Benjamin is doing that cute headshake thing!  You can’t hear the music in the video, but he does tend to start when he hears music, so I think he’s dancing!

This was Sarah and Kevin’s last week of Mapleton City Basketball.  It was fun for them.  Ten games and a small team = lots of playing time!  In fact, when they didn’t have enough players for a full team, Megan played, too.  So it was a good experience for her, too!  On Tuesday night, Megan played and even then they only had four players until the fourth quarter.  They tied 18 to 18 against a team that had beaten them twice.  Not bad!  I’d say that shows some serious improvement.  I went to their last game on Wednesday night and they won 36 to 25.  Their team also won the Mapleton City Sportsmanship Award and will get a free pizza party.  Holy Cow!  Go Team!

Also on Wednesday night, Megan had her last Activity Days activity and Mariah had her first in the older group – their only activity together!  Funny, huh?  They went caroling.  They both had a great time. 

This Sunday they called me and a neighbor as the new Activity Days leaders.  So I have missed Meg entirely, but Mariah and I will be having some fun times together in the future!  They will release me from being a primary teacher in January.  I really liked that calling.  I loved being able to testify every Sunday.  I know that I have chances to testify all around me, I will just need to . . . what?  Notice?  Create the opportunities myself?  Something . . .

This week Mariah and I had basketball practice twice (at one of which, I managed to bore my team enough that they asked if they could go home!  No respect I tell ya, I should have made them run lines . . .)  Megan had practice twice and Sarah and Kevin had Springville practice once in addition to their two Mapleton games.  January is going to be crazy!  It’ll be January madness – let’s see – January Jostle – January Juke – Jazzy January.  What do you think?

During the quiet days when everyone is at school, I’ve been listening to The Doomsday Book (our bookclub selection for January) and working on the dolls I am making for the three little girls.  I really like doing that.

Actually, I would have gotten more done and it would have been a little more peaceful if Ben hadn’t decided to get all four of his upper teeth ALL AT ONCE!!  There has been quite a lot of screaming around here this week, too.  Thank goodness for Motrin.  Tylenol is useless – just to let you know.

On Monday for FHE, we made chocolate covered pretzels to give as Christmas treats for all the teachers in our children’s lives.  (Everyone seems to be able to help on the pretzel project, so I really like it!)  There are quite a lot of people who serve our children and we are so grateful for them!  We didn’t even include their school teachers!  We delivered them on Saturday.

On Saturday we also took the girls to the dollar store to shop for each other.  Nothing else compares to the way that spiked the Christmas excitement around here!

Megan took the chance on Saturday to celebrate her (quickly approaching) birthday with her friends.  Ice Skating was the order of the day!  Sarah went, too!

They are silly girls and they had a great time!

Today at church, Savannah and I sang in the ward choir for our Christmas program.  It was really fun.  We even got to sing “And the Glory of the Lord” from Handel’s Messiah.  So. Cool. Savannah sang the high A, but I just lip synced.  :)  It was still cool.

That’s a mischievous little Santa Claus, don’t you think?  She’s gathering her toys by taking them from her little brother!  Good thing baby brother doesn’t mind too much, yet!  He actually thinks she is pretty cool!

On Thursday night, Mariah performed in a school Christmas program.  She really didn’t want to go as she had already performed three times during the school day and the boy she had to say her lines with was a “microphone hog.”  Horrors.  I know.  But, she decided she would go and -- happy day! -- the boy didn’t show up and she got the microphone all to herself!  She looked lovely and when Beth saw her in a fancy dress, she insisted that I dress her up, too!  Hey, in this picture, you get to see the new table, too!

Mariah’s program was “Christmas Around the World".  In addition to singing all the songs, her class played ukuleles for Santa Lucia.  I love Mariah on the ukulele!  I also love to hear her sing.  She did a great job.  She was willing to sing a little solo for all of you . . .

Saturday was our ward Christmas party.  Yay!  Savannah and Sarah have been rehearsing for over a month to perform the waltz to the song from Charlie Brown’s Christmas.  The girls in the dance spent Saturday afternoon getting “all prettied up!”  Some of them stopped by our house and I found all these lovely girls in my kitchen!

They did a great job on their dance, too (which I accidentally deleted from my camera!  Horrors!), but I did get this cute shot of them after the party:

 

Cheyenne, Calianne, Bethany, and I, didn’t spend nearly as much time getting ready, but we were pretty cute singing “Up On the Housetop.”  Well, they were anyway!

Megan got to be a reindeer . . .

Mariah got to sing with the other primary children for the last song and Benjamin got to sleep in his Grandpa’s arms for most of the party since Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik came, too!  It was a fun night.

‘Tis the season!  Merry Christmas!

There is not much story about this picture. It just made me laugh when I found it as I was cleaning up breakfast after the kids left for school. Hello?

Anyhow, this week was the week of Mariah’s birthday! She turned ten years old and entered double-digits. Holy Cow!

We went to Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik’s for a family party as usual. My kids love that! Grandma and Grandpa always make a special meal and decorate with balloons and, of course, we have cake! We had great fun watching Mariah open her presents.

And after many efforts to light and then more efforts to blow out the candles, our party was complete!

What a beautiful girl, huh? She sure is getting grown up!

We had more basketball practices this week and music lessons. Bethany, Benjamin, and I have a sweet time together when everyone else is gone to school or work. Already Bethany tries to involve Ben in her play. The other day, Ben took a long morning nap. When he woke up, Beth exclaimed with glee, “Ben! You’re back!” Now that Kevin is working closer to home, he’s been able to come home for lunch a couple of times. The first time, Beth ran into the kitchen before me and said, “Dad! You’re home!” Then I walked in and she pointed to me and said, “This is my friend, Mommy!” What an introduction, huh? This week when Dad came for lunch, she greeted her dad with great enthusiasm again and Kevin asked, “How are you?” To Beth, this must have sounded like, “Who are you?” Because she bowed to her father and said, “I Princess Bethany!” She is so funny!

I’ve also been trying to work on Christmas every spare moment I get. I just don’t get a lot of spare moments!

To get us firmly in the Christmas spirit, Savannah had her Christmas Choral concert on Friday. She was simply radiant. That young woman sure loves to sing!

She sang and danced and she was even chosen to recite a special poem for the performance. She did fabulous. It was so fun to watch her! I will include some videos at the end of the blog if you are interested in getting a feel for the night!

On Saturday, Mariah had her “Big Ten” birthday party. We always try to do something extra special for the tenth birthday party. There were just two friends that Mariah wanted to hang out with on her special day, so we partied it up, together. First, we went to see Tangled, the new Disney movie about Rapunzel, in 3D! It was so exciting!

Great movie, by the way! I really liked it! (So did the girls!)

After the show, we went to the Brick Oven for pizza and ice cream and to open presents!

It was a fabulous ladies day out! Mariah and her friends had a great time! And so did I!

Back on the home front, Kevin had started putting lights up, but changed focus when Jim came over to help him with the temperamental outlets in our bedroom. Savannah saw the ladder and recognized an opportunity . . .

Sarah saw Savannah and the ladder and also recognized an opportunity . . .

I also saw an opportunity and ran for my camera!

I was back inside for several minutes before I realized that although Sarah had come back inside the house, she had not put the ladder back up. That sweet little girl has a definite sneaky streak!

Today (Sunday) we finally decorated our Christmas tree. Kevin bought it Friday night, but we just did not have time to decorate it until today. We’ve been kind of redecorating and moving furniture around. After a month of checking the classifieds almost daily, I found what I wanted for the right price and got my Christmas early. We bought a round table and four chairs for our front room so we can play games, do puzzles, complete homework, or hold study groups (wishful thinking!). It is going to be great!!!!!! I love it. Thank you, Santa!

Anyway, we had great fun decorating the Christmas tree! Our back room is still in a bit of disarray, but it is getting there!

We love Christmas!!!! Happy Holidays!

Savannah is front row, fourth from the left:

This actually happened at our house this week!Bizarre, I know!  Savannah loves to read, but lately she is usually reading fanfiction on the computer.  Megan can’t be torn away from books she loves, but she is pretty picky about what she finds interesting.  Sarah is kind of the same way – she only finds some books very compelling.  So, it is rare that they are all captivated by a book at the same time – hence the picture.  Cute kids.

It was Thanksgiving this week, of course.  We only had two days of school, but Kevin wanted to get some work in on Wednesday, so we were planning to leave for Las Vegas on Wednesday after lunch.  That was his plan until about 6pm on Tuesday night when his plan suddenly changed to – LET’S LEAVE NOW!!!

Huh? 

It took all us girls some shocked moments before we kicked into gear and started trying to make it a reality.   In a sort of alternate reality experience, we were packed and ready with dinner eaten and the house cleaned up in one hour.   I am still not sure exactly how that worked – unless, of course, it was that everyone was working together on the project instead of me all by myself.  Hmmmm . . . Anyway, the blizzard still caught us and toyed with us and blew us around for about an hour before we broke through it.  After that, we had clear sailing for the next 4 and a half hours to my parents’ home.  Hurray!  AND we had a whole extra day to visit with the fam.  Double, triple Hurray!!  Yay!

I was able to go shopping for Thanksgiving necessities on Wednesday with my mom and dad and even visit some with Amy and her girls Wednesday evening.

On Thursday, we worked on cooking the big meal at three different houses while the cousins played at two different houses.  At 3:00, we packed up our cars and met at the church next to Amy’s house where we had the building reserved for two hours.  Of course, we had to put finishing touches on the food.  But that was how it should be. 

We have the gravy expert: The mashed potato expert: The turkey carving expert:

And what would we do without our fearless “champion of the details, make the idea a reality” expert: My sister, Margaret, and her family came down from Cedar City to be with us, too.  She helped make one of the stellar, juicy turkeys. 

Diane and Jason were there, too, and Diane made very, very yummy sweet potatoes – in her crockpot!  We were all impressed.

My brother Dave came, too!

Uncle Paul held Benjamin.  He is very good with babies.

Here we all are at our tables!  With some family friends thrown in we had 30 people for Thanksgiving dinner!

 

It was very yummy.  Grandpa and Benjamin became fast friends when Grandpa gave him his first roll! Bethany enjoyed sitting next to “my friend!”  This is Amy’s youngest daughter, Emma, who is just one year older than Bethany.  Beth followed her everywhere.  Emma was a good sport about it, too!  That’s a good thing! After dinner, the men did the dishes:

And the lucky ones of us went into the gym to watch some impromptu entertainment dreamed up by the cousins.  Yes, there is only one little boy in that crowd, so forget the basketball court – let’s use the stage!!!!

Afterwards, we went over to Amy’s house for pie.  It was a really nice day.

On Friday, everyone came up to Grandma’s house.  Diane brought a craft for all the kids.  They made dolls out of clothespins and houses out of empty milk cartons.  Grandma had two bins full of adorable fabric scraps and the kids cut and glued and colored and had a marvelous time!

Amy also brought a craft making snowmen out of foam cut-outs.  The kids loved that, too.  What smart sisters I have!

With the kids busy, we had time to visit and watch a bunch of football . . .

. . . and do more eating!

It was so nice to relax and talk and just be together for a little while.

On Saturday we were back on the road heading back to Utah.  Thanks Mom and Dad and Amy and Paul and Margaret and Rick and Diane and Jason and David Jack.  We had a great Thanksgiving!

It was the last of fall’s glory days this week.  So, we took a walk.

 

It was a beautiful day and Bethany and Benjamin so adorable and it was my favorite walk by the river that I’m pretty sure was one of the ways God prepared this place for me as the perfect place to live.  I remember walking the same way when my oldest girls were that small.  I realized that the only way to hold on to the time that seems to be falling so swiftly through my fingers is to do things that are memorable – like taking a walk on my favorite path on a beautiful fall day.  I’m glad I did.

We had a beautiful sunset this week, too!

I bet you are so glad that I took a picture!  Actually, Megan took it and I can’t take any credit.

I am telling you how beautiful fall was this week because this is actually in memoriam.

This is what my world will look like for now on!  For (what seems like) forever!!

At least we got the leaves up yesterday, or as best we could with the wind blowing.  Two weekends is actually not bad considering the size and number of our trees.  I am grateful for that, too.

I took Ben to his 6 month doctor check-up.  (I know he is 7 months, but I’m behind, remember?)  It was actually quite convenient because he got sick just a couple of days before.  (I think I might be taking my Polyanna mode a little too far, huh?)  Early in the week Ben started coughing that seal-bark cough that really can only mean croup.  Yikes!  He sounded scary, but he was still as cheerful as the day is long.  We listened to him and watched him carefully and ran the humidifier in his room.  By the time he saw the doctor, he was pretty much out of the danger zone.  Actually that is even why we went on the walk – for some good cold air!  Now he seems to have just a regular cold – runny nose and a bit of a productive cough.    He also thinks he is hot stuff because he can crawl anywhere – including under the desk where little things like paper clips and tacks fall down unnoticed.  So, the fact that Ben is still alive is another thing for which I am grateful today.

Sarah and Kevin had some more basketball games this week including a quick tournament on Saturday.  Out of three games this week, they lost two and won one.  Sarah does not like losing.  Nor does she like really mean girls who push and kick and give dirty looks.  She is having to deal with both.

Not today, though.

Today she is making cookies with her sister, Megan and the dubious help of Calianne.  Yipee!  Snickerdoodles!

Mariah thinks the snow is fabulous!

 

Cheyenne is playing with Ben.

Savannah was on the computer, but I kicked her off.  Now she is telling me it is time for choir!

Bethany is sleeping and Dad is trying, too as well.  Poor guy.  Sundays are the loudest days in our house.  Especially when we are all inside because of that awful white stuff.

This week, at least we are going to run away.  Las Vegas – I am thankful for your warm Novembers! 

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!