Letter - Christmas Spectacular, Disneyland, Deacon's Quorum Secretary

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Wow today was a busy day!!!  I am so glad to have it over with.  It was our ward choir Christmas program and I accompanied a couple of difficult songs that I got at the last minute so I was pretty worried about performing them.  They went well enough.  Besides those numbers that worried me, I had several other commitments today so it’s been an all-around busy day.  I’m relieved to be relaxing at home in my pajamas as I type this.

Tuesday, Dec. 9^th Marlee had her kindergarten Christmas concert.  It was PERFECT.  It lasted less than 20 minutes.  After the concert was over, I went to mutual.  The YM in our ward made and served the YW dinner since the YW won our ward’s indexing competition.  The YM and their leaders did such a great job.  The young men all dressed up in nice clothes, no jeans or shorts and had to have collared shirts.  They were very polite and genuinely happy to serve us. 

Wednesday Dec. 10^th Spencer had a basketball game against a Salt River Indian community charter school team.  Spencer’s team won.  That evening I practiced a song for our ward’s RS Christmas dinner.  We sang an old song called Behold Thy Handmaiden.  I had never heard it before.  It was beautiful.

Thursday, Dec. 11^th I watched my friend’s boys while she volunteered at the school.  Spencer had a basketball game against a really good Christian charter school.  The game started late and my girls were throwing major fits so I left after the first quarter.  I also had to get back for our RS dinner so I could sing.  Spencer’s team ended up getting slaughtered. 

Chad took off work on Friday, Dec. 12^th so we could go up to Snowflake to be a part of the Jake Flake Family act in the Snowflake Christmas Spectacular.  My mom was asked to have our family perform the finale of the whole show.  When I found out about this I was not excited at all to be a part of it.  I did it out of duty … but it ended up being a lot of fun!!  My kids really had a lot of fun performing too.  The other acts were comical and my kids keep retelling the funny parts.  For our performance my nephew Ray sang a George Strait song call “Christmas Cookies” while the rest of the family did a line dance.  Then we did a parody of the song “Merry Christmas from the Family” and we had a funny slide show with the new words and some of our family pictures.  I had never attended a Snowflake Spectacular before because they started the tradition after I moved away from home.  I hope Penny and Dean and Crystal can get our performance on YouTube soon so I can see how we did.  When they do I’ll post access to the video.  We had performances on Friday and Saturday nights.  We got a lot of nice complements on our performance.  We didn’t do a whole lot other than the performances while in Snowflake.  We had fun visiting and playing with our family up there.  Kari and Alden and their children live with my Mom right now so it was fun to visit with them and their cute kids. 

Tilly and Raya waiting for the Spectacular to start.

Sunday we drove home after attending Travis and Teresa’s ward at 9:00am.  We got home around 4 pm then Karalee and I packed up again so we could leave at 6pm to catch a flight with Brenda, Jennie and Malia to California for Karalee’s and Malia’s special 8 year old Disneyland trip with their Grammy (Brenda).  It is such a fun tradition.  I am so thankful for Brenda for doing that for my children.  This year Jennie and I decided to get in on the fun and go too.  We stayed at my sister Kayla’s home.  Thank you again Kayla for letting us stay there.  We didn’t spend very much time there though because we got in late and then woke up to make it to the park when they opened at 8:00am.  We had a blast at Disneyland and the lines weren’t long.  We packed in a lot that day.  We never had to wait longer than 30 minutes.  However, we did skip the new Cars Land ride because it had an hour and a half wait.  Karalee’s favorite ride was Soarin’ over California.  It was my favorite too.  You can see pictures of our trip HERE.  I really enjoyed spending time with Jennie, Brenda, Malia and Karalee.  I sure love them!!  We flew back into Phoenix around 11pm Monday night and didn’t get home until midnight.  I was thankful Chad waited up for us.  I missed him and wished he could have been there with us.  I’ve been trying to recover from that busy weekend all week this week, but it was all worth it!

Tuesday Dec. 16^th I let Karalee sleep in and go to school late since we were up so late but I had to wake up for a doctor’s appointment.  I had to go get a physical in order to get lower health insurance premiums next year.  My blood work was all normal except I have slightly elevated cholesterol.  My total was 204; normal cholesterol is under 200 so I’m not too concerned about those 4 points.  I can do better at eating less junk food though that’s for sure.  For mutual that evening we took the laurels to go see the Mesa temple lights. 

Wednesday I don’t remember much except going to the church to practice the organ.  I was asked accompany the choir on the organ for part of one of their songs.  It was pretty hard because I am not really an organist.  I can play the hymns fine now since I only have to copy the bass line with my feet, but this song had a separate bass and pedal part.  I had to have the choir pianist play a big section of the pedal line on the piano because I couldn’t do it.  It ended up sounding awesome though.

Thursday Spencer had a basketball against ALA.  They got killed.  ALA is coached by Chad’s cousin Brennan and he does a fantastic job coaching.  I wish Spencer’s school coach was that good!  That evening I practiced with Brother Del Bianco because I was asked to accompany his solo in our Christmas program too.

Friday I got to go help with Marlee’s class party.  While I went to help, Tilly went to play at my friend Riki’s home since her daughter Emma is Tilly age.  They got along well so I plan to start inviting Emma over to our home to play with Tilly while the other kids are all school.  Friday evening was our ward Christmas party.  The stake center was decorated beautifully!!  It was fun to visit and spend time with our ward family. 

Karalee's been learning to fix her own hair!

Both girls wanted to sit on Spencer's lap during the program at the ward party.  He's a great brother.

Yesterday we had a special choir practice at 8am then we attended the baptism of Karalee’s good friend Sammy Washburn.  That evening Chad and I attended the temple with Chad’s friend Eddie.  Chad met Eddie at Saturday morning basketball.  Eddie was baptized a little over a year ago and went through the temple for the first time Saturday.  It was neat to be there with him.  After that we attended Bob and Niki Hick’s, our neighbors, annual Christmas party.  As always it was a great time.  I just love this time of year because people make the effort to get together and do nice things for each other, I know that it is the spirit of Christ that touches people’s hearts and helps them reach out and show love.

Karalee and Sammy

Bryant, Karalee and Marlee wanted to sleep by the Christmas tree last night.  So cute.

Today Spencer was called as the Deacon’s quorum secretary.  He was given a beautiful blessing when he was set apart.  Among some of the nice things that were said, was that he was foreordained to this calling in the pre-existence and that he is compassionate and that will help him in his calling.  Spencer does have such a tender, compassionate heart.  He is serving in the presidency with several of his buddies.  In my mind’s eye I can picture them in the pre-existence together while they were getting foreordained to serve in this presidency together. 

Spencer's b-day at Grammy Sanders

All the little cousins love Spencer.  He's a good sport.

Bryant loves Rummy Cube.  This is Chad and Bryant's tie breaker game.  Bryant beat me twice this afternoon.  Then this evening he beat Chad, Spencer and me.  Then Chad beat us and so they had to have a play off.  Chad ended up winning.  We don't take it easy on the kids in our house.  We play to win.  (I think its kind of funny that Chad looks like Shawn Spencer from the TV show Psych in this picture.)   

My quote for today is from Pres. Kimball.  “The more we serve our fellow men in appropriate ways, the more substance there is to our souls.”  Such a beautiful promise!!

Love,

Mindy