Lots of togetherness

Well then... we have had many adjustments since moving to Washington. The one we still aren't used to is the way the Seattlites freak out when it is bad weather. So we're told that it doesn't snow much in Seattle but since we've lived here we've had much snow. Last winter we had 1 school snow day, 3 late-start days and church cancelled once. The folks here just don't have the means to clear off the road, so even if we have 1/2 an inch of snow we have to cancel things because the roads are crazy. People abandon their cars and walk because they don't know how to drive in the snow and the roads really are BAD with no salt, gravel or plower trucks. Plus so many roads are hilly which adds to the slippy-slidy of it all. If you're a news watcher you'll be aware of ALL the tons of snow we have gotten in the period of a week or so in December. We knew the storm was coming a week in advance and as it got closer everyone was loading up on food and supplies. We even recharged all our batteries from the warning of possible electrical outages. The topic of weather was a part of every one's conversations. Wednesday the storm was supposed to come... Tuesday night we got the e-mail that school was cancelled. I mean EVERYTHING was cancelled--preschool, music lessons, math tutor, everything. We waited and waited all day long for the storm to come and not 1 flake of snow fell on Wednesday. Wednesday night another e-mail saying school would be cancelled for Thursday. Fortunately we woke up to 1 inch of snow on the ground but I am thinking, "Come on now! I have things to do! The fun is over! School is 1 mile away and there is only 1 inch of snow!" For cryin' out loud people!!! Friday we woke up hoping for school, the e-mail said it was a 2 hour late start and then a few minutes later the news said all schools were cancelled again. We did have more snow but when you grow up in snow it is so silly to cancel life with so little snow. To top it all off Saturday night the word came through that church was cancelled on Sunday. So, the poor kids missed their Winter (stupid that it's not Christmas) parties at school and we missed the church before Christmas. That is SO sad! Here are my problems... 1) I had to get ready for Christmas. 2) I had to get ready for a Christmas trip to Utah. 3) I had to work overtime on my Primary secretary calling to get ready for the New year since I was going to be gone. 4) I was getting cabin fever. 5) I was tired of having the kids around for 3 premature, unnecessary, unexpected days. We tried to make it as fun and special as we could like giving everyone a break from practicing their instruments, going sledding, doing crafts and going out to eat 2 times. (it's so silly to be out driving around and going out to eat and to movies when everything else is cancelled telling us to stay home and off the streets.)

Sunday we tried to make the day special with a nice Family Home Evening with stories and watching the Tabernacle Choir and the church's show of "Joy To The World." I was sad that we couldn't get all dressed up for church to get our Christmas pictures... so I made everyone get dressed up for pictures anyway. In fact, as the girls were pulling out all their dresses they realized they had many "Christmasy" dresses, so we decided to have a fashion show. Here is a sampling of the many pictures we took that day...

Emmy
fashioning a dress worn at McKay and Danielle's wedding.

Maryn

looking sassy in her new red sweater dress which looks stylin' with her tall black boots.

Ady

sporting a dress that Emmy wore last year for Christmas.

Emmy

modeling a recent birthday dress

(although pretty this dress is a nightmare...she wore it one Sunday to church, the next Sunday we knew exactly where we sat the previous Sunday because glitter was all over the pew. We have to do the "glitter check" because anyone who has been near Emmy has glitter on their faces, arms, clothes. Anyone have ideas on how to solve the dress-glitter problem?)

Emmy

Just a winter dress that she and Ady share.

Ady

The official Christmas dress from last year.

Maryn

So lovely in her last year's Christmas dress.

Maryn

Not a Christmas dress but the colors worked.

Ady

Looking stylish in a dress that Maryn wore for Christmas when she was 6. Definitely many advantages of having 3 girls in a row...the younger kids have more clothes.

What you don't see is that Jeff only got ready from the top up...we have on our pajama bottoms... we just had to get our pictures in.

We used crafts and projects to keep everyone busy. We think our kitchen window looks so festive. We made the snowflakes with pipe cleaner and beads and hung them with string.

Then we got puffy glitter glue and made these snow flakes, let them dry and wall-ah! the next day we peeled them off the wax paper and stuck them to our window.

We made bookmarks with ribbon and buttons to give out for presents.

This has become our favorite wall in the house...our "laughing wall."
When anyone is grumpy or we are bored we take a moment, look in the mirror and let out out best fake laugh. It always helps and especially did for me on starting our Christmas break 5 days early.

Celebrating Christ at Christmas

In August Jeff and I were called to be on the tri-ward Christmas Nativity committee. We didn't have a clue what we were getting into and the only instruction we were given was to "simplify." You betcha! So after many meetings and much work Friday and Saturday, December 5th and 6th arrived. In the past there had been a humongous theatrical pageant event reenacting the birth of Christ. Apparently 4 years ago the media even became involved since it was such a huge thing with costumes, live animals, scripts to memorize etc. Well, Jeff and I decided to throw everyone a curve ball since we're still pretty new, and do a combo of things we have been a part of in the past... A Creche Festival/Christmas concert. (if you're like most you won't know that Creche is a fancy word for Nativity.) We invited several musical numbers from the 3 wards and community to be part of our musical concert. Bottom line...huge success! We felt really good about everything and had so many nice comments about the success of the 2 nights. Our bishop wrote us the nicest Thank You card telling us that he was definitely inspired to call us to the committee to give the wards the fresh new experience that the community needed. We hope it will be a tradition to come for several years. We had so many choirs from other Churches asking to participate in it next year. We were so grateful with how everything came together. We loved working with Angela and Kirt Zavar and Jenny and Jim Debenham (our great friends who we requested to be on the committee). We were relieved that it was over because it was time- consuming and got in the way of my Christmas preparations, decorating my own house, getting Christmas cards out on time and doing anything extra for Christmas, not to mention my Primary secretary calling. (everyone had been released from their calling to be on the committee, but not me...double duty Dorthy that's me! SO BUSY!)

Now for your own personal enjoyment here is just a taste of a few nativity scenes that were present ( out of several hundred.)

This is barn we had in the center of the cultural hall where the youth from the 3 wards did a live nativity.

I wanted to bring one of my 3 nativities to join the collections... so to add variety to the evening I thought I'd bring my Relief Society homemade nativity. Don't ya just love it?! Let's just say that after this event I had a desire to invest in a couple of really nice and special nativities. I do have an olive wood one from Jerusalem that I personally picked out and brought home but I have noticed that SO many people have Olive Wood nativities too... not so original.

Ady was forced to come to one of our meetings in the beginning. For some odd reason she thought the meeting was fun and asked to go to all the rest of the meetings. She nominated herself to be the 7th member of the committee. Even in the Bishop's opening comments he recognized Adyson as a member of the committee. She thought that was awesome.

Jeff and I feeling proud of our success' and and grateful to be finished.

Emmylicious

November 30th was Emmy's birthday. She turned 6...finally. She didn't even really ask for a birthday party or for lots of gifts or anything. When I asked her what she wanted for her birthday she said, "to have milkshakes with my family," so that's exactly what we did.

Emmy was born with so much hair and it has just gotten thicker and more luscious with time. Most girls are jealous of her thick hair. If she ever donated her hair to "Locks of Love" I bet she could get 3 wigs out of her 1 ponytail. She is the winner of the longest eyelashes in our family and they are dark bringing out her blue eyes. She also has the prettiest rosebud lips that made her look like a doll as a baby. She has squishy cheeks which makes her quite kissable. She is just yummy to squish and kiss and hug.

Emmy came to earth as an easy and happy child. She was our fastest baby to be born, the easiest child to breastfeed, the first baby to sleep through the night, the child who cried the least and the best child to entertain herself for hours. The day Emmy turned 3 years old she woke up with an added dimension to her personality...she became very dynamic and expressive. When she talks her eyes get big, her hands start moving and her mouth moves big with her words. Her sentences included lots of "yahs" and "uh huhs." She talks to herself, she play games by herself but she is also best friends with the whole wide world. As I have mentioned before in previous posts, Emmy is constantly cracking us up with her humor and drama.

Emmy begged and begged to take a dance class so in August I signed her up for a dance combo class with ballet, jazz and tap. I thought it would be fun for her to change shoes during class and keep her little busy body busy getting some good exercise. It wasn't until a couple of week ago that I learned that Emmy has been not feeling well at dance...I mean at every dance class she hasn't been feeling well. Apparently she goes, dances a little and then sits and watches for the rest of class because her "tummy hurts." What's up with that? So, come January we'll be dropping dancing and giving gymnastics a shot.

So many gifts... dresses, pants, shirt, sweater, slippers, writing and drawing stuff.

The other day we were talking about my children having children and they would be my grandchildren. She said,"but you won't be getting any grandchildren from me because I'm not having any children." When I asked her why she said, "because it would hurt too much." Then she carried on about the fact that she's not getting married either because "it's gross to kiss a boy, and besides that she just wants to travel and play with her friends." Actually, she's talked like this for a couple of years which is kind of weird... maybe I'm not showing her enough the joy that comes from having children... that even though you go through MUCH discomfort and hardship in getting them here it is worth it............ isn't it? We're just hoping this attitude is a stage.

Our home is definitely a little more spunky with Emmy around. We love her so much!! Happy Birthday Emmylicious!

Post thankfulness

The day after Thanksgiving...

Most don't believe me but the turkey neck is really the most flavorful part of the entire turkey. I most always get it all to myself each year.

We had a night out with the Madsen and Slichta adults. Steven and Stephanie came along too knowing that adults have a lot more fun than kids. We ate at Cheesecake Factory and shopped around at Bellevue Square.

I always think it's weird that the second Thanksgiving is over (and sometimes before it's over) we are suddenly thrust into Christmas. I saw Santa out 2 weeks before Thanksgiving even. Please... that's ridiculous! Bellevue was no different with the hustle and bustle going strong including tons of carolers.

We were hoping so badly for a little sunshine to show our California friends that we do get sunshine. But no... we put on some pretty chilly weather for them. Even a visit to the temple grounds kept some of their chilly bones in the car.

Kaden was so funny here... he ran in front of the sign with his football player run, hunched over and swinging his arms, stopped suddenly and said "take my picture with the temple." He stood right there and didn't even smile then took off just as fast and football player like as when he came.

Maryn and Julia entertaining themselves on the ferry ride over to Bainbridge Island.

And where do we go when we go to Bainbridge Island? Mora's Ice Cream. The Madsens were very impressed.

Up to this point in his life Kaden has been terrible at posing for pictures. Something has suddenly changed and now he wants to pose all the time... we'll take advantage of that to make up for lost time of many not-so-good pictures of him.

From the minute Kaden was born Stephanie sort of adopted him as her own. She babysat him all the time mostly just for fun. Sometimes she would pick him up and take him to lunch with all her friends. Sometimes they would take naps together. They were together a lot his first 2 years. So it was great to see that they still liked to hang out and be best buddies.
Steven has always been best buddies with Adyson. When Ady was 5 and Steven turned 11 he invited her to his all-boy birthday party at the roller skating rink. She had a blast and loved the attention by all the nice boys. I had to capture this picture of these 2 being best buddies again.

This was our lame attempt at taking a picture for our Christmas cards. Guess we won't be sending this one out.