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!!!!

Christmas Eve and Day 2016

Here's a glimpse at our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day:   

On Christmas Eve we ran errands, did a lot of cleaning around the house, went out to eat at Uncle Julios with AnnaLisa and Tim, then stopped at Barnes and Noble for one last Christmas present.   (no pictures of any of this!) 

After dinner was over we also made our final 12-days delivery--a mailbox filled with letters from people who love them!      

After the delivery was made, we came home and had our Christmas Eve devotional with the Sister missionaries from our ward.   

 They loved having Rocky snuggle time and we loved their beautiful voices joined with ours during all the Christmas songs....

We had little stockings for them....

and them being there made us miss our Sister missionary,  who was spending  Christmas 4000 miles away,  just a tiny bit less.  

Emma is home, which meant that  Christmas morning breakfast was 10 times more amazing than it would have been had it been me in charge.   Homemade English muffins, monkey bread, poached eggs with homemade hollandaise sauce.   Yes, my daughter is quite the chef and it was all delicious!

After breakfast we opened presents, including these gorgeous dishes, which I'm quite excited about!!!!  

 Eventually, this beautiful girl called via FaceTime and we got to talk for about an hour.  The connection wasn't all that great, but it was amazing seeing her face and hearing her stories.   She is working hard and doing a wonderful work there in France.  

We all  really enjoyed our time to talk to her, but we were sure to save her just a little time, so that she also had time to talk to a certain someone who lives far away.   Apparently, we are not the only ones who are missing her like crazy!  

Eventually we got our family Christmas pajama photo, with Cami included via picture!  These might be our favorite pajamas ever.   

We eventually went to church (our church is at 1pm) and enjoyed the Christmas service very much.  The music and messages were outstanding and we really liked that Christmas Day was on Sunday this year.  (no pictures)

  And after that, we threw together some food and went to Aunt Evelyn's house for dinner...

The food was great and we very much enjoyed hanging out with cute little kiddos and the adults while we could.

 One of our kids was acting like a bonehead and embarrassing us thoroughly though, so we didn't want to stay too late.  We hit some tacky Christmas lights on the way home.... 

and the kids watched a movie (the BFG) during which I fell sound asleep.   It was sleep I desperately needed.   

Merry Christmas to all!   

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!