Ever's birthday fell on a Monday this year. It was the day of Wren's nativity / Christmas party at Little Bugs. Wren was a shepherd. This is the worst-quality video of her participation.
Her smile kills me.
She napped that day (as always), and I found her in an uncomfortable-looking position.
Ever and Leela planned a joint birthday party with friends for January. On her actual birthday, Anna and I just took our kids to the trampoline park. I don't think it was the most exciting thing ever since they're not big enough to do much and there weren't that many of them, but they had fun. Ever wants to go again.
The littles had a heck of a time climbing out of the foam pits.
I barely caught one of Ever's front flips.
The try-to-push-each-other-off-the-beam game was pretty fun.
Wrenzy was a pro at the trapeze.
Tiny liked doing it but always refused to let go.
I believe on December 18th (Leela's birthday), Anna took her kids and Ever to Legoland. So nice how she's helping us use Ever's season pass.
We didn't have a chance to get our Christmas tree until December 12 this year. It was a cold night, but Tiny insisted on wearing a princes dress and didn't even regret it.
We got our tree from Home Depot again this year. Jim went into the store to buy some stuff he needed for the house. The girls and I were supposed to pick out our tree while he was shopping. I can't really unwrap trees, stand them up, spin them around, and make decisions all by myself. So we looked at a couple and then mostly stood out there in the cold waiting for Jim to come help us. I'm such a dependent lady. Once he finally got out there, Jim told the worker we'd take the first one I looked at. Then Wren decided she needed to go to the bathroom, so I took the little people inside. Tiny and Wrenzy ran through the store and weren't in a listening mood.
Back at home, Jim continued work on the bathroom.
That weekend Ever had a camping trip with her Daisy troop to Camp Winacka. Anna said they had one last year at the same time - right before Christmas, and on Ever and Leela's birthday weekend. The timing was not ideal, and the only girls who could make it besides Ever and Leela were the daughter and granddaughter of the leaders and two other girls (who are cousins). Anna took the girls up Friday afternoon, December 14. She documented their s'mores-making that night:
She also texted me proof that they helped with breakfast dishes Saturday morning.
I drove up Saturday to meet them, and I took treats to share with the troop to celebrate Ever's and Leela's birthdays. Leela requested plain chocolate chip cookies, while Ever wanted "thrusters" (chocolate chip cookie dough baked in mini muffin tins with peanut butter cups pressed into the center after baking). The girls overwhelmingly opted for plain chocolate chip cookies, but we had enough. I forgot candles, but we sang "Happy Birthday":
It was supposed to be really cold that weekend, so Sara and Marin had planned to do a bunch of crafts inside and then get outdoors to the extent possible. The weather ended up being beautiful and not very cold at all. We did the crafts on the porch of the craft building.
Then we squeezed in a walk around the lake before dinner.
We enjoyed the pretty yellow trees.
We saw a bunny on our way back up the hill, and the girls took out their binoculars and watched it as if it were the most exciting wildlife imaginable.
We enjoyed a dinner of spaghetti, bread, and broccoli at the cabin.
Marin and the girls wrote a song.
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A couple of girls started bringing mattresses in from the back room and making a stack in the living area. Soon all hands were on deck, and the girls managed to get every single mattress onto the pile. It was quite impressive.
Ever and I came home Saturday night so we could make 9:00 A.M. church Sunday morning.
Jim was so cute with the girls in nursery.
For the first handful of weeks in our new ward, Jim and I went into the nursery. We realized on the second or third week that there were no people in there who were actually called to the nursery. The boundary changes left a lot of callings to be filled, so most of us from Oceanside 4th just started helping in the auxiliaries we were in before the changes. Jim is so great in nursery and Primary. He and Derrick were hoping to be called as co-teachers in Primary, but ultimately Jim was called as Second Counselor in Young Men.
Back to Sunday, December 16. We decorated the tree that afternoon. Jim was very pleased that it was a family affair. In the past, he's just done it himself while I've been preparing lunch, feeding the kids, and getting them to bed.
To complete the festivities, the girls watched Polar Express. They passionately loved it and talked about it constantly for weeks afterward.
We've had way more rain this winter than normal. Thursday, December 6 was a rainy day. My whole house needed cleaning, but the littles and I spent a long time reading. They always switch off on my lap; whoever picks the story gets the lap. When Tiny sat next to me, she reached up and gently rubbed my neck or touched my hair. It was the sweetest thing. I thought she had to be most uncomfortable, as she did it for a long time, but it was amazing.
Just for fun, Jim got us tickets to the San Diego Symphony on Friday, December 7. The special guest was a world-renowned mandolin player from Israel. Jim decided that he hates the mandolin, but the parts when the famous mandolin player was not playing were enjoyable.
The weekend of culture continued when I took Ever to the Nutcracker on Saturday. Jim had wanted the three of us to go together, so I bought three tickets. When that weekend rolled around, though, Jim yearned to work on the house. We let Ever invite a friend to take the third ticket, and she invited Ella. We left Jim to cut holes in walls, move pipes, and do other neat things.
Ever and I twinned for the occasion.
We got there in time for the girls to pose with the dancers. (Ella braided Ever's hair in the car.)
Ever insisted on going to the full-length production instead of the abbreviated kid-friendly show. When I extended the invitation to Ella via Kristi (her mom), Kristi said Ella would love it. I had concerns about the running time and issued warnings about the length of the show, but Ever and Ella were sure it would be no problem. Not long after it started, I sensed the antsy-ness from both girls but more from Ella. When it finished, I asked Ella what she thought, and she said, "It was long." So that was a lot of money that could have been better spent. Ever may not remember this come next December, but she finally agreed that we'd go with Wrenzy to the hour-long, kid-friendly performance next year.
Sunday we made cookies to deliver to people in the neighborhood. In order to make them Christmas-y, Jim and Ever picked through our bag of mini M&Ms to sort out the green and red ones.
Even though we started as soon as we could after church, the whole process took forever. We had to rush to deliver the cookies before leaving for dinner at Maggie and Al Long's house (and we were late to dinner). The cookies were thrown in plain containers and hurriedly delivered by Jim and Ever to unsuspecting people in the neighborhood with whom Jim and Ever didn't have time to chat. The cookies, themselves, were not our finest work (imagine my dismay when I later learned our neighbor to the south is a chef!), so all in all - better luck next time. We tried.
We had a nice dinner with the Longs. Al is really fun with the kids and entertained them after we ate by giving them rides on his giant reclining chair and fanning them with a blanket.
The Longs are great, and the kids have fun together. Afton and Wren are in gymnastics together now. It's a bummer they're moving in May for Al's job.
The first weekend in December, Ever and I started Saturday morning off with a service project at the stake center where we packaged up thousands of meals to be sent to school cafeterias in developing countries. Hats and hairnets were required. She stole my beanie.
Our one-hour time slot went quickly, and Ever didn't want to leave. It was a gratifying experience.
I had accumulated so many overripe bananas that I finally took the opportunity Saturday evening to hold a banana bread taste test. I have been dying for years to identify the very best banana bread recipe. I've primarily used two main banana bread recipes, although I'm not 100% sure they are better than others I've tried. Nonetheless, I figured finding a winner between those two was the first step. So we made one batch using Mariah Koehle's recipe and one batch using a recipe I got from allrecipes.com. The event was over-photographed.
Wrenzy's doe face:
There was some excellent chair dancing that became more rump-focused after I started filming.
The girls went to town on the bowls and utensils. They must be the most thorough lickers in all the world. I have to force them to stop after about a half hour, when they can't possibly still be getting enough to taste.
We all enjoyed the final products.
The bad news is that the vote was split. Tiny likes anything with chocolate chips (which is all banana bread I make because I only believe in it that way). Wrenzy and Ever voted for Mariah's recipe (which is less flavorful), and Jim and I voted for the other recipe. So that was sort of a bust. Plus I have other recipes to try...
Jim was intent on getting our house decked out for Christmas early and well, especially since Mamo and Papo were coming. He squeezed in some light stringing between meetings on Sunday.
That night he and all the other Oceanside bishops were released at a special stake meeting. He and his counselors (Derrick Karner and Phil Alexander) were sad to be released, which surprised me a little. They really enjoyed their callings and the bromance among them. The stake presidency was reorganized, and all the Oceanside and Carlsbad wards' boundaries were changed. We and a decent-sized contingent from Oceanside 4th joined what was formerly the Oceanside 2nd ward in the Mesa building. We are now the Rancho del Oro ward. Many O4 members grieved the changes, but for some reason I didn't really have feelings about it. O4 was a nearly perfect ward, with lots of amazing people, plenty of capable members to fill callings, and minimal welfare needs. O2 was struggling really badly. We heard that it was second place in the country for how much welfare money it gave out last year and that no ward has ever given out that much without fraud's being discovered. A lot of O2 people were really happy about the influx of new ward members. So anyway, Jim was released, and we changed wards, and it was the end of a good era.
