Post Christmas Blues

Can I be honest? This Christmas was hard. Harder than usual. There were a lot of factors. My calling. My preparedness. The pressure to make a memorable Christmas since Addie will be moving out this year. Decision fatigue....it's a real thing!! As hard as I tried, I think it was mostly just normal, which was a little bit of a disappointment to me. But it was still really good. I just wanted something AMAZING, I guess. I know it's all in my own head. My kids loved it, and they loved what they were given, but I still sit up at night thinking about how I should have done it all differently. 

The best part of Christmas was having Grandma and Grandpa Allred here. We told them we would be up at 6:00 am. At 6:15 The Babe and I were startled awake by a loud tapping on our window! Grandma and Grandpa beat the kids out of bed! I was shocked, my kids never sleep that long on Christmas morning! My kids still didn't stir until about 7:00. It was fun to watch the kids open their presents. After they were opened, we got ready for church. The choir sang...which you know because of my melt down. It turned out pretty well. We messed up our song a little, but not enough for anyone in the congregation to know. It will be 11 years before we have Christmas on a Sunday again. By then my kids will all be grown up. Will will be 17. So, I tried to soak it all in. I love having Christmas on Sunday. Later in the day Marie and Ben and their kids came, and also Matt and Karen and Emma. It was fun being with them. 

Today The Babe took down the tree and put away the decorations. It's always a bittersweet day for me. I loved my tree this year. It was really beautiful. I found myself just staring at it many times. It was sad to take it down. But I get so worked up about it taking so much space. I already feel crowded and with a tree in the center of my living room, it is more than I can take some days. So, by the time Christmas comes and goes, I'm ready to set my house back to normal. I know it's bad luck. But I think there is only one or two years in my married life that I kept it up until New Year's.

While The Babe was setting the house back in order, I went shopping with Mom. We needed a girl's day, and you know what? I needed it more than I realized. We shopped and talked and had a yummy lunch. We even splurged on ourselves and bought a few things we wanted. It was rejuvenating and it filled my bucket! I hope it filled hers as well. It was good for my soul. 

The Babe and I spent a little more time on the house (it was out of control in here!) Then he took me on a date too. We went to Costco to grab some batteries and surprisingly left that store with only batteries and some reading glasses (because, sadly my eyes are getting old). When we got home, we put batteries in just about everything we own. I went to pull some out of the cupboard, and dropped them, right over the top of the garbage cans. We searched and searched, and I found about half of them. I couldn't believe I just wasted half a package of Costco batteries. The Babe was kind and reminded me we just put a lot of batteries in things, so we probably just used more than we thought we had. I told him he was right and decided it wasn't worth worrying about. About 3 minutes later, I started cleaning off the table and picked up a brand-new package of batteries only 4 were missing!! Apparently, we had half a package of batteries this whole time!!! I just didn't realize it! 

Sing, Sing a Song

Have you ever had something that you want to do so badly, but you're just not good at it! That's how I am with singing. I want to be able to sing, so bad, but I'm terrible at it. I have always loved singing; I joined our ward choir when I was 12 years old. I always asked my mom to go with me, but she doesn't sing either, so she wouldn't go. I have been part of our ward choir as since then...as long as the ward I was in had a choir. I figure that it's the only way that I can sing and not get kicked out. When I stay consistent, then I do better. So, I try really hard not to miss, but that's not always possible. Anyway, my ward right now, has a lot of really good singers, so it's intimidating for me. But I still go, and hope they drown me out! We are singing on Sunday, of course, because it's Christmas, and the program is done by the choir. Last night we had a practice, and it went pretty well, but by the time I got home I felt like the worst singer on the planet Earth! I've never wanted to quit the ward choir, but last night I almost did. I've been asked to sing in an ensemble (I think that's the word) a smaller group, essentially. It is so so scary for me. I sing in choir for a reason! So, when there are only 7 of you it's so terrifying. I'm not a good singer! I know I'm not, but that has never really mattered until last night. Last night it felt like it mattered. It felt like it mattered a lot! 

We practiced in the chapel, and we circled around the pulpit. I was in the very center and then they lowered the mic because none of them want to be singing directly into the mic, but with it lowered it is right smack in front of me! I nearly cried. I don't want to sing in a small group in the first place and to be in front of the mic just about killed me! Ahhhhh! I tried to quit, but they wouldn't let me. Once that chapel fills with people I honestly don't know if I can do it. 

But...

In the words of Karen Carpenter...

Sing, sing a song, don't worry if it's not good enough for anyone else to hear, just sing, sing a song! 

I wish I could do that, Karen! I really do!

The Reason for the Season

The live Nativity at Tuacahn has become one of our favorite traditions! 

Sometimes I wonder as we are all getting ready, if it's worth the hour drive for a 15-minute program. But every year I feel the Spirit and every year I'm grateful we made the drive. The Wolsleger's joined us and it was a fun time! I know this is silly, but I'm still impressed that they have a real camel! Who has a camel in Southern Utah??? I don't know where they found it, but I'm in awe of the real camel...every single year!

 

Della Mae

You may or may not know about our tradition to find a new ornament each year that goes along with a story from one of our ancestors. It's a fairly new tradition, we started probably 5 or 6 years ago. Each year I find it more and more exciting to find a special ornament to add to the collection. It's fun to watch the collection grow...

This year was particularly special as I listened to Leighna tell the stories of each of the ornaments to her boyfriend, Jack. It's such a special way for my kids to remember and pass down the stories of our loved ones who have graduated this life. 

This year I found the perfect ornament for my great Grandma Bishop. She is my Grandpa Bishop's mom. Her house was on the same street as my grandma and Grandpa Bishop, but her house was on the corner, so as kids we always called her Grandma Bishop on the Corner... Always. It's still hard for me to call her anything different. I had the great privilege of knowing her. She is the person we named Adelah Mae after. Her name is Della Mae. We used to go to her house pretty often and my mom would tell us every time..."If you tell Grandma that you're hungry you will be in so much trouble!!" You see, if you happened to mention that you were hungry in front of Grandma, she would always, always give you ice cream! So, without fail, 2 minutes after being there, we would start with the complaining that we were hungry! Every time! What kid can resist the temptation to get ice cream! It drove my mom crazy! Grandma also had gooseberry bushes all the way around her house and we loved to eat them! The problem was, we loved to eat them so much that they never got big enough to get ripe! I still don't think I know what a ripe gooseberry tastes like. We would eat them when they were small and green and super tart! So, we got banned from 1/2 of the house. We could eat all the gooseberries we wanted on the south and west sides of the house, but we were not allowed to touch the ones on the north and east sides of the house! Those were the ones that looked sooo good! They were about the size of a large gumball, and they looked tasty. But we were good, and we didn't eat the big ones!

One year in my great Grandma's younger years they lived in a little tiny house that didn't have anything more than cardboard in the walls for insulation. There was a really cold winter that year and my grandma and her little family almost froze to death. They didn't have enough bedding or quilts to stay warm. Grandma prayed to Heavenly Father and asked Him to get them through the winter, and if He would get them through, she would never be without bedding again in her life! She went to work cutting up every piece of fabric she could get her hands on and anything she could cut a 2-inch square out of. Old shirts and pants, anything that she could find. She then found an old mattress and took all of the cotton out of it and meshed it together to make a batting and made a quilt. For the rest of her life, she kept every piece of fabric she could and would cut them into quilt blocks. I don't know how many hundreds of quilts she made. When she was nearing the end of her life, she asked my grandmother to take her quilt blocks, she said everyone else would throw them away, and it was her life's legacy. She knew Grandma would finish them. She had boxes and boxes of quilt blocks. My Grandma sewed so many quilts from Great Grandma's blocks for the rest of her life. There are 49 grandkids and I know every single one of us has a quilt made from Grandma on the Corner's blocks. But that isn't even all of them! There are so many. I wish I knew the number. I have a shoe box of great Grandma's blocks my grandma gave me a few years before she passed away. I really need to finish it up. It's probably the last one. I know my Grandma Nyda wanted to finish all of the quilts before she passed. I'm pretty sure she did, except the one she gave me. 

Popcorn Trains!

Popcorn Trains!

 This is a tradition that I have kept from my childhood. 

We teamed up so we didn't have a billion trains all over. 

Bentley and Josh and Jack joined us. We always have extras these days, but I love it! 

There's enough sugar to put you in a sugar coma... but so far, we all survived! 

They all turned out super cute! You can tell my kids are getting older because none of them look like a massive volcano of frosting and sugar explosions!

 

Jolly Old Saint Nicholas...lean your ear this way!

Christmas wouldn't be complete without a visit to Santa and Mrs. Claus! I still make all of my kids visits with Santa. If they don't sit on Santa's lap, they don't get anything for Christmas. 

The Sharp's have been Santa and Mrs. Claus in our ward since Addie was a baby. They are so good at it. The kids love them! I love that they have heard my kids wishes for the past 18 years. They have watched them grow up. They are good people that I love!

 

The Perfect Tree

We call it our yearly fight...

The hunt for the perfect Christmas tree! 

The problem is our ideas of a perfect Christmas tree could not be more different!!! He thinks of 7 feet. Skinny. He thinks of fluffing branches, placing them in just the right positions. Twinkle lights already to plug in. No snow. No cold. No hiking. No missing branches. No holes to try to fill with ornaments. The perfect tree!

I think of the search. I think of 14 feet (because I know I need a few extra feet for him to cut off to make him feel better about it). Full thick branches. Skinny (I really tried to find a skinny tree this year). The fresh scent of pine. The prickly needles. There might be pinecones! If we're careful we can get it off the mountain with a few still attached (no such luck this year). The perfect tree!

But it's so much more than that! It's the piling in Grandpa's truck and every truck we have available...there are a lot of us now! It's the snowball fights and the snow angels. It's the snow my children won't stop eating no matter how old they get! It's freezing your toes off and the warm hot chocolate. It's the slipping on an icy road and it's my dad driving up a steep hill and back down just to make sure our blood is flowing! It's the adventure...

But mostly... IT'S TRADITION