Living, Laughing, Loving: The Magic of Ordinary

It has taken me a whole lot longer to complete this post than I expected, but just reading over the events of the last month made me think of the movie title "The Magic of Ordinary Days" one of my favorite hallmark movies. Most Facebook and blog posts highlight the extraordinary and best parts of our lives, and that can lead to feelings of despair and thoughts of comparison. But real life is filled with both the magical moments and the ordinary days. Sometimes December can be a hard month for me as the days get colder and darker and the pressures of gift giving fill my mind. For someone who doesn't like shopping, or spending money or making decisions, all the wish lists and thoughts of choices of how to give the perfect thing can feel a little overwhelming. But I enjoy blogging about the memories of our life, the magical and ordinary and sometimes not so good. It helps me to remember my blessings and the moments I am surrounded with the people that I love.

At the beginning of December, I had hopes that my children would be more motivated to complete their household chores with a little incentive. I invited them to a Saturday "Christmas Party" at noon with plans of cookie decorating, Christmas fun, movies and games from the library kit, and putting up the tree if they finished their jobs in time for the party. But, my workers were slow, Wal-mart was out of some ingredients and when I went to pick up the library Christmas bag it was already reserved. We finally got around to making some cookies late that night. Sometimes life just doesn't work out as planned!

A cousin visit

I have enjoyed being a scout leader this year a lot more than I expected, and Josh loves to tag along with me sometimes. In December we had fun doing experiments about germs and making and delivering cookies.

Scout Cookie Service Project

I love hearing Emily play her cello! For the ward Christmas party she played The First Noel on the cello as I accompanied on the piano. In our practice session in the piano room tears started rolling down my cheeks just hearing the beauty of the music and enjoying this musical moment with my daughter. I made up a little intro for our performance and than just improvised as I went along using the standard hymn book version of the song. This worked great at home, but with the performance anxiety in front of a large crowd and the music not clearly laid out in front of me I made some obvious mistakes and was not feeling the same joy I did earlier in the practice room. I was just glad to have it over.

Emily orchestra concert

I am not much of animal lover......at all! But the kids finally won out and now the dog spends most of her time sleeping in the house, especially on days after she's been chasing the kids sledding on the 4 wheeler in the field. I'm trying to follow the expert advice of my husband by "Loving What Is" even if that means finding dog hair in places that I'd rather not.

The dog joins the family

Hot cocoa doesn't last very long at our house. Alyssa played waitress and made up this order for Emily. I love kid spelling!

Jared's new role as Bishop didn't kick into full gear until January. He has been plenty busy already meeting with members of the ward to get to know them and extend callings since our ward starts from scratch. I feel like this new calling has a calming effect on him as he really enjoys connecting with people and has spent a lot of time seeking for prayerful inspiration. Usually December is the month when I feel the winter blues settling in, but I am thankful to have felt better than normal. Somehow I can feel happier about picking up the slack on the household chores when my husband is gone serving in a spiritual role than when he is gone a lot serving as the sport's coach for our kids even though they are both positive endeavors.

I loved going to see Joshua's school Christmas concert! Usually, music makes me cry and this year was no exception, but I think I feel it a bit more with Josh as I contemplate that he is my last child and these surreal motherhood moments won't be happening quite as often as they used to as my kids grow older and older. I love my bubble of a town where the kids still sing songs like Silent Night as they do sign language actions and a peaceful feeling settles in my heart.

We attended Jared's work party and he commented that he wasn't sure that my definition of "white elephant" as being "random stuff around the house you never use" matches the rest of the world's thoughts, so I sewed this penguin rice bag for one of our gifts. But it turns out that there was plenty of random junk being exchanged... like miniature doll hands and feet?#!, ancient salon hair dryers and baby toys. We ended up with some treasured mugs🤣 with an inscription. "Of course I talk to myself, sometimes I need expert advice!"

The younger kids had fun with their friends at an ugly Christmas sweater party and Alyssa was proud to win the contest for the ugliest sweater with this outfit she threw together at the last minute.

Josh had high hopes of getting all of his Christmas wishes, including the hoverboard he requested from Santa at the ward Christmas party... but sometimes Santa has different ideas and fortunately he was pretty content with the remote control cars he got.

We had about 30 of these homemade snowflake decorations hanging from the ceiling above our kitchen table all month long. It made me think of the paper chain summer in Pocatello when my girls drew creative and sentimental messages on paper chain loops all summer long and were pretty upset with me when I finally put a stop to the chains that were taking over my kitchen and falling when I opened the pantry door. They moved them to their room and finally had to take them down when we moved but insisted on saving the "memories" of the chain scraps in a notebook.

Jared's birthday has an extra brings an extra bit of sentimentality to me every year, because it is also the anniversary of our first date. This year it was his first vacation day so we enjoyed going out to lunch while the kids were in school. As we age our birthday celebrations seem to get simpler and simpler. I sometimes worry that I'm not giving enough... and picking gifts is not easy for me. But I really just enjoy spending time together talking with Jared. I compiled/organized some binders for him containing all of the notes of gratitude love and appreciation that he has received over the years from family and friends and it was meaningful for me to read through and reminisce as I saw many of the people we have known through the years who have touched our lives for good. I loved seeing the kids notes and artistic depictions of their dad from years ago too! My friend Becky delivered a beautiful, delicious mint chocolate cake just in time to celebrate his birthday with the family.

Emily performed at her school assembly and she can often be seen standing against the wall like this at our house throughout the day.

Jared's dad and brother came up to celebrate Christmas Eve with us. We had fun singing Grandma got ran over by a reindeer and then acted out the nativity with some meager props before opening Christmas Eve gifts.

This picture made me think of the happenings earlier in the month. Someone gave us a Christmas tree, and I had the kids put it together. Unfortunately they didn't notice the instruction sheet and it somehow got set aside on the opposite end of the room under some papers. When they asked for help I thought, logically the tiers of branches which were labeled with letters would be arranged alphabetically. After building it from the bottom up 2/3 of the way up I discovered there are multiple "I's," and no "A,'s, B's or C's. But without instructions, I still stuck with my alphabetical hunch. After getting done with assembly, I discovered the instructions, with the random stacking of tiers going something like M, L, N, I, J, K, I, D, etc....#$!????? This tree was obviously not made in the USA! It didn't look that bad so I just left it, and I was super grateful when Jared's mom helped the kids finish decorating it with light and ornaments.

One of my favorite date night activities is playing games. We finally hosted a Minute to Win It Couples Date Night to cap off the end of great year. It was fun to watch "cookie face" and "defy gravity" competitors and just enjoy socializing with good friends. I really wish we did things like this more often, but the work to get my house in order sometimes inhibits me from inviting people as often as I think about it.