Tis’ the Season

Tis’ the season for holiday parties!  Thursday evening I enjoyed having dinner with the ladies from church at our Relief Society Christmas celebration.  The theme was “Christmas in the MTC” which sounds boring, but they pulled it off in a really fun way.  The speaker, our new home teacher, was awesome.  So engaging.  Justin had a couple work parties on Friday, one in which he won a $150 gift certificate to a swanky restaurant in Bellevue.  Since college Justin has been called “King of Free Stuff” he always seems to win things at conferences, etc…  over the years he’s won an iTouch, iPod Nano, a basket of hair products from a salon back in the day he didn’t cut his own hair, a $500 VISA card for participating in a survey for the software he uses at work, and so on.  Of course I’m glad he wins, but what I’d really like him to win are the contest for free cars, vacations, etc…call me greedy.

Friday night our new neighbor friends had a party with several couples from church.  It is always fun to get to know people more personally.  We had a great time and came home with some interesting white elephant gifts.   Justin made a comment later that night that it is going to take years for us to really get to know these people.  We love our new area, but we lived in Auburn for 10 years so we really knew our friends.  We’d seen them have children, then watched some children go off to college, get married, have kids of their own, we had history with them - we were there when their families went through difficult challenges and life changes – relationships like that take time.  Thankfully, we are close enough that we still have and enjoy those friendships (though I miss seeing them as often as I'd like), and we get to work on creating new friendships as well.

Saturday morning was our ward Christmas breakfast.  The girls haven’t been feeling well the past few days, but we thought they were well enough to go.  Carly invited a friend from school to go with us several weeks ago and they’ve both been very excited about it.  After breakfast Santa came to visit.  Abigail wasn’t feeling up to sitting on Santa’s lap and for some reason Carly opted out as well, though her friend still waited in line and spent some time with the big guy.

I was surprised that even without their older sisters leading the way, both Jason and Katie were excited to sit on Santa’s lap.  Apparently Jason asked Santa for a phone (say what?!?!)  Later I asked him why he wants a phone and he said, “So I can play games like on Daddy’s phone.”  

I’m not sure if Katie put in any specific requests.  I think her only motivation for sitting on Santa’s lap was to get the candy cane afterward.

Tis' the season for winter colds as well.  Carly came home early from school on Thursday with a fever and sore throat and stayed home sleeping most of Friday.  Abigail came home from school on Friday and spent all evening and most of Saturday conked out, missing both of her basketball games.  When I woke up Sunday morning I knew it wouldn’t be long before I was down and out as well.   I mustered through having friends over Sunday for dinner, only to spend all night miserable.  Katie woke up last night at 10pm, 2am, 5am with a burning fever and we’re keeping each other company in our sickened state today.  Four down, two to go?  I hope not.