December

December came and went quickly. I decided to make my own dress for Daniel's work Christmas party, and so the whole week before, I worked on the dress. It was simple, but I'm still a novice, so it took a lot of time to get it right. And it still ended up imperfect. I love it, and I felt rather proud to be out in something I'd made myself. But it took so much time and effort that I lost all motivation to do anything else the rest of the month. I'd planned to do something similar to what I did last year: making a list of Christmas things to do and then do something every day (or nearly every day). But I just lost all my oomph for the rest of the year. We didn't even put up a tree this year! We were planning to, and we even went to Walmart to pick one up. But they weren't selling trees, so we just left. And since we were spending Christmas in Medford, time just slipped away, and then it wasn't worth it to put up a tree.

We did decorate Christmas cookies with our friends at the park. And I did participate in the Stake Christmas program, singing in the choir, which was amazing, as usual. Daniel brought the kids for one of the performances, and then we went out to see the live nativity outside after the program. It was pretty neat. Daniel and I also went to our friends' annual ugly Christmas sweater party. And, of course, I made loads of treats to give to a bunch of our friends. This year, instead of doing the chocolate pretzels (which I love), I decided to do chocolate truffles. I looked up a bunch of different versions and made a few different kinds. They were delicious! But very time consuming. I watched a lot of Gilmore Girls whilst making them. I also made a bunch of gifts for the kids: pillowcases for Camille and Jack, a little tied blanket from owl fabric for Brooke, and capes for both Brooke and Camille. My sewing machine was quite busy last month!!

I barely managed to do all our Christmas shopping before we left for Oregon, getting the very last things the day before we left. Since I was playing the piano for the choir in our Ward's Christmas Program, we stayed until the 23rd, and left right after Sacrament meeting was over. That day we drove up to Michael and Michelle's to stay the night. They fed us and we chatted with them while we put our kids to bed one by one. And then we got up and finished the trip up to Oregon the next day, Christmas Eve. The 2nd half of that drive was a little scary because it was raining and slushing a ton, and it was hard to see the road at times.

That night, everyone (except Julie's family, because Mark was there and he doesn't step foot in Mom and Dad's house anymore) went to Mom and Dad's for Christmas dinner, which was delicious. The kids played together for a bit with their cousins, and then we put them to bed. Daniel and I were up pretty late that night wrapping presents, because we had to do all our wrapping that night. But we watched Scrooge with mom and dad and Scott, and we even made it to bed around midnight, which was pretty good.

Christmas morning was perfect. I was actually the first one awake. I got up around 730 to go to the bathroom, and all the kids and Daniel, Mom and Dad and Scott were all still sleeping. I tried to go back to sleep, but shortly after that, I heard both of the girls stirring, and I looked up to see both of them just sitting up in bed looking at each other. It was so funny. We had a little scripture reading at the top of the stairs before going down to see what Santa had left in stockings. It was fun to watch the kids empty their stockings and open their presents, as it is every year. They get so excited about things, and they just want to show us every little thing. It's so fun.

Julie and her boys (minus Mark) and Diane and her boys came over later in the afternoon to unwrap presents left for them under the tree. The kids did a little cousin exchange, where they drew names for buying a gift for their cousins. It was pretty fun. Overall, it was a great Christmas.

The rest of the week, we were fairly busy. Mom and Dad had made a bunch of plans for things we could do together, and we actually did a lot of them. I was surprised. We obviously did our fair share of sitting around and watching movies. But we got out and did a bunch of things: went to the church to play in the cultural hall, played at Julie's house, had a girls/boys night, went out to breakfast, played pickle ball, had game nights, baked cookies, went to a pottery painting place. We had a great time. And the kids all LOVED playing with their cousins. They all seemed to get along really well. I was surprised (though I shouldn't be) at how well Owen and Brooke played. They just seemed to hit it off right away, and they loved playing together. Brooke can play well with anyone, it seems, though, so it makes sense.

It was nearly perfect. We were missing Brian and Sammy, of course. And Mary only came for a few days. And then, of course, there was quite a bit of awkwardness with the Mark situation. Julie didn't hang out with us much because of him, which was dumb. But other then that, we had a wonderful time.

We drove back to Michael and Michelle's house on the 31st, and made it in time for dinner. They invited some other friends to come hang out, so there was quite a group of us. No one made it til midnight. Daniel and I were in bed at around 11:30, and I was just falling asleep when Daniel counted down to midnight. We did a little cheering, kissed and then rolled over and went to sleep. It was a long week, and we didn't go to bed before midnight once. So I was exhausted and ready to be home and back to our normal routine.

 *This is about the only picture I took through the whole month of December.*