A Birthday Party

We had a surprise birthday party for my mom tonight, just with our local family members: my mom and dad and sisters and brother and some of the grandkids. It was fun!

Patrick came over a bit early to make dinner (he made pasta with a tomato-cream sauce, honey-roasted Brussels sprouts, and meatballs; Kelli brought some French bread; I made a salad and a (no-bake) blueberry cheesecake). I was glad that he took over making dinner!

It was fun to get to celebrate my mom, even though I lied to her for (probably?) the first time in my life in order to keep it a surprise. I asked her if she could come watch my little ones so that I could go to an activity with my older girls (but really there was no activity). 

One of the highlights of the evening was video-chatting with my sister's twins, who've been estranged from the family for the past few years since their father was awarded full custody. It would be great if we could start seeing them at family events again because they're only a year older than Rachel! But I suppose any contact with them is a Christmas miracle at this point.

Here's my sister, and niece, and daughter chatting with the twins:

[lă-ring′gō-mă-lā′shē-ă]

I just diagnosed Alexander with laryngomalacia.

I'm not a doctor or anything like that, but I am a mom and so I diagnose things all the time.

Hangnail.
Second-degree burn.
Hand-foot-mouth disease.
Ingested penny.
Strep throat.
Pink eye.
Croup.

Sometimes we go in for a formal confirmation of our diagnosis (mostly so we can get a prescription) but other times we simply don't need to. There is no course of action for laryngomalacia (unless it happens to be interfering with breathing or eating, which, in Alexander's case, it's not).

Find a penny...

One day (this morning), Zoë found a penny.

"I have money!" she said, holding up the gleaming, pristine old and tarnished coin proudly.

She carried it around with her all day to show the world how rich she was. She took it to the breakfast table, she took it on a walk to pick up her big brother from school, she took it downstairs when we went to play. 

This was our downfall.

I had invited a new family over for a playdate. They have a little girl Benjamin's age, a little boy Zoë's age, and a little girl Alexander's age. So obviously it was meant to be! 

And the mom is from Russia so I kind of pounced on her after she bore her testimony on Sunday, and she very patiently  allowed me to wade through my dusty knowledge of Russian to welcome her into the ward. 

Anyway, I let my guard down while the kids were playing so that we could chat. 

In the back of my brain I was aware of what Zoë was doing. She had her prize friend The Penny with her (because why play with the actual child her age, who was busy building a train out of LEGO) and had set out a tea party (she loves playing tea party).

Most of my brain, however, was occupied with nursing Alexander and chatting with my new friend. I believe we were just on the topic of Macey's versus Macy's because she'd asked about the best grocery stores nearby and I said, "Well, there's Macey's..." And she said, "They have groceries at Macy's!?" And then I had to explain about Macey's (the grocery store) versus Macy's (the retail store).

Suffering the children

My second cousin's wife and I were due around the same time, she with her seventh and I with my fifth. Alexander came a few weeks early, but Sharalee had her baby on Miriam's birthday so her baby ended up being that much younger than my baby. Somehow, however, she's managing to keep up with the Light the World calendar (and her seven children) this year and I...am so totally not.

I'm not keeping up with the calendar and I'm barely keeping up with my children.

Life has been just a little crazy lately.

On Saturday, for example, the scripture was "I was thirsty and ye gave me drink." It wasn't until I saw people posting on Facebook about donating towards clean water campaigns and delivering infant formula to their local food bank that I remembered that the Light the World calendar was even a thing. But my friend Alayna stopped by on Saturday to pick up some milk for her baby (I've been pumping for her) and I thought that was a happy coincidence. Usually she picks milk up on Friday, but she waited a day, and lo, it coincided with the scripture on the Light the World calendar. So that was fortuitous.

Other than that...I don't know that I've managed to do a single extra thing (we haven't had the children open any of the days on our advent calendars either; go our team).

But my cousin has been posting about the little ways she's trying to light the world, which I've appreciated because it helps remind me to go about my day more mindfully (she, for example, tried to remember how the Saviour fills her cup as she went about Saturday getting water for her children or nursing her baby, which is something I certainly didn't think to to do).

Anyway, earlier this week she wrote about how she'd failed to "love her neighbour." She had grand designs of making Chex Mix and delivering it to her neighbours with her children in one grand Yuletide Koombayah. But her plan for the day got completely derailed (I have no idea how that happened with seven children to take care of) and she failed to even make the Chex Mix, let alone visit with her neighbours.

Thanksgiving Awkwardness

I have a bit of a penchant for making a perfectly normal conversation turn awkward really fast. It's not even always my fault. I mean, sure, there are days when I have no filter. Everyone has days like that, but this mishap was not my fault at all.

We spent Thanksgiving with Andrew's family since Emily was in town and all the little cousins were having so much fun together. But I did feel bad about not seeing my family at all during Thanksgiving so I hopped on Facebook and sent a group message to my family.

I typed their names into the "to" field: Dad, Mom, Kelli, Abra, David, Patrick, Josie

Then I composed my message: "Happy Thanksgiving! I'm thankful for all of you!"

Benign enough, right? Festive, even. Jovial.

But then I caught a glimpse of the previous messages on that thread:

And I just about died because apparently,* the last time we chatted together** was October 2014, before David and Shalise broke off their engagement. What a wonderful thing to bring up out of the blue, amirite?!

So I quickly wrote: "Awwwwwwwkward thread to hop on. Sorry about that."

My family responded with love, kindness, and laughing-so-hard-I'm-crying emoticons.

Pro tip: Sometimes when things aren't quite awkward enough you just have to stir the pot a little bit. With some practice you, too, can be as socially awkward as me.

* Or, as Benjamin would say, accordingly. While we were eating at Wendy's after our photoshoot on Saturday Andrew asked, "Who's happy?" and all the kids—except for Rachel, whose mouth was full—chorused, "ME!" And then Benjamin said, "Well, accordingly Rachel's not!" And I thought it was hilarious.

In situations like this, accordingly could work as well as apparently. Like, "accordingly the last time we chatted together it was about something that feels super awkward to talk about today. Because of course it would happen that way."

** Not that we haven't chatted together since; it's just always been with other people added in, I guess (spouses and children and things). So this was simply the last time we chatted with just my parents and siblings.

One day only

My brother David left his job in England for a new one in British Columbia, so he flew into Salt Lake City on Sunday evening, was here all day on Monday, and left early Tuesday morning to fly up to Prince George. A small part of me is jealous that he was able to secure a job in Canada—and in beautiful British Columbia to boot—but a much larger part of me is glad that I'm not moving that far north. 

To be fair, however, it's -7°C (20°F) here while it's only -1°C (30°F) there. So maybe it won't be that bad for him after all. We'll have to see. I'm sure I'll be comparing temperatures all winter (I already do that with High River all the time, anyway).

Yesterday was cold and snowy here. We were planning on meeting at BYU for dinner at the Cannon Center, but I wasn't sure that I wanted my first drive in the snow to be quite that long...and I knew I didn't want to drive in the dark on the ice on the way home. One day I'll have to drive in the snow, I'm sure, but yesterday was not that day. Instead everyone came to see me (because they're enablers)!

Here's Uncle David meeting Alexander:

The Lights at Temple Square

After family pictures we went to Temple Square to see the lights. We were a little too early so we toured around the visitor's center while we waited for the lights to come on. We even got in line to see the Christus statue (but thought better of it after standing in line long enough to drive the kids crazy; we'll go back in January or something when Temple Square isn't so busy).

 

From generation to generation

While we were taking family pictures today I asked Andrew to take a picture of me holding Alexander. Rachel had been reading my grandma's history book this morning (I am so glad my Auntie Colleen did all the work to put it together; I need to get a copy of my grandpa's!) and in addition to coming up with all sorts of questions (Why did she need a license for a radio? Why was telephone operator even a necessary profession? Are you named after your grandma?), we found a lovely picture of my grandma (who I'm named after) showing off a new baby Myrna (my mom).

We did our best to recreate that picture today (from memory; I should have brought a picture with me to our location (and technically I did, but I left it in the car and it was cold outside and we had four kids running around plus a babe in arms and so no one wanted to go fetch it so we could do things properly). It's not perfect, but it will do:

Funny boys

This morning I asked Benjamin what his favourite part of Into the Woods was last night. Instead of answering my question, he started rolling his head around and around and said, "Do you know what the international symbol for 'I don't know' is?"

So apparently he doesn't know what his favourite part was (though his favourite character was Cinderella).

I was reminded, however, that little boys are hilarious. Benjamin has been fairly consistently hilarious the past few weeks, but I've been remiss about writing every funny thing down because, well, I've been busy with a baby. I need to get back in the habit, however, so that we can keep running into funny things Benjamin says because Patrick was also a rather hilarious child, always saying something ridiculous, and in his baby book my mom simply wrote down, "He's always saying the funniest things!" or something like that. When we came across that she said with much regret, "I should have written down more!"

When I thought of funny little boys, however, I didn't think of Benjamin first. I thought of Gavin!

When he was here at Thanksgiving, he and Zoë were having a bit of a fight over a toy phone. Uncle Morgan managed to convince Gavin that he should let Zoë have a turn with the phone because she's little and he's big (a rather tall order for a three-year-old, considering Zoë is only a year younger than him, but when it comes to screaming fits Gavin throws infinitely fewer than Zoë throws and we were just trying to get the madness to stop).

"Thank you for giving Zoë the phone," Morgan said to Gavin. "You're such a nice boy."

"Well, I'm not nice enough!" Gavin retorted.

He then spent the next several minutes stomping around with a grumpy look on his face, just to show us how not-nice he could be (to be honest, he's not very good at being not-nice).

"Are you mad about something?" Andrew asked when Gavin stomped past him (Andrew had missed the phone debacle).

"No!" Gavin said. "I'm frustrated!"

I know Gavin was feeling very frustrated (and not quite nice enough), but it was sure entertaining to watch him express his frustration and not-niceness!

Parent Teacher Conferences

I don't know what it is about me and the communication style of the administrators at my kids' school, but they seriously have me questioning my reading comprehension skills. Every form they send home seems to confuse me, at least a little. 

Most recently, we received an email about parent/teacher conferences:

Student Education Plan (SEP) Conferences will be held November 30th. We are excited to be using SignUpGenius in assisting us to create schedules for our December SEP conferences. (Our SEP Conferences in February will be our Student Led Conferences and will follow a different schedule.) 

5th and 6th graders do not need to sign up for a time. Their teachers will hold an open-house style SEP that night. It will be on a first-come first-serve basis in our school gym. (Just the same as it was this past September). 

The SEP schedules are the same time as our previous SEPs. You do NOT need to sign up again unless you missed the last SEP conferences. You may click on the link to view the time you scheduled for.

This was followed by instructions on how to sign up for a time slot. I read this and understood that (a) conferences were happening on December 1, (b) we're using SignUpGenius (huge fan), (c) 5th grade conferences are open-house (not a huge fan, but no worries because...), (d) I didn't have to sign up for a conference because I did not miss the conference in September. Boom.

So I made no plans to attend parent/teacher conferences. My kids all had tickets to go to Into the Woods at BYU that night, anyway.