01 December 2024

 December already!  Wow!  I was very fortunate and had the whole week off from work, which was glorious.  On Monday Phil was working and the big kids were at school so Jude and I had the whole day to run errands together.  We made a trip to Sam's Club across town and we stopped at McDonald's for lunch on the way home.  Jude was such a good boy.  He LOVED playing in the play area with the other kids.  In the evening I went back out and did some Mom only shopping.  It was so nice to spend some time without any kiddos hanging off of me.  I stopped at Boot Barn to spend a gift card, Hobby Lobby to check out the 90% off fall décor sale, and then over to Saver's to look for some shoes.  I was shocked that at 7:30 at night the parking lot was absolutely full.  The store was really hopping.  I did some shopping and found a few things and then discovered when I went to check out that everything is half off on Mondays.  Ahh, now I understand why the place was packed.

Felicity came home on Tuesday evening and we were all looking forward to having her home for the week.  I put her right back to work as my taxi driver when Helen needed a ride to her friend Morgan's house for a "Friends-giving" party.  When Helen got home she realized she had homework that was due the next day and got set up to shoot a video for her ASL class.  Her assignment was to film a mock cooking show in American Sign Language; she was so cute I just couldn't help catching a video of her making her video.  I'm really proud of Helen, her ASL has progressed and she's learned so much over the last two years.  I hope that Cienega will be able to offer ASL 3 next year; they don't currently have the class, but might add it if there is enough interest.  If you don't know, I sign and spent several years interpreting at church.  I miss getting to sign on a regular basis.  Helen's ASL teacher has invited me to come in and practice with the students, I just haven't had the time.  Enjoy this video of Helen teaching her audience how to make pumpkin bread.

We were up early on Wednesday as we had three families coming out to the ranch to harvest turkeys.  Phil set everything up and walked everyone through butchering their own Thanksgiving turkey.  We decided this year that we were ready to start over with our flock and we harvested our breeding pair as well as the two chicks we raised to adulthood.  I sure am glad that none of the families picked the old tom because while he was a huge bird, man was he tough!  

I had a hair salon appointment in the afternoon and while I was gone, Felicity gave each of the boys a hair cut.  Arlo's turned out great, Jude's was a little rough!  I think a hair cut on a wiggly toddler was a bit of a challenge for a novice hair stylist.  I'm really proud of Felicity, she's doing great in school and seems to be enjoying her classes and she's been taking clients at the beauty school.  She will be getting her certification/license at the end of the summer.  At my appointment I'm sure my stylist was shocked when I told her I was ready to actually cut my hair.  Right around the time I hit the hundred pounds lost mark, my hair started falling out...I upped my protein intake and made a more concerted effort to regularly take my vitamins and its growing back, but it is very thin compared to its normal state.  Long story short, I had her cut off the bottom six inches that were looking kinda scraggly.  I'm happy with how it came out.

When I got home on Wednesday I was full throttle Thanksgiving prep.  I cut all the veggies, put together the casserole dishes, and baked my pies.  My pies turned out so beautifully!  Felicity also finished her King of the Hill crocheted blanket.  Oh my goodness, its so cute!  She did such a great job.  I haven't done a "graph-gan" like that before, but now I kinda want to find a project so I can learn the technique.

Jude fell asleep on the couch before I got the pies out of the oven.  He cracks me up, he fell asleep basically standing on one foot, what a character! 

Our Thanksgiving was wonderful.  I had far fewer people this year, it was just our family and my mom and dad.  So I had way too much food, but that was ok.  The girls helped me in the kitchen and there may have been a couple of impromptu Broadway performances around the kitchen island.  Everything (except the turkey) was delicious!  The dogs got the tough 'ol turkey, which I guess is fitting since they hated each other in life.  Seriously though, that bird was inedible...think the turkey scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

After cleaning up from dinner we loaded up the truck and headed to Show Low in the White Mountains where we had reservations at the Best Western. Our drive up was uneventful and we got a good night's sleep before getting up and heading in the Apache-Sitgreaves Forrest to cut our Christmas tree!  This has become a family favorite tradition.  

The one unforeseen opps in our trip was such a face-palm moment for me.  When I packed Jude's bag to leave on Thursday I didn't pack his shoes because he was obviously going to put them on to get in the truck.  But then, an hour or so later, right before we left, I had the brilliant idea that he wear his PJs for the ride up so that he could go straight to bed when we got to Show Low.  Naturally he picked feety-jammies and thus didn't need shoes.  So on Friday morning when we got up to drive into the forest we realized that Jude didn't have shoes.  Dang it!  We took a trip to Cal Ranch and lucky for us they were having their black Friday sale and we picked up some new boots for Jude and Dad got a new pair for good measure.

We drove into the forest in the same area we used last year and hiked up the side of the hill.  I saw my tree almost immediately.  We poked around for awhile longer and decided on another of couple of trees.  We got one for ourselves, one for my ministering family, and an extra.  Phil is always the hero with saw.  Then the un-fun part, carrying them the few hundred yards back down the hill to the truck.  They're pokey and one of them was really heavy.  We got them all loaded up and then went into Greer to have lunch at the Rendezvous which was delicious!  I had the Sassy Swine, I'd highly suggest it if you're ever in Greer (I should mention that Phil said his burger was ok and the bill was outrageous; I'm just remembering that tasty BBQ sandwich when giving my review of lunch).  Our drive home was fun with a mixture of Christmas music and musicals (depending on if Mom was in charge of the radio or the sisters).  We stopped in Mammoth (I think) and I let the kids each pick $5 in snacks to tide them over for the rest of the trip home...that was a huge hit.  Heaven love my eternally patient husband. 

My Saturday was really busy.  I had an appointment in the morning and then I drove to Benson to meet my friend Sume for lunch to celebrate her up coming birthday.  We had such a lovely time!  I wish we had taken a picture.  When I got home I got the family ready and did a wardrobe check and then we met the very talented Chantell of Chantell Nicole Photography at Gates Pass to update our family photos.  I also had her do a Christmas photo for us to use in our cards this year.  She got that back to me super fast and I'm in love, I can't wait to see the rest when they're ready!  The kids were rock stars, and we were done pretty quickly. 

When we got back home we changed and then Phil, Felicity, Helen, and I went to the movies to see Wicked.  The girls were dying to see it, in fact I'm pretty sure Felicity asked to go every night since she got home.  We enjoyed the movie, it was so well done, we all liked it and are excited to see part 2 when it comes out.  I'm also surprised I only had to lean forward and shush Felicity once when I caught her audibly humming.

We mostly enjoyed church on Sunday.  Its always hit or miss as to whether or not Jude is going to terrorize us...this week was a terrorize week.  I taught Gospel Doctrine second hour and I think that went fairly well.  With about ten minutes left in my lesson I started to feel really warm and uncomfortable.  I made it through my lesson, but right after church I was desperate to get home as I was feeling nauseated.  I got home and had the most excruciating abdominal pain on top of the nausea.  I pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon in bed.  I did get up in time to organize the kids in decorating our Christmas tree before Felicity had to head back to school.  I still don't know what was up with my stomach, I'm praying I feel better tomorrow.