Updates continued

Hopefully this will be our last update (on Christmas, that is), as my memory of those far distant days is becoming increasingly fuzzy. Maybe that has something to do with actually working on my dissertation this week--if I concentrate for too long on the nineteenth-century, it becomes somewhat difficult to focus on the twenty-first.

First, though, we'd like to announce a recent change in our lives--last Sunday, we were given an assignment from our stake to attend the branch in Huntington (about forty miles from here). Three families from our ward (including us) are currently assigned there to help fill in callings as needed. Today was our first day in our new branch--everyone seemed quite friendly and nice. Andrew, though, may prove to be something of a distraction--we still haven't accustomed ourselves to a fully mobile toddler and Andrew took great delight in exploring every room that we were in. I think that he must have visited every sister in Relief society at least once today (more likely two or three times) as he made his rounds around the smallish Relief Society room. He also reduced another toddler to tears, simply by being extremely interested in her business. Her mom finally had to take her out of the room. I worry that he'll distract everyone else, but Dan says (and I think he's right) that the older sisters enjoyed the attention. We haven't received official callings yet, although the branch president today gave us intimations that they may put Dan in the Young Men's and me as choir director (eek! Does anyone else see the problems with that? I tried to explain to him that my family is not exactly known for our singing, but he seemed to think that simply being able to read music qualifies one for directing music. Since I don't always recognize when singing is off-tune--being frequently guilty of that myself--I'm not entirely sure how I would be expected to lead others in tuneful harmonies! However, since nothing has been made official yet, perhaps there's still a slight chance that I might escape that calling).

That said, we return to our Christmas update. We left Cedar City for Provo on the day after Christmas (and apparently just missed a snowstorm that dumped 10 inches of snow on Cedar City and missed the nearby mountain ski resorts almost entirely). We had a quiet day or two with my parents before the rest of the horde descended on Wednesday evening (Justin, Lia, Julia and Eli; Jared, Mitcee and Joshua; and Dan, Andrew and I all stayed at my parents). On Wednesday, my mother and I went to get our hair cut--for me, this was the first hair cut since before Andrew was born! Needless to say, I was long overdue. I also decided to be a little more adventurous than normal (besides, Dixie, our hairdresser, assured me that my hair would be just long enough for the ten inch minimum required to donate it to Locks of Love)--and chopped off a full ten inches. Most of you have already seen my new do, but for those of you who aren't in the vicinity, here's a snapshot. (It looks a little fuzzy here--I promise that it can be much more elegant. At least, when I bother to do it).



Thursday morning--after much debate--we decided to take the kids up to Salt Lake to the Discovery Museum, which is geared towards childrenof all ages with all sorts of learning activities. I think the museum would have been an unqualified hit if it weren't for the fact that most of the other parents along the Wasatch Front seemed to have had the same idea for whiling away a gray winter day (we had opted out of a trip to the zoo because it was so cold outside). There were WAY too many kids there. At any rate, some of the kids liked the exhibit--Andrew liked playing in the water and pulling the plastic vegetables out of a play vegetable garden.


Andrew playing in the water.


Andrew driving a play car. He looks rather stoned here--not sure why. Shortly after this picture was taken, he was driven away by an older toddler who actually knew what the car was for.


Andrew's cousin Emi sitting atop a life-sized model of a horse. I don't think she was too excited to be there.


In one of the cooler parts of the exhibit, kids got to sit inside an actual rescue helicopter. Here, Andrew's cousin Jacob poses for a snapshot.

That afternoon, Jared and Mitcee and Dan and I took our kids over to Jeni and Samuel's house. As part of their kids' Christmas, they had splurged and bought a giant inflatable toy yard. Jacob and Joshua delighted in tearing across the yard and throwing themselves down the slide. Emi just stood inside the yard and bounced up and down, grinning madly the whole time. Andrew was too scared to go into the yard (possibly scared of his larger cousins?), but he did like the slides. Dan and Mitcee entertained themselves by watching and providing their own MST 3000 commentary (for those of you who don't know what this is, don't worry about it!) on Interstella 5555, an anime music video.

Friday was comparatively quiet. Jacob got sick, so Jeni imposed a twenty-four hour quarantine on her kids, and Mitcee had to go up to Salt Lake, so we stayed at my parents' house and played pinochle with my parents, and Scrabble with Jared and Lia, who roundly trounced us.

Saturday commenced our big Christmas celebration. Dan and I spearheaded a breakfast of eggs and waffles, after which we gathered in the front room for presents. We started with a chaotic rendition of the nativity story--while my Dad read the nativity story from the Bible, the grandchildren were supposed to enact the story with the Little people nativity my mom had purchased. However, as you can see from the pictures below, this didn't entirely go as planned. Andrew tried to eat Baby Jesus, and the other children generally wandered around the room with random pieces of the nativity. (At this rate, Mary and Joseph would never have made it to Bethlehem!)





Following the nativity, we distributed presents to each other. Although this, too, was a little chaotic (none of the grandkids could wait for anyone else to open their presents), everyone seemed to enjoy it--and we're blessed to be affluent enough that Christmas is no hardship. After we had exchanged gifts, my mom brought up her characteristic mountain of presents from the basement--literally a bag full for each person! I think the highlight of the morning for my mom was not seeing the gifts opened, but my finding her Alaskan ring (which my dad had purchased special for her on our cruise--it has Alaskan gold in the center of the stone), which she had lost a week or so before and despaired of finding, at the bottom of a bag of clothes for Andrew. Andrew was also characteristically helpful--every time another child opened a present or toy, Andrew had to help them play with it (which caused more than a few protests and tears).



That afternoon, while the children napped, the grownups enjoyed a rousing game of Boxers or Briefs. From this, we learned that Justin is the real Slim Shady; that Jared likes to dress up in spandex on the weekends and play air guitar; and that the thing I most need is a "real man" (a card that Dan himself handed me!).

We're also proud to announce that Andrew generally wrecked havoc during his brief stay in Provo. He managed to make every one of his cousins cry at least once: he stepped on and bent Jacob's prize pirate sword; he continually made Julia cry by trying to get in her business (and this despite her parents' frequent reminders that "Julia, you're bigger than he is and you can move faster--just move away from him!"); he terrified Emi (we think because he is both bigger than she is--if five months younger--and because he was at that awkward stage of learning how to walk where he walked with his arms outstretched and subsequently looked like a small Frankenstein); and he made Eli cry to (often by accidentally knocking her over or trying to sit on her). Below, you can see how pleased Eli was to share her Dad's lap with Andrew.




As always, Andrew lost no time in discovering the cupboards and "taking inventory."

Monday morning, we indulged in an orgy of creativity, making gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. My creation (made with Julia), you can see below--it was rather a sad specimen. (It was not "a boxcar with a getaway slide in the back, just in case," as has been suggested elsewhere--it was just a partially collapsed house whose architect was decidedly lacking in creativity). Lia and Samuel were much more creative, building respectively a cathedral and a kind of medieval fortress.





All in all, it was, as Dan put it, a "rip-roaring, feel-good time." (If sometimes more of a "rip-roaring" than "feel-good" time!)