotch beer (besides the butterbeer from Universal Studios Harry Potter World).  I think it was pretty unanimous that it was all a bit too sweet for us to buy on any regular occasion, but #1 (the one we'd gotten from Costco) was the one we liked the best. 

 So there you have it...our very boring, but wonderful Christmas festivities.   These days I don't even want non-boring.   Having our college kids home, a missionary in the house, and my Mom, brother, and sister here was perfect.  The only thing that would have made it more perfect, was if Cami, Garrett, Lucie, and Oliver could have been here too, but we had {most of} them for Thanksgiving, so we will be grateful for that!  

Happy New Year!  

Ten Things That Made Me Smile Last Week

 In no particular order, here are 10 things that made me smile this past week...

10.  A "dam" surprise!   One morning I was taking a drink out of my water bottle when the kids started making snarky comments about it.   I was confused until I looked down and found a  sticker with strong Lara-humor-vibes sticking to it.   It took me a second to figure out how it had gotten there overnight, then I remembered a visit from my sister, Heather, the night before and I didn't have to wonder any longer!   😀

9 . The sun started shining again!    We went through a couple weeks of very un-Utah-like  days of endless clouds.   It was cold and dreary and every day it would rain or snow a bit more.    It's still cloudier than usual for Utah, but  we've definitely seen the sun a bit more this week and it's made me very happy!  

8.  Letters from our missionary.  We take great pride at making sure our missionaries are the mail receiving  champions of their missions, but we know missionary life means they don't have time to actually write back all that often.   This week we were surprised with snail mail letters from Adam....something that made us all smile big!  

7. A full row of girls {+Glen} at church!   Emma had to run to her ward after sacrament meeting, but I loved having the whole G Girl crew for the first hour of church.   I miss people knowing my older kids.    

6. Lucie snuggles.  She's not actually much of a snuggler normally, but there were a few times when I happened to be taking care of her when she was a bit on the tired side, that I got to enjoy some sleepy snuggly moments!  I loved every second of it. 

5.  Finding a way to share!     I started making the Come, Follow Me activity sheets again this year and worried because I didn't really have a good forum for sharing them, since my FHE blog isn't all that well-used anymore and our current ward doesn't do paper programs.   Then I remembered that I had an email list from a few years ago.  I sent out a note and got about 15 people who indicated they were interested in receiving them by email once a month.   I was very excited, because I enjoy making them and I enjoy the opportunity it gives me to dive in and study each week's reading with more purpose and depth, but I also like knowing that they're being appreciated. 

4. Lucie dances!   Lucie is a girl who can dance before she can walk!   She's got rhythm and moves and it's hard not to get in on the dancing with Lucie leading the way. This week we introduced her to "Baby Shark" and, much to Cami's chagrin, she's now a fan!   She even figured out a way to ask for it by signing, "more," and then saying "dance" or doing the baby shark action.   {sorry, I can't figure out how to embed it, but here's the link if you want to watch a video of her dancing, though now I need to video her dancing to Baby Shark}

3.  Healing well!  I went to my post-op doctor appointment and was declared to be healing well!    I can start introducing more intense  physical activities in about 2 weeks. 

2. A nice comment on my FHE blog.  I know that my blogging habits (and the reasons why I have spent so much time on them over the years) is inexplicable to most people, but suffice it to say, it was NOT to garner attention or feedback.   Having said that though, there really isn't anything more satisfying than  when I get a nice comment on something I spent many hours on.  The particular blogpost {that I got a comment on} was one that I put a lot of thought, prayer, and heart into several years ago.   In real life, it was completely ignored and got zero feedback,  so getting the occasional pat on the back, a handful of times in the 7 years since sharing it, is extremely heartwarming to me.   I'll be honest, it feels like I was led to create that blogpost more for the online world than for my own ward.    

1.  Cami and Lucie being here!    It's been an absolute delight to have Cami and Lucie here for the last week and it's going to feel awfully lonely around here now.    

Honorable mentions.  To close off this blogpost, here are a few honorable mentions that are making me smile this week...

We ordered some caramel apples from our favorite ice cream shop in Pennsylvania!   We would have loved to have ordered ice cream as well, but we'll take what we can get! 

I taught Lucie how to say, "Baaaaa," when asked what a sheep says and I am very excited!   

 

We got Lucie this little puffer suit for Christmas and it made me smile to have her try it out on a walk the other day.  

Emma is fully entrenched in her life at BYU, so she's only been able to come home a couple times while Cami's been here, but I love that she's close enough that Cami and her can still hang out while she's here.  

What's making you smile this week?   

Christmas 2020

Letter to Emma dated 12/28/20:



Hello Hermana!
How is post-Christmas life? I hope you're excited about whatever transfer day has in store for you and I look forward to hearing all about it.

What have we been up to?

Well, mostly eating way too much crap,

 playing Codenames (a game we got for Christmas), and watching movies. 

The boys are playing Magic nonstop and they even taught Dad how to play, so he'll likely be absorbed by it too. I worry a little about Adam and he playing a little too much of it when Christmas is over. 

Today we had a very delicious cheese tray for dinner and WOW! It was tasty (and beautiful thanks to Cami). I decided that I need to get myself a wooden cheese/cutting board one of these days..

 

Today, I decided to wear Ellie's hiking shoes on a little walk around the neighborhood. They're the same brand as the evil ones I swore off after the unfortunate incident in Utah, but different enough that I thought they'd be okay. They weren't. I had the exact same issue with them and fell....HARD! It was quite cold, so thankfully I was wearing a thick jacket and sweats, but I still busted myself up pretty good. My knee is bruised and scraped, but my elbow is a mess. It immediately started dripping blood and apparently is busted open quite deep. Both Cami and Garrett said it is something that is deep enough to be stitched. They also said that the fact that it was my elbow, where the skin is loose and scarring isn't really a big deal, that it didn't HAVE to be stitched. So I am avoiding it. I had Cami and Garrett clean me up good, cover it with lots of antibiotic ointment and wrap it up in gauze and such. In the meantime, I am in pain and quite adamant that I never touch a hiking boot ever again. Maybe a hiking shoe, but maybe just tennis shoes since I'm kind of scarred at this point.

So we watched Wonder Woman 1984 on Christmas night. It was stupid. I don't think a single person in our house enjoyed it. We watched Soul last night and that was a much better effort. You'll definitely need to watch that one when you get home.

I'm sure you saw the pictures on Hangouts, but we ended up going to Bethlehem last week. It was a cute little town and it was cool to see a glimpse of a place important to Dad's heritage there. Apparently they normally have quite a big Christmas market that's the coolest around. We missed it though... I'm not sure whether we were too late in the season or if just never happened this year because of COVID, but even without the big market, it was still quite a charming town to visit.

Tomorrow (Monday) is Cam and Garrett's last day with us, so we are trying to figure out how to spend it. We thought that we'd take them downtown, but they're not acting as enthused about that anymore, so we will see. I wouldn't be surprised if we just have another chill day at home. WE shall see!

Well, I hope you're having an awesome week! WE love you like crazy and are praying for you. Good luck with packing and such if you are getting transferred. 

Love, 
Mom 

PS  Here are some other random pictures from our Christmas...

Christmas breakfast...

One of many homecooked meals together....

Just chilling....

Dad, Cam, Garrett, and Adam ran a half-marathon at Valley Forge....

Christmas pajamas!!!!