Peas in a pod

I hate it when that happens

At the beginning of the Christmas holidays Rob brought out this 1000 piece puzzle that he had bought years ago at a clearance sale. Every year when we lived out of town and stayed at Granny and Grandpa's for Christmas they would bring out puzzles and various family members would put them together. It was super fun--to me an annual treat--forget the work for a while and do a puzzle.

This was the first big one we did at our house. At first everyone worked together as we got the perimeter pieced together. It soon became apparent, however, that this was a very difficult puzzle with hundreds of pieces looking almost identical--shades of grey and brown. Apart from some Christmas day help from Grandma Berry and one evening from Shari, (Mark's caregiver), this became my personal endeavor. For a month or so in December and January, I also suffered from quite bad insomnia. I spent many hours on days when I was too tired to do anything useful working on that puzzle. I'm sure I could have read War and Peace several times over in the time that puzzle took me. I finally finished it last weekend, only to find that one piece was missing. I hate it when that happens!

Robert Munsch, meet Austin Doig!

On Thursday, last week, the famous children's author, Robert Munsch, came to Raymond. A family there had won a story writing contest as part of a Canada-wide literacy campaign, and because of that, the family got to spend an evening with Robert Munsch and he came the next day to read stories for an audience at the school. I decided to take our boys (Alyssa had play practice). Mark listens to Robert Munsch stories on his iPad a lot. He loves the sound effects and his intonation. Robert Munsch frequently makes him laugh and laugh. Austinalso won the storytelling contest last year telling his story, "Mmm, Cookies. " While Robert Munsch is Canadian, I think his stories like "Love You Forever," "The Paper Bag Princess," etc, are pretty famous elsewhere as well.

Anyway, because we had Mark in a wheelchair, we were able to find seating on the front row to the side of the stage. Robert Munsch chose children from the audience to come up to the front. He changed the name of the child in the story to match the child he selected. As they were introducing him, etc, I thought I saw Robert Munsch looking over at us once or twice.

Sure enough on the first story he called for a child to be part of the story and then looked directly toward Austin and called him up. Preston followed right behind and he let him come. So, in this video, you can see that "Moira's Birthday" became "Austin's Birthday." Unfortunately for our family honor, apparently Preston was not very attentive and was even...I am ashamed to admit....picking his nose up front before about 1000 people!

After the show, I got a book autographed. I also gave Robert Munsch a letter I had written to him thanking him for the difference he made for Mark. Mark did really well through the whole thing which is pretty impressive since being in a gym with 1000 or more people is not his favorite pastime.

Happyland Graduation for Preston

Here it is in 9 video clips. If you think it's long, remember some of us had to sit through it! Anyway, all in all a very good graduation for Preston. Good work, Anna, on putting the event together!

Highlights of being at the Bryners

I really didn't take enough pictures while we were at Bryners to capture the whole feeling of being there, but we had a great, classic Prete time together. Top ten highlights include:

10. Allie and Olivia playing princess by dressing up in swim suits...and the post-play condition of the swim suits.....

Conversation between Haylee and Olivia:

H: Why are you two wearing swimsuits (slight disapproval in her voice)

O: We are playing princesses

H: But princesses wear beautiful dresses, not swim suits

O: But we are pretending the swim suits are beautiful dresses

H: I don't know how to argue with that.

9. Emma's birthday on the 29th. She turned 9.

8. Cousin bonding. It was cute to see Preston bond with Garrett and Pierce. In these pictures, preparing to sleep--three boys, 2 beds, everyone wanting to sleep with Preston. They were extremely silly and hard to get to sleep, and though we paid for it, later, I could hardly be mad because it was so cute. Paul, James, Sam and Austin formed another cousin group and did everything together. They especially loved playing "The mysterious Jungle Ascent" the game Brian created...oh, and of course, the Wii.


7. Watching basketball games. Christian and Rob talked lots of sports and watched a couple of games on TV including this one while dad walked on the treadmill...

6. Happy Land--There was one happy land event for the kids on Wednesday morning. Alyssa and Anna did the girls' hair and nails, and they played games with the kids. They also made lunch as Liz had gone to get Mom and dad. In the afternoon, Anna took four kids tobogganing. In addition to one happy land event for kids, there were four staff only functions--movie night, wii night, games night and a staff lunch.

5. Alyssa is momentarily and only slightly taller than Anna.
4. Happy Land Graduation--see separate post.

3. Games, games and more games. Beyond Balderdash was super funny...we laughed until it hurt. Mostly we made up descriptions for movie titles. There were some great definitions about "chorus girls in 1940s romps," "a middle aged woman and her cat on a dog sled adventure finding love in an unexpected place, " several "heartwarming stories", etc, etc. I also enjoyed learning to play Sleuth which is a challenging game using deductive reasoning. I hope to play it again til I can do it well--Haylee accomplished that on the first attempt.

2. Amazing hosting by the Bryner family and delicious meals planned and prepared by Liz. I want to thank the Bryners for sharing their home and their holidays with us. The kids reached out to their cousins and everyone felt welcome and had a good time. Christian helped Rob have fun, too.

1. Just being together. I love my family and was so happy to strengthen relationships with everyone. I also want to apologize if I said anything insensitive or harsh. I was a little sleep deprived on the trip and that sometimes affects my sensitivity level.

Utah Trip--part 1 travel

It was partway through the day on Christmas day that we decided to go to Utah to my sister Liz's house. But everything fell into place perfectly (thanks Shari for keeping Mark, Gabi for doing my sharing time, Granny and Grandpa for shovelling and taking out our garbage) so that we were able to leave early on Monday the 27th. We had quite decent roads most of the way there and back, which was a blessing and a big change from our last Christmas trip to Utah.

We stayed in SLC on Monday night. Rob and Alyssa went to the Utah Jazz game, and I took the boys to Temple Square where we met up with Joe and Haylee and their family. We enjoyed temple square. The lights were gorgeous. It was super busy though, and the Las Vegas girls were cold, not having what I would consider winter coats.

Right next to our hotel was a Subway restaurant. Rob and Alyssa grabbed a quick bite there before hitting the game, and I would have loved to have fed Austin and Preston there too, but they complained that they don't like subway. So, instead, we took off walking to Temple Square--3 blocks. Since there was nothing on the way to temple square that I noticed, I thought we'd go to the south side where they used to have Cross Roads mall. I knew it had been redone, but I figured they'd still have a food court. We walked up and down the block a couple of times and the only place I could see was "Blue Lemon", a trendy gourmet cafe. Seeing no other option, we lined up for food. After about 20 minutes in line, and another 20 minutes waiting for our food, we ended up with Macaroni and cheese for the boys and ravioli for me. Austin ate some of his macraroni, but didn't like it as much as KD. Preston, though took one bite and spit it back in the bowl. ...next time I just dare them to complain about Subway!

On Tuesday our family went shopping in Orem and ate at The Golden Corral (where everyone made up for going hungry the night before). We arrived in Price late afternoon.

Magical Christmas Morning

My family will attest that I was a rather grumpy slave driver on Christmas eve in the morning and early afternoon. I wanted everything clean and perfect for Christmas. I made everyone do their regular jobs and some extras. When about 2:00, everyone but me was finished their work, the kids, forgiving me for my earlier meanness, and in a spirit of Christmas cheer, helped me finish what I needed to do. The result a beautiful magical home to wake up to on Christmas morning. ...As you can see the perfect cleanness did not last. Santa was very generous this year. Everyone got a big chunk of their Christmas lists and perhaps a few surprises too. We are very grateful for the plenty we enjoy, but especially that we could be together for Christmas. Thank you also to the grandparents, great grandparents, Aunt Sarah and Brian, Aunt Joyce, and friends and neighbors for gifts that made our cups run over!

Cousin Gift Exchange

The cousin gift exchange was a big hit this year. Ken and Tracy's kids had both Austin and Preston (also Chad) and got them all nerf guns. These provided entertainment the rest of the evening on Christmas eve with Rob offering $5 for a dart sticking to Granny's glasses, the $10 for the same with Grandpa Paul and $20 to Ken. You can see Austin got right into that. I'm thinking the nerf guns should be a toy we keep at granny's so that all the cousins can play together whenever we are there...what do you think?
Granny protecting the rest of her face as she gets fired at. Notice the beautiful necklace she is wearing. Preston made that for her and insisted she open it before the cousin gift exchange. As we were wrapping it, he said, "I just can't wait to see her face when she opens it. I know she's going to love it."
Alyssa excitedly opening her gift from Kartchners. She loved the shirt and the headband. ...and she loves her Aunt Sherylee...because let's not kid ourselves, we know who the brains of the gift are.
Paul deserved to get shot at as it took him nearly 10 minutes to open his DVD, so that he could save the wrapping paper in perfect condition
Mark playing with his new toy from Paul.

The pinata

In backwards order...due to my amazing blogging skills....the contents of the pinata (super cute hoodies...and treats of course) and then the process of opening the pinata.

These pinata hitting videos may seem boring to some, but considering how many hundreds of times my kids have watched the home videos of breaking open pinatas in Christmases past, I daresay these will be adequately watched to justify their being posted. Granny surprised us all this year by buying everyone hoodies and having them in the pinata. The kids were thrilled. She has super cute taste, don't you think? Good work, Granny!

Christmas Eve, Dinner and Nativity

As usual, we spent Christmas Eve at Paul and Sheron's place. Granny prepared a beautiful turkey dinner which we ate on the fine china. Granny laid down the law this year and insisted the kids organize the annual nativity. They really stepped up to the challenge. They used granny's costumes and a script and decided all the roles. Alyssa narrated. They asked Rob and I to play Mary and Joseph. Paul helped Mark be a shepherd, and Mark actually didn't mind being in the nativity since there was a tie on his bathrobe to chew. Preston enjoyed being a wise man with his cousins. The singing was improved over other years with the hymns on tape joining our voices. I thought it was very nice, and I was glad to be part of it.

If at first you don't succeed.....

So, on the 23rd, I started getting tired of the kids watching tv/movies, playing on the computer and playing video games, so I decided I should get them out of the house to do something active. So, I called the town office and asked when they have public skating at the arena...1-2 p.m., perfect! So we dressed the kids up in snow pants and helmets and mitts and found all the skates and drove over to the arena at 1:00. When we got to the door there was a sign that said "Public skating 1-2 p.m., cancelled, today only." Dang it! Someone suggested we go tobogganing instead. We drove over to the hill, but there was not enough snow (it faces south and we'd had some warmish days).

So Alyssa said, lets go swimming in Lethbridge. So, I checked the Lethbridge pool schedule, and found a pool that had swimming until 5:00 p.m. I packed 2 bags, one for the boys and one for the girls. As we were leaving, I hadn't grabbed the bags, and Alyssa noticed. When I was doing something else, she grabbed the swim stuff and put it in the back of the van. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the pool on the far side of Lethbridge and opened the back of the van, there was only one swim bag...she hadn't realized I packed two. At this point, I nearly cried. I have had some trouble sleeping lately and I hadn't slept well the night before, and my tired little brain could not take much more!

Anyway, we calmed down and decided to go to the Movie Mill. There we played mini golf and after waiting an hour or so, went to the theatre and watched Megamind, which the kids really enjoyed.

The irony is that we ended up sitting through a movie, with, as you can see a lot of popcorn and pop instead of getting active. Also, I spent over $50, instead of $8 (public skating), but I think we made a memory that day!

The Nativity Pageant in Cardston

On Wednesday the 22nd, we went to the Nativity Pageant in Cardston put on this year by the Cardston First Ward. It was a chilly night, but we bundled up well and didn't suffer too much from cold at all. Nativity pageants are special to me as being part of the pageant in Kingston was the essence of Christmas for me growing up. I found myself wishing I could tweak their pageant a little...get Mary and Joseph to wait to come in until the narration says "and Joseph also, " change the placement of the animals so they could be more visible, etc...get the shepherds to act more surprised....I mean no offence to the pageant in Cardston, it's just that it was exactly those types of things that I helped with in Kingston. The angels in the Cardston pageant were quite magnificent. One angel on the top of the tallest roof, and a chorus of heavenly hosts with angel-Moroni-trumpets on a lower roof. One thing they do at the Cardston pageant that I thought was especially powerful, is they have a big projection screen above the stable and at the end when the Halleluiah Chorus is on, they have a short video of Christ's life death and resurrection. It reminds us that the baby in the manger is meaningless without considering the Savior's atoning sacrifice for us.

Holday Bowling

On one of the first days of our holidays, we went to "Holiday Bowl" as a family. It felt good to do a family activity together after a very busy December with next to no nights together as a family.Preston bowling with the between the legs method.
Austin is using "the force" to control the ball as it travels down the lane.
Rob won, but I got vengeance bowling on the Wii at Liz and Christian's where I bowled 165 in 10 pin.
Afterwards we went to Boston Pizza for dinner.

Sometimes we weren't sure if Preston's balls would make it all the way to the other end.

Christmas Recital Duet

This is Alyssa (primo) with her friend, Karah (secondo) performing a duet at a come and go recital in Lethbridge. This piece was quite difficult. They practiced hard, and actually had it pretty good. In this performance some things fell apart in the second half, but I was still proud of the girls. For Karah, who hasn't been taking lessons as long, the music was especially difficult, but she really worked hard.