End of the Line

With our impending move back to the south on my mind, I've been spending a lot of time climbing around my paternal grandmother's side of my family tree. I should have done a lot more of that when we lived in North Carolina (or, you know, ever) but I've always just thought of my grandmother's line as being from Florida so I didn't really think of it. But before they were from Florida they were from Georgia and before they were from Georgia they were from North Carolina (and before that they were from Germany/France/Ireland/England).

There are a lot of dead ends in my grandma's line; even the names that I do have are faceless, story-less figures. I wish I knew more about them, but I fear they will forever remain a mystery.

My great-great-grandfather, Charles (Patty) O'Neal, stole away across the ocean on a ship. There is no record of his transit, but on census reports he has claimed to have immigrated from France. Our family stories say he is from Ireland (and I don't doubt that's what he told people) but his other family (scalawag up and abandoned my great-great-grandmother shortly after childbirth) believes he is French. So who knows about him?

Mary Duggar (my great-great-grandmother, who was married to Mr. O'Neal) has a much more significant family tree (and by significant I mean...it exists (there is a record of it) whereas Charles O'Neal left us no clues about his family line). That said, her line soon fizzles out as well.

I spent a lot of time looking at the Futch line because, well, that's the one that is there, but even that one leaves a lot of questions.

New Year and Church Changes

It isn't the best picture, but we finally got a picture of our family in front of the Christmas tree. Just in time for the New Year, which will bring a lot of changes for our family. 

Show time

My parents treated our family to a trip to the movies this afternoon. We haven't all been to the movies since the very beginning of the year when we accidentally had the kids skip school so that we could go to Coco. That's because going to the movies as a family is both (a) expensive and (b) hard. 

Actually, the four oldest kids were all super well behaved. It was just Alexander being a handful—and, boy, was he ever a handful!

I watched 95% of the movie from the little entrance hallway thing, which was fine. After 2+ hours of wrangling Alexander, however, I was about wiped out! 

We saw the new Mary Poppins movie, which was charming. In Durham we once checked out all of P. L. Travers' Mary Poppins books and I read them out loud to the children. I think it was because we had watched Saving Mr. Banks and then because of that we introduced the kids to Mary Poppins, both on the screen and on the page.

It was fun background knowledge to have because I could say (to myself, and later to Andrew), "Yes, yes. The bowl incident. That happened in one of the books." 

A lot of things in the movie happened also in the books, which was nice. And it was nice that it wasn't simply a scene-by-scene remake of the original Mary Poppins but was, instead, a continuation of the story (similar to how the books work) with new music and adventures. 

I think we all enjoyed it, though I may have enjoyed it more if Alexander had truly been free to crawl around and make a nuisance of himself (he was determined that we would not sit in our seats). 

After the movie we headed over to my parents' house for a pizza dinner and the kids had fun exploring the big box of stuffed animals in the basement (mostly Josie's (though the troll is mine—haha)). 

When we got home, as if we hadn't had our fill of screen time, Andrew and the three oldest kids watched Two Towers while I put babies to bed and then looked at houses. 

I have no idea how to buy a house, guys, and it's kind of stressing me out.

Dress ups

Our friends James and April lent us their baby's Halloween costume so that we could dress Alexander up like Jack Jack for Auntie Josie. So we put him in the costume (finally) and snapped a few pictures, but he wasn't feeling very Jack-Jack-like when we took the pictures and just sat there and stared at us. He hasn't been feeling 100% so that's probably why he was exuding a lack of energy he entire photo shoot.

Christmastime Stuff

Christmas Adam we had sacrament meeting at church, and that is all, which felt odd. We came home wanting lunch even though it was only 10:00 in the morning. Rachel and I sang with the choir and everything felt bland. The way that we are—this numbness—is a coping mechanism, I think, because the alternative to not feeling anything is feeling everything. So I sang the songs and I felt very little until I looked down and saw a sister in our ward openly bawling and then everything inside of me broke, too, and I spent the last little bit of the song mouthing the words instead of singing them because I was crying. 

Mild he lays his glory by, 

Born that man no more may die: 

Born to raise the son of earth, 

Born to give them second birth. 

Hark! the herald angels sing,

"Glory to the new-born King !"

A couple in the ward adopted two little girls from Ukraine, so I went up to talk with them. They speak no English and seemed rather relieved to speak with someone who could communicate with them a little easier. In the evening my friend Gulnaz (who is from Russia) brought dinner to their family and the girls and I met her at their house to sing В лесу родилась ёлочка to the girls. They seemed to really enjoy it; we were happy to give them a little bit of the familiar to them when their life is rather turned upside down. 

My sister and mom came over for latkes and stew, prepared by Andrew, and then we watched The Muppet Christmas Carol, which Zoë found enrapturing. She was terrified and mesmerized in all the right places. Afterwards we gathered around the piano/organ for some singing. We sang a few carols that Miriam played and then entertained Zoë by singing whatever words she told us to (to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star) while she played nonsense on the piano.

"Sing, 'Alex, no! Alex, no!'" she'd demand. "Now sing, "Mommy, yes! Mommy, yes!'"

The Lights at Temple Square

We thought we'd beat the Christmas rush—or, rather, out-wait the Christmas rush—by heading to Temple Square on Boxing Day. Alas, we seemed to hit Temple Square with all the other procrastinators because Temple Square was packed.

It took us about ten minutes just to use the elevator at the parking garage, which should have been a sign, and we were shuffling through crowds the whole night! 

When we finally made it off the elevator, which spat us off in the middle of the mall, we ran into our friends—the Enslows—from our Durham days! That was fun! They live in Idaho now but were down for Christmas (obviously). How funny to bump into them at Temple Square (I realize the world is small and the world within the church especially so, but still).

Although our Christmas was dry as a bone—with not a flake of snow in sight (Zoë declared her Christmas "ruined" at dinner because it wasn't a white Christmas—we woke up to a winter wonderland this morning, so the trees at Temple Square were covered in both lights and snow and it was dazzling.

Into the crib

Christmas is coming.

Rather, Christmas has come and Christmas has past It's the stories of Christmas that will soon be coming. 

For now, enjoy these pictures of my babies playing together in the crib. Zoë has been climbing into the crib with Alexander forever so it's not entirely surprising to see them both in there. This particular day, however, I know that when I left them they were outside of the crib, which means that somehow Zoë got Alexander into the crib. I'm not sure I want to know how they accomplished that feat.

Christmas Jammies, Christmas Tantrums, Christmas Carrots

We don't do Christmas jammies.

In fact, my children tend to choose their most hideous bedclothes to wear to bed on Christmas Eve so that when we open gifts in the morning they look downright terrifying (the hideous bedclothes, of course, being accompanied by some wicked bedhead).

Similar to the idea of coordinating Halloween costumes, the idea of coordinating pyjamas—for the entire family—seems entirely outside my sphere of control. Sometimes, from the look of social media (and this is when social media turns into a bad thing, I guess, because I shouldn't be comparing traditions but literally every post in my entire feed is about Christmas pyjamas). I feel like we're maybe missing out on something. But how am I supposed to (a) convince the entire family to wear the same style of pyjama or (b) surprise everyone with cute pyjamas to wear that they'll each be thrilled to pieces about wearing?

How do families pull this trick off?

Guaranteed if I tried it the results would be disastrous. Someone would cry or refuse to wear their pyjamas—probably both. Also, someone would manage to stain their pyjamas before I would manage to take the coveted Christmas Pyjama Picture.

I'm fine with that usually. I mean, they're pyjamas, which don't really matter at all until it's pyjama day at school and you realize all your tween ever wears to bed are Grandma's old t-shirts. Those aren't so cute to wear to school...sorry about that, Rachel.

Ahem. Anyway...

Christmas Miracles

As my mom and I were wrapping up a conversation this evening she said, "I'd better let you go so you can blog so I can read it in the morning." No pressure.

We didn't do much today. Some grocery shopping, some ornament making, some movie watching, some napping. I am feeling a lot better today, though I fear we'll spend the rest of the break passing this virus around. Alexander is running a fever now and several other children went to bed complaining of feeling ill. 

While we were watching (and painting, for those of us without the attention span for Lord of the Rings), the doorbell rang. We opened it to discover three big boxes filled to bursting with presents. A little sleuthing revealed—or very nearly revealed—our benefactors (who still remain very much anonymous but at the very least we can thank the organization who played Santa to us). 

Andrew and I numbly unloaded the boxes, filling the empty cavity below our tree. 

Everything seems a little numb and empty these days. 

It's not that we weren't grateful for the gifts; we were (and I'm sure it will be fun to see the children's faces on Christmas morning (in fact, maybe even tomorrow morning because none of them noticed any gifts appear under the tree)), but emotions are complicated and messy. 

We didn't need Christmas delivered to our door, not in the physical sense. We aren't lacking financially (finally; and it's a wonderful feeling!) and we've got Christmas presents stowed away waiting to be wrapped. There are others who could have used these gifts more than we could, in that sense. But our house feels poor in another sense—in the lonely, heartache, missing-something (missing someone) sense—and if a few toys can cause a ray of Christmas joy to break through our pall, then I suppose it will have been well worth it.

So we didn't need this. But we did.

(Plus, I've more or less talked myself into accepting them in a pay-it-forward scenario.)

In sickness and in health

We went out for our anniversary last night (to the Payson temple to do an endowment session and then to dinner at Cubby's) even though we're still both a little under the weather. While we were out I mentioned a time long ago when someone warned us that we would regret getting married so close to finals week, but we scoffed at them. That would surely only matter until we were finished with our degrees (which I was and which Andrew had immediate plans to finish) and then we'd be free and clear.

Thirteen meandering years later (hi there, grad school) and we're still running into issues with our anniversary and finals week (and probably will forevermore). And I'm pretty okay with that.

What I'm less okay with is how often we're sick on our anniversary. 'Tis the season, I guess.

While I was mostly alright before we went to the temple, I started sneezing at the temple. And things went downhill from there (which was annoying because I thought I was getting better, not worse). I was a drippy, drippy mess by the time we got home, but I still felt alright.

By the time we went to bed, however, I did not feel alright at all. I could not get warm. Eventually I fell asleep, however, and by the time I woke up at 4:00 in the morning (thanks, Alexander) I was downright miserable. I had a raging fever and could hardly get out of bed. After I nursed the baby I messaged a few people to find a substitute for Benjamin's class party today (which I really didn't want to miss but...oh, well). And then I went back to bed.

Andrew took Miriam to her orthodontist appointment and Rachel to her orchestra party early in the morning. I got Benjamin off to school and then once Andrew was home went back to bed (for, like, four hours). I slept more in the afternoon.

Good thing I had so many helpers at home today! (Andrew didn't go into campus and the kids got out of school at noon).

At dinner time I said to Andrew, "You know what the dumbest part is? I don't even really feel sick. I mean, besides the fever and the headache and the runny nose and the full body ache and the burning eyes, I don't even feel sick!"

"Okay. You literally just described sickness," he said. "That's like saying we don't have any kids—besides Rachel, Miriam, Benjamin, Zoë, and Alexander. But, I mean, other than that we have absolutely no kids."

Fine. I'm sick.

But I'm hoping to feel better soon because I'd really like to do something fun with the kids during their ridiculously short Christmas break (Atlanta's school district appears to get a full two weeks off, which I'm looking forward to because I obviously haven't been able to wrap my head around this one-week of Christmas break thing (we sure do miss the year-round calendar)).