Happy Christmas!

Happy Birthday Jared!

Jared turned seven. We celebrated his birthday by going to the planetarium earlier in the week and then on his birthday we went to a placed called Jumping Jacks, where the kids jump on all these blow ups in a warehouse. We had Jared's favorite dinner, Hawaiian Haystacks and played the new wii game he got for his birthday. By far his favorite gift was a snuggie he got from his Grandma Barnum




Chaz's Winter Choir Concert

It was really good!













Christmas Plans

We are all ready for Christmas and are settled in for a Christmas Eve at home. Seeing lights, making candy, delivering our secret santas and playing the wii are all on the agenda. We also always read the Christmas story from the Bible as a family.

We hope you all have a very Happy Christmas. And hope you each have a quiet moment when you can remember the One who came to save us from death and sin, who gave up his throne next to God the Father and came down as a baby in a stable, who lived a perfect life and set the example for all of us. We thank him by remembering him and following him, not just at Christmas time but all year.

No More Braces

After almost three years of orthodontia, Kaitlin got her braces removed on Monday. She is so happy and like I said on Facebook, who wants a car or several big screen TV when they can give their child a beautiful smile.


Natalie Cole and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Chuck and I went with some friends to a christmas concert this weekend. The crowds were horrible, the traffic atrocious, but the concert was wonderful!

You can watch video highlights of the concert here.




Singing

Kaitlin sang in a recital on Saturday. She sang "Mary Did you Know" and "Once Upon a December" as well as a few group numbers. She did a really good job. That night, Kaitlin sang again at our church Christmas dinner/party. She did an even better job there.

The next night Chaz and I sang in our Stake (a combination of 9 churches) Choir in an evening performance. Ruth and Jared sang in a children's choir that night as well.

This coming Sunday, Chaz and I will be singing in our Church Christmas service. I found out on Sunday that I'll also be singing a solo with the choir that morning.

So lots of singing for the holidays going on around our house. Whether singing or listening, what better way to bring in the spirit of Christmas?

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

We decorated for Christmas this week. Some years I look forward to the annual tradition and other years I dread the holiday clutter. This is one of those clutter years, so when Ruth asked if she could set up the little tree (that usually goes in our front window) in the basement for a "kid's tree", I thought it was a great idea.





One of my favorite childhood Christmas memories is making and decorating sugar cookies. I don't have as many cookie cutters as my mother did, so we were making bunnies and houses and tractors along with the traditional stars and santas. We even have a big "it" cookie cutter we got as an eBay gift one year. Nothing says Christmas like eating a big "it" cookie.



Ruth's a Natural!



Ruth has been begging me for some time to give her guitar lessons. My steel string is a little too much for a ten year old to handle so I told her that she would have to start on the ukulele. For those that don't know, a ukulele is tuned the same as the highest 4 strings of the guitar. So the fingering of a uke is like playing the guitar - simplified. The video above is Ruth after only two lessons and two days of practice. Since the recording of this video I got her some Christmas music and she's learned a couple new chords. For awhile there we all thought we might suffer death via pearly shells.

A New Steam Vac

We've been needing our carpets cleaned for years now. But I am too cheep to call the professional cleaners. A friend recommended buying a steam vac, and then my sister over Thanksgiving also said how much she loves her steam vac. So when everything went on sale over Black Friday, we bought this hoover. It cost a little less than having the pros come out and clean our carpets one time.

After lots of hours of sweat labor, our high traffic areas upstairs are all cleaned. The results are better than any of the carpet cleaners I've ever rented, but probably not quite as good as a professional cleaning. My carpets were so filthy that they will need another cleaning to get them where I'd like them to be.

Thanksgiving

We had a fun Thanksgiving at my sister's house. My parents were there as well.









The girl in the pictures with Chaz and Kaitlin is my niece, Amy, who is a college sophmore.



The pie pictured is my world famous Apple. It tasted as good as it looked.


On Saturday Kaitlin, Chaz and I went to see the musical "Savior of the World" about Christ's birth. It was really good. Kaitlin and I especially enjoyed looking at the set.

Freedom From Orthodontia Pending

The two years of braces that turned into three is finally coming to an end for Kaitlin. We got word this week that she will be getting her braces off next month.

On the Ruth front, the excitement of having her own retainer has worn off; "It hurts," Ruth tell me when I ask her why she is not wearing it. The super good news is that our insurance approved our application to cover the appliance as a medical necessity. They payed 80%! The woman at the orthodontist said that she almost never sees an insurance do that. So we are counting our blessings.


Happiness is Going to First Grade

This was the name of Jared's 1st grade program this week. He was standing in the front in the middle and was just so stinking cute (I'm his mother, I can say that).





Kaitlin meets HIM!

If you know Kaitlin at all you already know the "him" I'm talking about. This weekend David Archuleta was signing CDs and Kaitlin's dad agreed to take her. She is so excited. Just ask her and she'll tell you all about it.

Winter Has Arrived

Old Man Winter finally arrived with a few inches of snow and lots of cold. On Saturday we bought a indoor cage for Summer, our mini rex bunny and she moved inside. At first she seemed pretty freaked out by all the commotion, but she seems to be adjusting. Summer is litter box trained so if we keep an eye on her she can hop around the house freely.

Reflections

Ruth won her school Reflections this week. She made a puppet show about an Ostrich who thought he was ugly. I served on the Reflections committee and we put on the open house on Wed.. I made a video compilation of many of the entries. It was a big project.

Bishop's Storehouse

On Friday morning I volunteered at the Bishop's Storehouse, which is a foodbank (and much more) run by our church. I was trained to use a box baler, pictured below. I worked with a mentally handicapped young man who would help me take the scrap boxes to the baler and help me load them. Then I would crush them. It was kind of fun and something I never expected to learn how to do.

I learned that you should never donate products to a food bank, but rather, you should give money. A foodbank can buy up to 30x the amount of food for your dollar than you can buying goods at the grocery store.

Care Center Concert

We had an adventure this week when students of Kaitlin's voice teacher held a concert at a care center. When her teacher booked the concert she thought it was an old-folks home, but when we got there we discovered that it was a center for severely mentally handicapped adults.

As we walked in the center a patient met us at the door. I'm sure he was just being friendly, but he followed us with one arm outstretched, dragging one leg and moaning. Yeah, think Dawn of the Dead, which I don't say to make fun, just that that is really what it felt like. When we stopped to check-in, he reached out at the children, patted them on the arms and moaned. Then he picked up a speaker we had carried in and took off down the hall with it.

The hallway was filled with other patients. The kids are freaked out. We had not prepared the children for this and they have never been exposed to anyone severely mentally disabled or with deformities (is there a PC way to say that?) before - let alone a whole center full of people.

As the patients were rolled in and walked into the room, Ruth had had more than she could handle. Though she was supposed to sing a duet with Kaitlin she couldn't, and she and Jared and Chuck left to wait in the car.

Kaitlin was very poised. Always the entertainer, she smiled and sang her best in spite of the very noisy audience that didn't seem to even be paying attention to her. I sang Ruth's part in the duet and when we sang I could see the eyes of the patients light up. Even if they didn't show it with their bodies, I think they enjoyed the music. When the evening was over Kaitlin was slightly traumatized, but I was proud of her.

The Parable of the Princesses

This week was a play that I've been involved in at my church called The Parable of the Princesses. It was written by a woman at our church, based on a childrens book by Jenny Phillips. It is an aligorical story about three princesses who are sent away to build their own castles and wait for their father's return. Along the way two of the princesses get distracted.




I was the crew chief, which means that I was in charge of moving all the props for the scene changes. I was also on the set committee, which means that I helped build the set. We didn't have access to a stage so we built it right in the gym.





This is a close up shot of one of the castles "under construction" which I made. I learned how to make these realistic castle walls so if any of you ever need to make one I'd be happy to teach you how.

I also sang the song for the final scene. Instead of bogging this blog page down, I loaded it up to YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Or at least for my mom's viewing pleasure, the rest of you can skip it if you want.