Oh December, how I wish you went more slowly. I love the Christmas Season. I love it so much that I am adopting my Mom's idea of celebrating until January 6th - Three King's Day. Today is January 6th and I finally took down the Christmas decorations while listening to my favorite Christmas music and eating Rosca de Reyes that my Mom brought to us. It's hard for me to say goodbye to Christmas, and as I was lamenting this to the boys today Brian said, "Well anyway, you should keep Christmas in your heart all year Mom." He's so right. So here I am tucking Christmas away in my heart and hoping to keep it there all year while I relive the beautiful Christmas memories as I post them on the blog.
December started beautifully with the Church's Light the World initiative.
I took the daily service ideas to help us become more like Christ and put them in our advent calendar muffin tin for the whole month along with a little treat. Each morning we opened the day, and decided how we were going to serve and be like Christ for that day. Some of the more memorable activities were gathering toys for a family in need, picking out food at the store to donate, writing letters to family members far away, and committing to do kneeling morning prayers each morning in December. I loved it! It helped us focus on others and on becoming more like Christ through the whole month.
We went up one Saturday to the ranch for the annual Samiclaus party.
Each grandchild did some musical performance for Samiclaus.
Back at home we kept the animals happy and healthy.
The boys continued their morning Lego routine. The first thing they do after waking up is start creating things while I get ready.
They drew pictures to send to Mark's 104-year-old grandmother in Taiwan.
We got lucky and happened to be at Home Depot on the day Santa was there with workshop Christmas things for the boys to build.
I supervised the boys construction project while Mark got more items for our basement construction project.
Mark worked hard continuing on with the basement remodel. He broke out some of the fireplace to make room for a bedroom wall.
He filled in the conversation pit.
Flooring will go directly over the wood and no one will know it was there besides it maybe will sound a little different when walked on.
Both boys won at school for their reflections music compositions. Brian wrote a piano piece and Timmy wrote one for the cello. The theme this year was "What's Your Story?"
This year Brian also won at Cottonwood Council level. They feel even now because last year Timmy won at council and this year Brian did.
Here are the reflections songs the boys composed.
For the first time in over ten years I was able to get tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert. We took Mark's parents and it was amazing! I enjoyed every second!
The guest artist was Rollando Villazon. He was awesome!
Speaking of Christmas music, we fully felt the Christmas season music insanity at our house this year. I became the cello pack horse and we played at what felt like a million different places. It was a little crazy, but so fun at the same time. One of my favorite things in the world is to make Christmas music!
The boys played in the annual Cheney Cello Christmas Concert. It is so fun for them to learn lots and lots of Christmas songs and then to play with 80+ other cellists.
Here's a few clips of the boy's cello concert and school sing a long.
I played the cello and sang at the stake sing-in and on Christmas Sunday at church. I sang for a special musical number in church earlier in December and the boys sang with the primary on Christmas Sunday. We hauled the cellos to my parents house to play with my family and we took them to Grandma Joyce's house to play for her. One of the musical highlights was playing the dinner music for our ward party. I wish I had a picture of her, but my mom came all the way down several times to practice with us and then played the piano for us at the party. It was so fun to play with Brian and Timmy and my mom! The old people in our ward especially loved it and the boys got thank you cards and even money for their playing that night.
Brian and Timmy were cute enough that night that the 2nd Counselor in the Bishopric let them wear his nice cowboy hat a awhile after their cello playing was over.
The primary sang a few songs too.
At home we were getting super duper excited for Christmas! Brian and Timmy bought and wrapped presents to give to each other and they were very excited about it!
We had a bit of sickness as well. Timmy never got over a cold he had from November and needed several rounds of antibiotic to finally get rid of that bad sinus infection. One doctor's visit we had to wait over an hour to see the doctor. Luckily we have technology to help us pass the time.
Here's some Chinese school work from Brian.
Brian completed a big report about the Cherokee Indians at school.
The kids were happy to get some Christmas pajamas from Nai Nai and Ye Ye! The excitement for Christmas to arrive was palpable.
Our visit to Grandma Joyce was lovely as always. We love her so much!
Christmas arrived with lots and lots of snow! I'll post Christmas weekend happenings in another post. After Christmas we really really enjoyed a break from work and school and we loved all the snow to play in!
The Monday after Christmas we had some friends over for sledding in our backyard park and hot chocolate. It was a beautiful, cold and fun time!
That night we got a babysitter and Mark and I went to a movie together! We went with Luke and Sunny on their last night here. We saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It was so good!
The next morning we went back over the Nai Nai and Ye Ye's house to catch Luke and Sunny for a game of Majong before they had to head back to California. Oh we will miss them until next time they come into town. Mark is lucky to see them again in California in January.
Since there is too much snow to ride the Christmas razor scooter outside, the boys use them in the house!
Christmas break was full of snuggling in the new BYU soft blankets while reading or watching movies.
And putting together Christmas Lego sets.
We went for a swim at my parent's condo pool and stopped at Arctic Circle on the way home. Timmy absolutely loves the cherry dipped cones there and he doesn't care at all that it gets all over his face.
We went to the library and got loads and loads or new books to read. We got so many books that my library bag broke and I need to find some other way to carry all those books.
Mark did so much work on the basement.
The boys found some games to play.
And we did more sledding at the park.
One day we finally got the time to ride TRAX downtown for our traditional see-the-lights-at-temple-square trip.
I wonder if there will be a year when these boys don't want to ride TRAX. It always seems to be their favorite part of the night.
We stopped to see the windows at the Grand America...
As well as the ZCMI candy windows.
Of course my favorite was temple square as usual.
The next day I took the boys to stay a night at the ranch while Mark worked on the basement. My parents had a new fun car track that the boys loved in addition to all the other fun things to do at the ranch.
We got a few runs around the field with Grandpa before the six-wheeler needed a break. It was so fun and it brings so many memories!
I got a quick cross-country ski hike in with Alli and Dave and Bristol.
Then that evening we had our balloon New Year's Eve party even though it was a night before New Year's Eve because everyone was there on Friday. It was very very fun!
Good food, popping balloons with lots of money in them, and playing games like Pie in the Face, make for an amazingly awesome night!
The next morning my mom made us a good breakfast and then we had to head back down from the sunny clear skies in Oakley into the smog of what looked like Mordor as we drove down the canyon. I am grateful for the time we had up in the clear clean air! The rest of the weekend and break was spent cleaning up, doing laundry, and getting back to practicing instruments as we geared up to start school and work again on Tuesday January 3rd.
Here's a few clips of random videos from December.
