December Wrap-Up

December was a good month! We spent Christmas at home with just our family for the first time in over 10 years! The girls were a bit nervous that it would be terrible and boring, so I took it upon myself to have a few surprises.

We did our annual advent challenges, and we hid our little elf every day where occasionally there are small treats or gifts, but I noticed that days would go by where no one looked in the advent pocket OR for the elf, so that tradition may be fading out with age.

When the girls were younger the challenges were super simple. Here is one of our old lists:

Tell someone something you like about them

Wish someone a Merry Christmas

Do something nice for someone (but don’t let them know!)

Thank Heavenly Father for Jesus in your prayers

Read the nativity story

Draw a picture of the nativity

Tell someone you love them

Draw a picture or write a note to someone who is lonely

Visit someone who is sick

Sing a Christmas carol about Jesus

Play or talk to someone you normally don’t play or talk with

Make someone smile

Do something nice for mom without being asked

Draw a picture to say thank you for someone you appreciate

Spend some time playing with Kipper

Cheer someone up who is sad

The past few years we upped our game. I don't have this year's complete list, but here are some from previous years:

Learn the definition of the word peacemaker.  Find a scripture that teaches about peacemakers.  Pray that you can develop this quality.  What is the Savior’s role?* 

Listen to the First Presidency Devotional and share with your family your favorite part.

Do something nice for someone (but don’t let them know)!

Learn more about the sacrament.  Read Matt. 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; and Luke 22:17-20.  Establish a pattern of pondering during the sacrament.  Ask, “what can I do to improve?”  Listen for the Spirit.  What is the Savior’s role?*

Read the nativity story tonight by candlelight.

Visit someone who is sick or lonely.  It can be someone your age, an older person, or a call to a family member.  Be thoughtful.

Send a Christmas Card/Letter to Mormom.  She is lonely and this will give her some Christmas cheer.

Write a letter of gratitude to one of your teachers at church or school.

Heavenly Father has given you special gifts.  Read 1 Corinthians 12:4-12; 13; Moroni 7 12-13; 10:8-18; and Doctrine & Covenants 46:11-26.  Ask a family member to write down positive qualities the Lord has given you.  List these gifts in your journal, and write how you can continue to develop these gifts and use them to serve your family and others.  What is the Savior’s role?*

Write a note to someone telling them something specific that you admire or appreciate.

Write your testimony of the Savior in your journal.

Do something nice for mom without being asked.

Spend an hour doing Family History.  Take some of the names you find to the temple before Christmas.

Read about repentance in Isaiah 1:18; Alma 26:22; 34:30-35; Moroni 8:25-26; and Doctrine and Covenants 19:15-20; 58:42-43.  Discuss with the family what repentance means.  Apply the principles of repentance in your life.  What is the Savior’s role?*

Attend A Christmas Carol and then use Article of Faith 13 to evalutate what you saw and heard.  How can you use this Article of Faith as a guide for all you do so the Holy Ghost will be your constant companion?  What is the Savior’s role?*

Conduct a self-assessment of your personal integrity.  Ask yourself the following questions:  Do I avoid gossip, inappropriate jokes, swearing and profanity, and being light-minded about sacred subjects?  Am I completely truthful, morally clean, honest, dependable, and trustworthy in my schoolwork and other activities?  Today pray for strength and for the guidance of the Holy Ghost to help you live with integrity.  What is the Savior’s role?*

Read Doctrine & Covenants 18:10 and 121:45.  Do all you can to build others and make them feel of worth.  From now until Christmas notice the worthwhile qualities and attributes of others.  Acknowledge them verbally or in writing.  What is the Savior’s role?*

While in McCall choose to only speak kind, uplifting words.  Withhold any criticism or judgement.

Smile and wish a Merry Christmas to everyone you pass on the way to TRAX today.

Send an email or text to Babsie.  Tell her about your life, and wish her a Merry Christmas.  

Make grandma’s day by writing her an email telling her something you love about her.  

Read a story/article in the Friend, New Era or Ensign.

Talk to someone at school that you don’t normally talk to.  See if you can find out three things about them.

Give a specific prayer giving thanks for the birth of the Savior.

Learn about satisfying spiritual hunger (start with John 6:35)

Have a special lunch outing with mom/dad.

Point out a virtue in something that they don't see in themselves.

Eat lunch with someone new at school/work.

Secretly do something nice for someone in the family.

Learn about the problems in another country. Say a united prayer in their behalf.

Geoff took a trip to Mexico City for work, and I sent him and Tennie the challenges while he was gone.

We got ALL of our Christmas decorations out, which leaves no shelf or surface space empty! All of the Danish nisse and German nutcrackers, and European Christmas market treasures made the house feel super cozy and magical! On Christmas Eve we gave our annual Christmas ornament.

Our cat Mila really liked the ornaments.

Ceci's performance as Scrooge was fun, and we saw A Christmas Carol at Hale Theater too. I don't remember where this picture was taken, but it was in December!

We went to an amazing Christmas concert by The Lower Lights with our friends, the Serafins. Wow that was fun!

We attended a Kids For Kids fundraising concert put on by some of our friends where kids organize and perform and raise money for a cause. This particular concert was for a refugee center in Greece. They raised $10,000! We had plans for a sleigh ride in Midway, but it is hard to go on a sleigh ride with no snow! That fun outing will be postponed until a future date. But there was enough snow to open a few runs at Park City where Geoff and the girls have passes this year.

We also did a little ice-skating one weekend with a few of Tennie's college friends who also spent the weekend.

They also made lots of Christmas crafts.

We went and saw the lights on Temple Square twice.

Best of all was helping a family with Christmas and collecting and distributing coats to those that need them. These endeavors would have stressed me out if I hadn't had the luxury this year of getting most Christmas shopping and preparations done before Thanksgiving. It was nice to have the season to look outward.

I turned FORTY-EIGHT! To ease the pain, Geoff bought me a new phone! I'm so excited to have the nice camera! Now I just have to learn how to use it!

Christmas Eve we started a new tradition a woman at church mentioned - to emphasize the light of Christ. With all the lights off I lit a taper candle. I then lit the person next to me, she lit the person's next to her and so on. When all were lit we talked about how we can fill the world with light, Christ's light within us. We shared some scriptures and the girls ended up being obsessed with the melted wax. But they still felt the peace and truth of the point!

But the biggest and most time consuming and most exciting gifts for me to give were our old blog's Auburn years printed into three volumes (more on this in another post soon) and digitizing our old video camera's small cassette tapes, comprising the years 2000-2005. None of us had seen these videos since we took them! We opened these last on Christmas morning and it was a worthy staying-home-as-a-family-can-be-cool surprise! We spent all day Christmas day, and many days since, watching these movies and laughing and remembering, and on Geoff's and my part, longing a little bit. It seems like a lifetime ago, and yet time has slipped by so quickly.

Our Christmas break has been a little more busy than we anticipated, but still wonderful to be together. Geoff, Adele and Ceci got in a car accident (all are ok), which meant we had to buy a new car suddenly. That took some time and decision making. Ceci spent six days, post-Christmas with a nasty, nasty cold and missed precious open days skiing. The day she was back on her feet, Tennie and I woke up with it, and that is giving me a lot of time to lay around and read and watch movies and work on things like this post. (As a mom, sometimes being sick is the only time to be forced out of commission!) So Adele and Tennie had plans with friends on New Years, but Geoff and I stayed home and tried to be fun and exciting with sick Ceci. I don't think we succeeded...

It has been an eventful, challenging and exciting year. What rich memories! We're all looking forward to 2019. Life is full of surprises!

A Creative Gift

My brother-in-law Davey always gives thoughtful, often self-made, gifts. This year I got Davey for Christmas, and I wanted to do something meaningful. I wanted to give him his own kind of gift. After thinking through a few ideas, I decided to create a simple story book, much like the one I made for Ceci during our last General Conference. His wife Erica helped me brainstorm things he does regularly with the kids and I went to work. Here it is:

A Dad and Four Kids

For Davey, Kate, Eli, Emma & Hannah

There is a lot of LOVE in this book. See how many hearts you can find on each page.

Once upon a time there was a dad and four kids.

They liked to go on hikes and explore.

They liked to make music together.

They loved to swim and play in the pool.

They liked to look for shells on the beach.

They liked to look for birds.

They watched movies.

They really liked to be silly together.

The dad would hold them when they were sad.

Sometimes the dad would read chapter books out loud.

At night the dad pulled out his guitar and sang a song before the four kids went to sleep.

It didn't matter what they did, as long as they were together.

The End.

This was a really fun, creative project for me. I don't sit and create very much. And it was an easy project because Davey really is this great of a dad, and they are always reading books together. I wanted those kids to have images of the amazing father in their lives. But the best part was being thoughtful about what to give. This caused me to slow down and really think about the receiver. 

Geoff and I decided this year to give "favorite things" as gifts. His work colleagues got our favorite book of the year (Beneath the Scarlet Sky). Our family members are getting one of our favorite things that we use all the time. This at least causes us to be a little thoughtful. And when it works, I would love to be like Davey and create something unique and personal. I'm grateful this was one of those years.

Christmas in McCall, Idaho - Part 2

The rest of our time in McCall was all play. There was a LOT of playing in the snow and skiing, which days always began with Geoff making blueberry pancakes...

Some days were very cold!

A few heroic aunts hosted a gingerbread house-making party for the little kids.

The older cousins played countless games of Werewolf. I joined in once and was sure I permanently lost some of my hearing. Very fun, though...

We were often the teenage transport car, usually with six piled in the back seat and a few in front.

The main house had a hot tub, which was always packed with tired muscles.

People began to leave on the 28th, and our numbers continued to dwindle. We made our way home New Year's Eve, sorry to say goodbye to people we love and the memories we make together.

But before going home, a few stragglers spent a final day skiing and enjoying the end-of-year fireworks at Brundage.

On to many adventures in 2018!

Christmas in McCall, Idaho - Part 1

We asked the girls if they would like to spend Christmas skiing in Chamonix, France (we were there, afterall), and they unanimously said no, they wanted to be in McCall, Idaho with cousins. As time went on it turned out Geoff's entire family would be in McCall for Christmas, so we came home to spend Christmas in one of our very favorite places on the planet.

We would arrive a week before anyone else (except for Tennie who joined us the second week), and we watched the weather looking forward to snow, but there wasn't much. The first week we literally prayed for snow so Brundage, the local ski resort, would open! And sure enough, later in the our first week there, we got a lot of snow. That first week was full of crackling fires, reading, games and walks. It was delightfully quiet and uneventful.

Before it snowed...

After it snowed...

It was a typical McCall winter wonderland.

Most people arrived on my birthday. I treated myself with some goodies from the local bakery, Stacey Cakes, and had a pretty low-key day. It was very nice. The best part was setting out to cut down our own Christmas tree in the woods! (Any good quality pictures were taken by Geoff's sister Brittany.)

On Christmas Eve we took up a good chunk of the overflow at church. 

We were staying in three homes (including Ingrid and Trent's place). The largest of the three was the gathering place for all activities. Christmas Eve afternoon we decorated the tree and acted out a nativity play organized by Liz. It was awesome. Those kids took their parts seriously and put on a beautiful play. Tennie played a script helper, and Adele and Ceci were narrators.

Getting ready...

  

I love Lucie, the angel below, with her snowsuit under her costume!

We had a big taco bar for dinner, after which Geoff gave "snowies" to all the boys...and Ceci.

There was front row, indoor seating to watch...

As it was getting closer to bedtime, Ian began to read The Night Before Christmas, allowing the kids to finish off each sentence.

We then broke out into a rowdy version of Here Comes Santa Claus, and then we heard a "Ho Ho Ho!"

The kids almost immediately recognized Poppop! He passed out a present for everyone there, one at a time.

  

We finished the night off with a little circle of singing Silent Night around the tree (a Davis family tradition) and a fondue dessert before going our own ways to get ready for Santa's visit.

On Christmas morning we opened presents and ate breakfast in our own houses.

In the early afternoon we gathered at the main house and exchanged family gifts (all adults pick a name, and all of the cousins pick a name). This opening seemed to go on for eternity, but was so much fun. Tennie doing a little dance with her yard of Snickers...

In between there were games.

We had a big ham dinner and Geoff, Robin and I made batch after batch of ableskiver. Mmm. I think we are 37 strong now.  That is a lot of ableskiver!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!