Life in a Northern Town

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

Addie and her pal Lincoln in matching TRex sweaters
(he gave that to her for Christmas)

A photo and poem to celebrate the winter solstice
"It only gets brighter from here!"

Snow downtown

12/20 making Christmas cards for the nursing home

All the crazy kids at the Johnsons' Christmas Party 12/21

Conor gave Addie this fluffy fox for Christmas before they went to the party.
Conor is the fella she goes out with the most and we like him.

12/22-Addie and Ammon on their date

12/23!

SO MUCH SNOW on 12/22

Greek Christmas Eve dinner

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Christmas Jammies!

Christmas Weirdos

Santa brought Ammon some janitorial tools!
"My CWEANING STUFF"

James will SHOOT HIS EYE OUT with his new pellet gun

Addie and her new ukulele (it came with lessons!)

James building the marble run Ammon got from Niles

LASER TAG! ROCK RHINO tour shirts for the whole family!
(Niles' imaginary rock band)

Drum Pad-- with headphones! Charcoal masks!

Awesome TShirt from Nana

Thumbs up from mommy on Christmas night

Snacks at MOR before the star show 12/27

James, Addie, and Ammon in the planetarium

Niles and Heidi in the planetarium

The end of our street-- BEFORE the snowpocalypse on Thursday

Dear Loved Ones,

What a wild week of Christmas concerts and firesides and music and food! I started recapping the week in my head and it really feels like two weeks—CRAZY, but super fun.

Monday everybody went to school and that evening for Family Night we attended Addie’s choir concert at the high school. It was just beautiful. She and her friends look so lovely in their choir dresses. On Tuesday the 12^th we attended James’ 6^th grade band concert, his first concert on the French Horn. It was really good—it’s kind of amazing how much they have improved since 5^th grade! Wednesday was St. Lucia Day, so in the morning I baked Lucy buns and ginger snaps. In the afternoon I picked up Ammon from school and we went out to the ranch and started a fire and got the house ready to host a special Young Women’s Christmas fireside that night. I ran back home to serve dinner then up to the church for a choir practice at 6pm, then drove the girls out to the ranch for the fireside. We had some sleet during the day, so the roads were freezing into sheets of ice---so scary! But the fireside was lovely—guest speakers talking about how to become closer to Christ, reflect His light, and draw others closer to Him, with the Christmas Star serving as the symbol and theme. After the talks and songs, the girls went down to the pavilion in a few inches of snow, and they each lit and released a pretty white lantern (like on “Tangled”). They floated above us and flew south before they went out, and the girls sang “Silent Night.” I was up on the deck but I could hear them and it was just the sweetest thing. We got home late, but it was a lovely night. Thursday we had TWO concerts—one in the afternoon with Niles’ first grade class, and one in the evening with Heidi’s 8^th grade choir. Heidi did a great job singing alto, and she really loved the song, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” She said she cried a few times practicing it because she “just loves Jesus so much, especially at Christmas time.” So cute. Friday was a crazy busy day with a chiropractic appointment first thing, then visiting teaching with Addie. She had the day off of school, but the school was open for tutoring and make up work and she needed help in Geometry, so I had to rush her back to the school because our appointments went over, and then I missed my visiting teachers coming. I caught them as they were leaving and we exchanged hugs and they left me some sweet gifts—Davina always makes the cutest, craftiest things. She and Erin are great VTs. We had a quiet evening at home while the boys saw Star Wars with Dad. Saturday we did a bunch of chores and elfing—finishing gifts, wrapping, making neighbor gifts and cards for the nursing home, and preparing for the ward Christmas Dinner, which was pretty crazy. The Primary did a little Nativity, which was a bit of a fiasco, but really sweet, and we watched our annual ward history slideshow over dessert. The YW sang “Bring A Torch, Jeanette, Isabella” and Heidi and Sidney sang, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” in between dinner and the nativity and they did a nice job. We are grateful to be done with that!

Church today (Sunday) was very sweet. We got like 2 feet of snow on Saturday, so it was beautiful today when the sun came out. We had terrific high council speakers, including Finn Johnston recently returned from the Germany Alpine Mission. We sang beautiful Christmas hymns and had good lessons on the Family Proclamation and President Hinckley’s teachings on the temple. It was kind of amazing to look back on all the things that man accomplished. I’m sure he’s still gettin’ stuff done on the other side of the veil, as busy and efficient as ever. This afternoon we had a quick lunch and took naps, and had the Jones family over for soup and candy train making. Kara Saari was here hanging with Heidi and Lexi Speas just got home from college today, so she came and hung out with Eden at our house, too. I frickin love these kids! It was a delightfully chill evening-- so cozy and fun to be together. I am really looking forward to the next two weeks—more of the same! We hope all is well with all of you and you are enjoying some cozy Christmas traditions of your own. We love and miss you all so much, especially as we celebrate and do these fun things together.

All our love and holiday cheer—

Jamie and Rich and Family