Family call

Just this morning my family settled on a time for a Christmas call:

11:00 PM CET (for Patrick in Austria)
5:00 PM EST (for us in Georgia)
4:00 PM CST (for Rosie in Oklahoma)
3:00 PM MST (for everyone else in their various locations: Utah and Wyoming and Alberta and BC)

Abra lives in BC so she would have been at 2:00 PM PST but the region she lives in doesn't observe daylight savings (and hasn't since the 70s), so they're permanently aligned with MST (which means that for half the year they align with MST and the other half they're kind of PDT...but also still just MST)). 

But look! We all made it into the very same Zoom room:

We didn't play any games (I think we're planning on doing that later this week), but we did get to chat with one another. Phoebe and Ireland got the same Bluey grocery cart and cash register (and were both thrilled with them). Allen and Brady both decided to shave their heads. Kelline and Allen were both technically at work (Allen driving Uber...but on a break while talking to us...and Kelli waiting in her hotel room in Wyoming for her shift to start). We had little kids filtering in and out of three different screens and some cats curiously visiting in a couple of others. 

All in all it was a wonderful visit! 

Our Best Year: The Phillips Family

Every year I make Andrew a new calendar of family memories to go in his office at work. I started a long time ago when we were young and poor grad students* (now we're old and middle class grad students*...so moving up in the world) and Shutterfly sent an offer for a free calendar. I still wait for those free offers and this year's offer happened to come right in the middle of finals week, basically. 

I was swamped with work, but I still managed to churn out a calendar for him. 

Were the pictures the most carefully curated? Not remotely, but my motto is that any picture printed out is better than no picture printed out. And I was pleased with myself for crossing one gift off of my long list of gifts to procure.

Then it arrived in the mail and I...noticed I made a huge mistake...but wrapped it up anyway...because what option did I have at that point?!

Andrew was already confused by the wrapping job. 

Somehow or other it came just the same...

I feel like we have so many more things to do before it could possibly be Christmas and yet...here we are! 

The kids were very excited for their sleepover in the basement today and spent all morning getting things ready downstairs. They even set up a little game table for themselves and spent some happy hours playing games together which...was perfect. They don't do that very often and I have spent years encouraging them to do so and they are finally starting to do it. 

O Tupperware, O Tupperware...

There's this meme setup that goes "if I ever won the lottery, I wouldn't tell anyone...but there would be signs," and the accompanying picture is...whatever the sign would be. 

I feel like this is my kitchen right now, only it's "if my marriage was approaching two decades, I wouldn't tell anyone [or would tell everyone]...but there would be signs." And this would be the accompanying image:

It's a spatula/flipper (as opposed to a spatula/scraper; we tend to clarify at our house because I grew up calling both these things "spatulas" and didn't everybody? Apparently not) that we've had for nearly two decades now. The handle was melted at one point. And a couple inches of it broke off a few years ago. But we kept it around because we liked it. 

We've accumulated several others over the years, but this spatula was different.

This was a good spatula. It was the spatula, if you know what I mean. 

There are other spatulas and then there is the spatula.

It's rather met its demise now, I think. 

I'm sure a new favourite will surface, but for now we're keenly feelings its loss.

*****

We were gifted some take'n'toss Tupperware for our wedding.

Live nativity (and other things)

The evening the youth in our ward took a shift as the live nativity for the Giving Machine set up in Alpharetta. I was a bit shocked when they told us that we had an assignment and that we needed to provide six youth because, well, that's just about (but not quite) everybody. But we did manage to more or less fill the necessary roles. We had two young men and four young women show up and they invited the older primary kids to participate as well, so we had three primary children present to bolster our numbers.

Heiss Holiday Humbug 2024

This year's newsletter had to wait until finals were over to get started and I did have concerns about whether or not I would finish it in time, but here it is! We've come a long way since I first started writing these things. Miriam wanted to make sure that we took family pictures before she had oral surgery, so we ended up taking them the same day I got my braces. My face was in agony...and Miriam's surgery ended up being postponed (until January 3)...but the pictures turned out alright. And we at least got to cross "taking family pictures" off our list of things to do!

You can download it here or read it after the jump!

Dwaine the bathtub

Rachel and Miriam went out to see Wicked with some friends the other night (Tuesday) and it was dark when they came out of the theater and the moon was big and round and beautiful. We'd been admiring the full moon on Saturday. And still on Sunday. It was still quite impressive on Monday. It really wasn't quite as full on Tuesday, but it was still awe inspiring, at least enough for Rachel to comment on it.

"Wow," Rachel said. "Look at that full moon."

"Oh, I think it's waning," Miriam corrected her.

"No, it's not," Rachel said.

"Yes, it is," Miriam said. 

"No, it's not," Rachel said. 

"Yes, it is!" Miriam insisted.

"Are you crazy?!" Rachel asked, holding her hands out, palms up to the sky to prove her point. "It is not raining!"

"No," Miriam agreed, "But the moon is waning. Like...the actual phase of the moon is waning gibbous today, so it's not technically full anymore, it just...is still really big..."

"Oh," Rachel said sheepishly. "I thought you were just...talking like a baby for some reason."

I wasn't even there, but the telling of the story was so perfectly hilarious and we've since all had a marvelous time falling into a baby voice to tease...well, Rachel really...but it's Miriam who gets embarrassed it for some reason.

¡Y el pavito ya está aquí!

Today was our last day of co-op this semester.

On Sunday a few of my ukulele kids (Zoë and three others) joined my primary kids (Zoë and Alexander and three others) to perform Christmas Bells at our stake Christmas Sing-Along evening. That's eight total kids that I managed to pull together. We were small...but mighty. 

Then on Monday our co-op group played at a retirement home down the street. It was a little bit chaotic because I had it on my calendar for 3:00 but then the time was changed to 2:00 but somehow I missed that memo. We ended up getting there around 2:30, just in time to have my kids play their pieces on the piano before our ukulele group performed...and then Miriam accompanied the whole group singing a few pieces. We missed everyone else's solos! But, the kids all did just fine.

At the end of the semester the kids are encouraged to give little thank you notes/gifts to their teachers. I crocheted little trees for my kids to give to their teachers, along with a note of gratitude. I got a few chocolate bars and a lovely collection of notes.  

Our 19th anniversary (and other tales)

It was our 19th anniversary on Monday, so Andrew and I went out to do something fun, just the two of us. That hardly ever happens! Even for anniversaries! 

The older four kids went to see Wicked with Grandpa and Darla a couple of weeks ago, and we also wanted to go, so we decided to go see that. A friend had invited me to watch it with her on Tuesday because she had an extra ticket...but Andrew had to go into campus and I didn't feel great about making the girls babysit two nights in a row...so instead Rachel and Miriam went with this friends' family (because they're friends with her oldest daughter). It worked out well.

Anyway, Andrew and I went to watch Wicked. It was my first time in a theater in six years, as far as I can figure. The seats were fancy reclining seats, which was bad news for my perpetual state of exhaustion (I could not stay awake through Dancing Through Life, of all numbers to feel drowsy during), but the theater was freezing and made me long to be at home, curled up on my own couch with a warm, fuzzy blanket.

But it was nice to go out and not have to worry about anyone else's needs for a little while. 

When we got home, the kids were all gathered around the table decorating cookies together. They rushed to meet us at the door with their cookies in hand. It was nice to be greeted with such enthusiasm.

Christmas activity of the day #2 and #3

We had our ward Christmas party this evening. It was our first time attending a Christmas party ever in this ward. 

We didn't have one in 2019 because our ward was so new that we just "couldn't even" (as the kids say, though I would say that we "prolly" should have). There was no party in 2020 due to COVID (good call, honestly). And then I found this in an email from 2021 that states: "We held our first annual [redacted] Ward Christmas party with an exciting 'Service Swap' on Saturday followed by a Relief Society social on Sunday."

Our family was refraining from superfluous social gatherings throughout 2021 and 2022, which I'll admit did put a damper in our social life. But to our credit, I was (1) in a high risk pregnancy in 2021 and (2) had an infant in 2022 and (3) COVID was still, like, raging and (4) my kids enjoy, like, getting pneumonia and stuff anyway so I oddly feel like being sick for 90% of the year isn't very fun so with COVID in the mix it (crowds of people) just didn't seem like a thing I really wanted to deal with.

Phoebe has never gone to nursery. And we joke that it's because she's stubborn (oh, she's stubborn...we're not joking about that part!) but I'm honestly not broken up about it at all because the idea of sending her to nursery where germs are swapped like Pokemon cards is, like, not at all appealing to me. 

Anyway, totally our bad for not attending the ward Christmas party in 2021...or 2022...or...2023...well, we sent our teenagers to help babysit in 2023 (because that is what the teenagers evidently do at the ward Christmas party)...and we finally dragged our sorry behinds to the party this year. We're low-key social pariahs in the ward. We wear mask (to cover our piranha-esque teeth, of course) and lurk on the outskirts of the action. Afraid we might bite (or something), people are pretty good about steering clear.