Life in a Northern Town: FAMILY LETTER 12.30.17

Dear Loved Ones,

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! Ours was nice and calm and snowy. We missed the ruckus of extended family, but we enjoyed staying home and watching the snow fall. I know that this New Year’s weekend will be just as busy as last Christmas weekend, so I thought I’d send out my letter on Saturday before I get too far behind.

The week leading up to Christmas was pretty fun and busy. This is the first year in a long time that I haven’t had Christmas 90% ready by TG and I now I remember why. I swallowed my anxiety and nausea in crowds and did some shopping and last minute baking and gift deliveries. I took Addie to finish up Christmas shopping on Tuesday night (12/19) and we made the mistake of going to World Market, which was a black hole of cash-sucking global Christmas delights, but we had so much fun. The kids got out of school on Wednesday December 20^th. I was busy Christmasing all day, but I made a pot of hot cocoa and chocolate chip cookies to welcome them home and kick off Christmas break. That night the youth had a caroling hayride followed by a movie at the Dennistons. Thursday morning I made breakfast and made the kids finish making 45 Christmas cards for the nursing home. That night the girls attended a super fun white elephant youth Christmas party at the Johnsons.’ Heidi’s gift was a Onesie ELF costume—it was HILARIOUS! Addie invited her friend Conor and he had a great time with all the crazy Mormon kids. On Friday is snowed like crazy all day. That night, Addie took Ammon on a special date to see a screening of “Polar Express” at the Shane Center. They were greeted by a real conductor who took their golden tickets and punched them all fancy, and they got a bell as well as cocoa and cookies. Ammon was just on cloud nine; he carried his ticket and bell around for several days. SO CUTE! The rest of us stayed home and watched “Christmas Vacation” to celebrate daddy not having to go back to the office for Four days. Saturday morning we all did chores, then Rich and I went to do our last minute elfing and wrap gifts as the office. It was super fun. That evening, we met up with the Johnsons for our second annual caroling and Christmas cards at the nursing home. It was especially sweet to see the elderly residents doting on the little kids, and to watch little Raef's face and he shook the jingle bells. Pure joy!

Sunday we just had sacrament meeting. I tweaked the program from 2014 and had 7 readers, 11 hymns, and 3 musical numbers to invite the Christmas spirit. Everyone seemed to enjoy it—almost as much as they loved heading home after 70 minutes, lol! I like that the bishopric listens to feedback and encourages a mostly-music meeting for Christmas. Music is much better at expressing the praise and rejoicing of Christmas, after all. We came home and had some sandwiches, started some fancy Greek food for our Christmas Eve dinner, then took naps. Every year we have international dinner for Christmas Eve—learn a little bit about another country and its holiday traditions and eat their foods. Heidi suggested Greece this year, so we had lighted ships in the form of paper boats (celebrating St. Nicholas, patron saint of sailors—important to a nation of islands and mariners and fishermen). For dinner we ate Lemon-Celery Pork fricassee, herb-feta potatoes gratin, baked squash with herbs, peas for the little boys, an orange-vanilla vasilopita new year’s cake, and baklava from Costco. After dinner, we read stories and talked about Jesus. I suggested we have a song and prayer and watch a movie, but the little boys seemed anxious to get to bed so Santa could come. So the Elf hurried and brought us our new pjs on the porch at 6:30 instead of 7:30. After a little more hanging out, the little boys were asleep by 8. The big kids watched a movie and went to bed. And then to our surprise, they slept in until 7am! Christmas morning was lovely—gifts, phone calls and facetiming, biscuits, gravy and tangerines for breakfast, then candy and cookies and crackers, cheese, and sausage all day. The big family gifts was a set of 6 laser tag guns, so there were battles all day long. I fell asleep around 10am watching “Miracle on 34^th Street.” It was a deep and restful nap, much needed! The whole day we just hung out around the house, playing games, resting, laughing, etc. We had a nice ham and funeral potato dinner around 6pm, then watched MoTab on PBS and did a Yoda puzzle with James and Rich. The kids crashed shortly thereafter.

Tuesday was Boxing Day, but Rich went in to the office to catch up on things and we hung out here at the house. Addie and I went to a matinee of Star Wars since we are the only ones who hadn’t seen it. It was pretty good. It was super cold when we came out, -3*! We grabbed some dinner from Cluck and came home to find that Rich had taken the boys to Bozeman to get something at Home Depot for his VW Beetle rebuilding project. They got their own dinner there and went to bed when they got home. Wednesday I took the kids to Bozeman to Museum of the Rockies and we saw a cool planetarium show called “Seasons of Light.” The graphics were kind of out dated, but learning about the winter sky as well as traditions throughout the ages to turn the darkest time of year into a season of light was really cool. Everything testifies of our Savior, the light of the world, whether we know it or not! We also ran to Costco and Target. I found a long quilted Granny coat for 80% off, just in time for the SNOWPOCALYPSE that blew in on Friday. On Thursday, Addie and her friends had their 3^rd annual Twilight movie marathon from noon til 11pm (food breaks). It was fun to have them, but not fun trying to finish laundry and keep the little boys out of their hair. We let Heidi go to Clyde Park to stay over with her friend, which we kind of regretted on Wednesday when we had to pick her up in a blizzard and 2 feet of uncleared snow. I drove the Lexus (Land Cruiser), so the snow was no problem and the landscape was so beautiful. In the afternoon, Addie’s friends Caden and Conor came over with Conor’s sister who’s home from college. They were so nice, playing with the little boys and watching Bob Ross by the fire (their for-real favorite activity). Friday evening I folded laundry and binged on “The Crown” season 2 on Netflix. It took me a long time because I kept fact-checking every episode, lol. They have reeeeeally taken some unnecessary liberties this season, imho, but it’s still such a feast for the eyes—cinematography and costuming and acting, all top notch. I finished the series this morning—we’ve had the laziest Saturday ever. Rich worked on the bug, I watched the rest of "The Crown," then “The Queen” with Helen Mirren, then played with the boys for a bit, then got Chinese take out for dinner after taking the girls to their “New Year’s Adam” Party (because Adam comes before Eve). I just watched “Rogue One” with a boy snuggling each side and one asleep on my legs…cozy. Fun movie. Now I’m heading to pick up the girls in a bit. It has been a very relaxing break for the most part, except for our stir-crazy little guys—it’s hard when it’s too cold (below about 15*) to play outside much, poor fellas.

We wish you all a lovely Sabbath and a fun New Year celebration. New Year, clean slate, lots of possibilities! We will be in Utah next weekend (1/4-drive home 1/7) for Brandon Casper’s wedding. Hope we get to see many of you—message me! We love and miss you all, especially as we play games and celebrate all the joys of this time of year! Keep in touch!

Love,

Jamie and Rich and Family