December 20, 2015
It’s been a good week. Monday I didn’t have a lot going on other
than a chiropractor appointment, grocery shopping and picking up the kids from
school. I taught Spencer, Karalee and
Marlee piano lessons that evening.
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| I looked down at Spencer's hands while I was teaching him a lesson and realized he has man hands! It is crazy that he is so big now. |
Tuesday Tilly’s friends Emma and Jane came over to
play. Since LBC doesn’t meet regularly
anymore we’ve set up a weekly playdate on Tuesdays with Emma and Jane. Spencer got his braces off just before noon
that day. His smile looks so nice. That afternoon Tilly and I went to visit
Puring in the hospital. Monday she
called me to let me know she was in the hospital because she wasn’t breathing
well. We had a nice visit with her. Bryant went on a nature walk with the 11 year
old scouts at the Riparian preserve that evening. Karalee had activity days and got to do a $1 white
elephant gift exchange. For mutual Spencer
and I and all the YM and YW went to the Mesa temple Christmas lights. That evening mine and Chad’s group of friends
invited Spencer and his friend Danner to play volleyball with. Danner’s parents play too. Spencer and Danner played well. They are athletic and are picking up the game
quickly. Chad isn’t yet able to play
with us while he recovers from surgery.
Hopefully he’ll be able to play again soon. Chad’s recovery is going well though. He no longer needs crutches at all and he is
strengthening his leg so that his limp is less noticeable. He rides our stationary bike every night and
he also does all his physical therapy exercises.
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| Last day of braces!! |
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| Tilly couldn't quite make it all the way onto the chair before she fell asleep! |
Wednesday evening Chad and I had his Christmas
work party. I didn’t eat much lunch and
only had a snack that afternoon so I was looking forward to a nice dinner. We ate at a fancy Italian restaurant in
Scottsdale. I was pretty hungry and
decided to order Ravioli. When the
served them there were only 5 ravioli.
The dish cost $26, so each piece of Ravioli cost over $5! I was still hungry when I got home. However, it was still a nice evening visiting
with Chad’s boss and coworkers. His boss
is really a kind man. Probably the most
genuine of all the bosses Chad has had thus far.
Thursday Tilly, Spencer and I went to lunch. Spencer got to come because he had a ½ day schedule
due to finals. After lunch we went to
visit Puring in the hospital again.
(Puring is my former neighbor who took the missionary lessons in our
home and was baptized.) Puring’s
daughter Nanita told me on Wednesday that Puring was pretty confused but when I
saw her I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
Puring didn’t recognize us at all.
We had just had a nice visit on Tuesday, but on Thursday she didn’t even
know who we were. A couple other people
from our ward went to visit her as well and she didn’t recognize them
either. She wasn’t even recognizing her
daughter! It was so sad. I thought she was going to die. However she has since recovered and it’s been
reported that she recognizes everyone now.
I’ll have to pay her a visit tomorrow.
I wonder if she maybe suffered a stroke.
They did a MRI and hopefully that will show what happened. Thursday afternoon Bryant had a wax museum
project at school and he had to dress up like Gandhi. Bryant played Christmas carols after school
with his band while parents picked up their kids. Spencer had a basketball game Thursday
afternoon and sadly lost.
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| Tilly and I had fun exercizing on Thursday morning. She rides her bike while I run/walk. We didn't have anything going on that morning so we were able to stop and play at the park for awhile and then stop to play in the leaves. |
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| Bryant dressed as Gandhi |
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| Playing Christmas carols after school while parents picked up their children. |
Friday the kids were excited about their Christmas
parties at school and that they only had to go to school until noon. When the kids got home we packed up our stuff
and waited for Chad to get off work a little early so we could leave to Rocky Point
to help deliver the toys that our ward raised for the needy children there. We collected over 1800 toys!! Not all of those were from our ward; we
enlisted help from the stake and from our family and friends. We left around 3:50pm and got to Rocky point
around 8:15pm stopping in Gila Bend to grab a quick bite to eat and for one
other quick bathroom break right before we crossed the border.
Saturday morning Chad and the boys left to the church
at 7:00 to help set up. I opted to keep
my little girls at the hotel along with our friend’s little girls so they
wouldn’t be in the way and because it was going to be a long day for them to
hand out toys for several hours. The
event was supposed to start at 9:00, so the girls and I got there about 8:30
after packing up all our stuff and checking out of the hotel. We got there just in time to rehearse our
Nativity
program. I was asked to be in charge
of putting together a Nativity program before we handed out toys. I found a script online which Chad and I shortened
and then we found all the correct verses in the Spanish Bible and then Chad
translated the closing paragraph into Spanish.
Chad was the narrator and all the kids in the group who wanted to
participate were the actors. It went
well. After we acted out the nativity
for the families we had a solid line of children for over 2 hours coming to
pick out a gift. It was a wonderful experience.
We left Rocky Point a little after 1:00pm yesterday afternoon and got
home around 5:45pm stopping only in Ajo for a late lunch. It was a very quick trip, but everything went
smoothly and it was a neat experience to be a part of that effort. It's good to be back at home now though.
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| Beautiful sunrise from our hotel on the beach |
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| All the little girls watching a movie in our room while everyone else got things set up. |
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| The Nativity cast members |
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| My darling Karalee angel |
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| Spencer and the other boys playing soccer and basketball with the Mexican kids. |
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| Tilly was a great little helper. |
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| The girls had fun playing with the empty boxes as things were winding down. |
After we got home yesterday evening Chad asked me
if I wanted to go on a bike ride with him.
Of course I said yes. We rode to
the tunnel that goes under Germann rode and then came back a different
route. It was a nice cool, but not cold,
evening for a bike ride. After the bike
ride the older kid’s and I went to our neighbor’s annual Christmas party and
had a nice time visiting with our neighbors.
Chad stayed home with Tilly as she has the croup and had a light fever
yesterday. We brought them each a plate
of food though. After two days of
traveling, we didn’t stay long at the party because we wanted to go to bed
early.
Today was our ward Christmas program. Chad, Spencer and I sang in the ward choir
and Bryant sang with a group of primary children on one number. For my laurel lesson we watched
Mr. Krueger’s Christmas, ate chocolates
and I gave the girls a little Christmas gift.
We’ve had a nice relaxing evening together as a family. We ate BBQ lasagna for dinner, played
Guesstures and now the kids are making a fort to sleep in while they watch Mr. Krueger’s
Christmas. I’m getting really excited
for Christmas. I’m happy the kids are
out of school for the next two weeks. We’ll
have to do some fun Christmas activities this week.
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| The kids' fort |
My quote today is from Elder Packer,
“When
we say temple I would list what in
essence are Latter-day Saint synonyms for the word: marriage, family, children,
happiness, joy, eternal life, resurrection, redemption, exaltation,
inspiration, revelation. All of these
words in their own way are synonyms for the word temple. The word temple to the Latter-day Saint suggests
a reverence for life. It embraces a
concern for the young and the very old in the family. The world now fosters another view of these
family connections. There is a growing
tendency to establish centers for the care of the very young and of the very
old. This responsibility is being shifted
outside the home and family. There may
be times when institutional help is needed for the care of the infirm. But we are becoming too free nowadays to
shift from the family the privilege (I call it a privilege rather than a
burden) of caring for family members. It
is wrong. We should not disconnect the
generations in this way. We should not
unlink ourselves from our generations” (The Holy Temple, Boyd K. Packer,
p. 292).
I love that raising my children at home is linking
myself to their generation. I’m so glad
I get to stay at home so I can learn about my children, learn what they love,
know when they’re sad, be there for them when they learn new things, etc. It is a blessing. I’ve almost finished reading The Holy Temple
and I have loved it and learned a lot. I
appreciate Pres. Packer and his wisdom.
Love,
Mindy
P.S. Here are videos of the two particular songs gave me so much stress at the BFHS concert that I accompanied last week. They challenged me. I was glad that I didn't botch up the choirs' performances. My Spencer has a duet starting around 1.36.00 in Let it Snow. He did awesome... I'm a biased, proud momma though.
P.P.S. Here are pictures from Dec. 7-13th.
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| Silly Tilly |
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| Marlee was sick Tues. Dec. 8th and couldn't keep anything down. |
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| She's still cute even when she's sick! |
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| Spencer playing in a basketball tournament Friday, Dec. 11th. |
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| Chad giving Spencer some pointers. |
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| Making snowflakes to hang up in our home. |
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| Tilly in the petting zoo at our neighborhood HOA shin dig. |
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| The girls having fun! |
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