Holiday Week

I'm going to quickly run through the week leading up to Christmas.  We did a lot of fun things, but I don't have the energy to make a separate post about each one, and you don't have the energy to read them.  So for the sake of all involved, here is a quick overview:

Monday:
Jenny Smith and the girls had flown in from Chicago a day or two before.  On Monday, they came over to say hello and to tour our new house.  My girls were still in school, and the Smiths had other stuff to do. They only stayed a few minutes.  In the evening, we met the WHOLE Smith clan (minus David, who would be flying in later in the week) at Big Jim's Burgers in Ogden.  We took up about half the restaurant!  We ate delicious, greasy food, then went over to Kristin and Brian's house for hot chocolate and donuts.  The original plan was to go to Christmas Village, but a windy storm and a sick kid or two kept us indoors.  We had a great night visiting and playing with our family.


Clockwise: Alison, Megan, Ashley, Paige.



Scott, Jenny, Gpa, Gma, David



Bronson found a cool light saber!  He wielded it with impressive skill!  His metachlorians must be off the scale!
 

 Tuesday:
That evening, our girls had a birthday party to attend for a cute boy in our neighborhood.  It was at Chuck-E-Cheese's.  They had a blast and came home with quite a loot!  Meanwhile, Dave and I were finishing up present wrapping, neighborhood gift delivering, and work-related tasks that had to be completed before the holiday. 

Wednesday:
In the afternoon, I helped Alison's class make gingerbread houses while the boys had a play date at a neighborhood friend's house.  That evening, Ali had her first ever piano recital.   It was at our library.  She played two numbers.  She did such a  great job!  You know who didn't do such a great job?  Bronson - at being quiet.  He and Dave spent most of the recital in the lobby.  But that ended up working out really well for us because some teenager was walking out of the library with a nice large nut tray. (You know, the kind from Western Nut company or something?) She said she didn't like nuts, so she gave it to Dave. Woo Hoo!  After the recital, we drove around and looked at Christmas lights for a while. 


Our cute girl!

Thursday:
We attended the 5th or 6th annual Smith Family Christmas Bingo Party.  For the first time, we held it at a church.  It was great - we'll never go back to holding it in a house again.  We all bring a bunch of little prizes, gift wrapped and labeled either "kid" or "adult."  We eat yummy finger foods, then let the games begin!  Everyone goes home with lots of fun stuff and in a super-festive holiday mood!


This is when we're still setting up.  Those chairs would soon be filled with Smiths



The prizes!



This is what a Smith party looks like after we've all decided NOT to have food at it!



Grandpa is always the bingo caller.  This year, Bronson helped.



After the game's over, everyone trades prizes with each other.  Dave was the one running around trying to trade all the kids for their candy this year.  It was funny.
 

 

Friday: 

Friday was a day for cleaning the house, packing the bags, cooking as much food as I could for Christmas dinner, and finishing up any last minute preparations for the holidays so that we'd be ready to leave the next morning.  It was a busy, busy day.  That's all I have to say about that.

Saturday:
We woke up, ate breakfast, packed the van, and headed to Idaho.  On the way there, we listened to "The Christmas Carol" read by Patrick Stewart.  It was wonderful!  The boys were too young to really enjoy it, but the rest of us liked it a lot.  We got to the Gee's house around lunch time.  We spent the day visiting, then in the evening, we had the Gee family Christmas dinner.  Since both Shawn and Kristi's families had in-laws visiting for the holidays and Jodi would be with her in-laws as well, this was our big get-together.  We had a full Christmas dinner with ham and cheesy potatoes and home made rolls and everything!  Afterwards, we had a wonderful concert.  We had lots of piano numbers (seriously amazing!) and singing, gymnastics, saxophone, trombone, guitar, and violin numbers as well.  It was such a great night! 


Nicole sang, "I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas"



Evan played the sax - I didn't know he even could!



A super fun piano duet by Grandma and Sue
 

Sunday:
We went to church at our old ward in Lyman.  I can't even describe how beautiful the program was.  Every song and every word was beautiful.  I was so happy to be there.  David and the boys stayed home because Dave "wasn't feeling well."  He really was a little sick, but let's be honest - he would have come if he'd remembered to pack his pants!!!  We had a great time visiting with old friends and neighbors.  I was amazed at how much all the kids in the ward had grown in only six months! We spent the afternoon visiting with Grandma and Grandpa, Suzette, and Aunt Linda.  That evening, Jim, Marilyn and I went to visit Dave's Aunt Marilyn.  Then we drove around for a while and looked at Christmas lights together.  It was such a fun time for me.  Meanwhile, everyone else stayed home and watched "A Christmas Carol" with George C. Scott as Scrooge.  My kids had never seen to before - it was a little intense in parts for Nicki, and the boys didn't watch it at all, but I think otherwise, they liked it. 


Grandpa played Old Maid with the girls.

So that's it...that's the week leading up to Christmas Eve.  Pretty fun, eh?  I LOVE Christmas time!  I love being with family and going to concerts and parties and shopping and singing and reading the gospels and everything - EVERYTHING that goes along with it! 

Our Miracle

As I mentioned in my last entry, I lost my camera somewhere on the Frontrunner train system.  I'm not sure exactly where I lost it - I had when we were waiting for the train, and I didn't have it when we were at Temple Square.  That's all I know.  I spent most of the evening trying not to think about the loss, and when I wasn't successful, I tried to remember if our warranty covered losing it on a train.  David was so totally cool about the whole thing.  He told me not to worry about it - it was a camera, not a child.  I was grateful that he wasn't angry, but I was sick about the money and the memories that were gone - we couldn't replace either.

We got home from our outing pretty late that night.  I was cold and tired and sick and very sad.  I got the kids in their beds, then collapsed in my own bed and fell instantly asleep.  Dave was awake for a little while.  Around 11:30 or so, he woke me up.  He said, "Kell - there's a message on our answering machine from (the lady that used to live in our house).  She says that someone called her tonight and asked her if she lost a camera on the Frontrunner. She left the people's name and number for us to call in the morning."  I'm sure Dave was expecting me to be excited, but instead, I burst into tears.  I mean, I WAS excited, but I was pretty overwhelmed by our little miracle.  Talk about a tender mercy!

So, here's the story of the lost camera.  A very nice, honest, kind lady and her adult daughter found our camera at the train station.  They wanted to find the owner, but couldn't find any name or address on the case.  They turned on the camera and started to look at the most recent pictures for clues.  First, they saw a picture of our little family waiting for the train.  "Ohhh!  How sad!  We've got to find them!" they said.  They looked at more pictures.  Suddenly, they found a major clue!  See, just a few days prior to our trip, we just happened to get a Christmas card from our cat, and I just happened to take a picture of the envelope.  They googled our address and found the previous owner's information.  The previous owner happened to keep their same phone number when they moved, so she was able to answer the call and forward the information on to us.  Can you believe how many things just HAPPENED to fall into place?!?!?  I contacted the woman the next morning, and she was more than happy to deliver the camera right to our front door. She was greeted by the most excited, humble, grateful family she'd ever seen!

Temple Square

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Jodi and I made plans to meet at Temple Square in December to see the beautiful Christmas lights.  Friday, December 14th was the day we made those plans come to pass. (That was also the day of the horrible school shooting in Connecticut.  I had spent much of the day in tears, and was especially anxious to spend quality time with my family).

We decided to ride the Frontrunner train to Salt Lake and then take Trax to Temple Square.  The Layton terminal is not far from our house.  We had a great time waiting for and riding the train! Sure, it was cold and rainy, but we wouldn't let that dampen our spirits!  In fact, the kids were all a little TOO excited!  They literally could NOT hold still!  Jodi's family was also riding the Frontrunner to Salt Lake at the same time.  We showed up at Temple Square not too long after they arrived.

We spent some time walking around and "enjoying" the lights for a while.  I say "enjoying" because it's not exactly peaceful for the moms.  You know, we're just laser-focused on trying to keep nine excited kids together, out of harms way, out of the ponds, and out from under the feet of other light-lookers, etc.  There was a lot of stress on the parents' part, but the kids weren't listening to us anyway, so they had a blast. 



About half way through our visit, I realized that I'd lost our camera.  That put a damper on the evening, but I tried not to let it ruin anything.  I'll tell you the whole camera story in another post, but for now, just know that there weren't too many photos taken.  Most of these photos came from Jodi's camera or David's phone.

After a while, we decided that we should try to find some place to eat.  We discussed JB's, not far from Temple Square, but when Dave called, he was told that there was a half hour wait.  We decided to try the food court in City Creek.  Yikes.  After herding nine rowdy, hungry kids across busy city streets and down a couple of city blocks in the rain, we discovered that the food court at City Creek was PACKED!!!  I mean, it looked like an ant hill!  It was wild!  We decided that a half hour wait at JB's was sounding better than a half hour wait in a food court line.  We walked another couple of city blocks and across another busy street or two in the rain with rowdy, hungry kids (some of which were starting to melt down - JOSH!), but we finally arrived at JB's.  I don't think the wait was more than 15 or 20 minutes, most of which was downright pleasant.  We ended up seated in a great big table in the back of the restaurant and had a wonderful time (all except a child or two who continued to melt down, but even that was over once the food arrived). 

After dinner, we all rode the Trax to the SLC Central station.  Then, we had to split ways and head in different directions.  It was fun to say goodbye - over and over again since we were just standing on opposite sides of the platform for about half an hour.  While we waited, David took Josh off somewhere to let him run.  He just ran and ran for about 20 minutes.  The rest of us huddled by the space heaters at the train platform and watched the rain turn to snow.  We got home late, but the kids were in wonderland!  What a fun night for them.  Me?  Well... between having a heavy heart over the shooting, losing the camera, chasing kids all night, and feeling my cold get worse and worse with each passing minute, it wasn't my best night.  Still, seeing how much joy it brought the kiddos pretty much wiped out all the bad stuff.  I hope we do it again every year!

Season's Greetings?

We got a mysterious letter in the mail a week or so ago...



When I first saw it, I figured someone must have let their child address the envelope.  It seemed like strange handwriting.



Then, I got quite a shock to see who the sender turned out to be.



That darned cat!!!  It totally made my kids' day!  They spent a lot of time passing the card around and trying to figure out how she held the pen, etc.  Of course, I went out and got a gift for her the very next day so as to avoid any further letters.
 

Thanks, mom!  What a great surprise for all of us.

Grandpa's Challenges

In November, my 92 year old Grandpa Church suffered a minor stroke.  He spent a couple of days in the hospital, then a few weeks at a nursing home in Ogden.  For a while, things weren't looking too good.  When I went to visit him the first time, his speech was terribly slurred, one side of his body was paralyzed, and he wasn't really able to eat.  He's such a fighter and hard worker, though.  He soon regained some of his strength and speech and within a few days, he was telling us that his physical therapy was a "piece of cake!" (As you can tell, he never lost his sense of humor) Still, he's probably not going to be strong enough to come home for quite some time (if ever), so we're all trying to adjust to this new phase of our lives.  It's been the most difficult for my grandma, of course.  Her whole life has been turned upside down and there are still so many unknowns about the future.  My mom also spends a lot of time with them.  I wish I could do more, but I only get to see him about once per week (thanks to the fact that Josh is terrified of nursing homes and cries like a mad man every time he has to come along). 

One day, Grandpa Church's older brother, Ned and his little sister, Sarah drove up from Delta to visit him.  It was pretty amazing! Ned's 97 or so and Sarah's 90!  Ned is one of the best men I've ever had the blessing of knowing. All the Church's are - they're truly the most loving, fun, warm, happy people I've ever met!  Here is a picture of them in the parking lot of the nursing home before they left. 


Katie, Kristin, Mom, Dad, Ned's granddaughter, Ned, Sarah, Ned' daughter Florence
 

A few weeks ago, he was transferred to the Veteran's Nursing Home in North Ogden.  It's a very nice facility, and we're happy that he's there. He's been struggling with dementia worse than ever so he's been moved to a dementia wing.  At first, we thought that was a sad thing, but it's turned out to be great. They're just better equipped to give him what he needs there.  He's encouraged to be out-and-about visiting other patients, which is what he's been wanting to do all along.  It's hard because he doesn't want to be there.  He wants to go home - to Ogden or sometimes to Delta.  We think that he sometimes thinks he's back in Japan as a POW.  On Friday, he was showing me the fence out the window and telling me that we had to get to the other side of it.  As hard as this is for us, it's got to be hardest of all for him.  I love him so much and wish he could be spared this trial.  I love to visit him.  He's such a kind man, even when he is trying to talk you into busting him out of there.