Tis the Season

Life has been busy around here.  I keep find myself saying, “I just need to get through _______________... (fill in the blank, examples below)     

•       Coordinating volunteers and donations for a huge community giving tree project (which falls under my responsibilities as the new Relief Society community humanitarian specialist)

•       Hosting a large luncheon to say goodbye to a friend who is moving away

•       Deciding whether to buy a car

•       Days jam-packed with birthday parties, errands, concerts, basketball, etc...

…and then I'll be able to think about ______________” (fill in the blank, examples below)

•       Sending out the rest of our Christmas cards

•       Figuring out my new lens

•       Buying Christmas presents

•       Getting ready for our trip to Utah

•       Making invitations for Abigail birthday so she can hand them out before Christmas break

•       Ordering new family pictures

There's so much going on I feel like I can only focus on the next big task or event coming up otherwise it's too overwhelming.   

In an attempt to not fall too behind on the blog I’ll post a few pictures taken recently. 

The first weekend of December our stake holds a huge nativity event at our stake center (located behind the temple).  Like last year Justin pulled an all night security detail on Friday night – the guys hung out in the high council room playing xbox and eating loads of food.  We attended the event that Sunday after church.  Our first stop was the picture room.

We ordered personalized Christmas decorations for the kids last month and we’re excited when they finally arrived.  They came individually wrapped in pretty red boxes, but we didn’t know whos box was whos so we made a little game out of it.  Abigail was pretty stoked to open her own and was happy to help Drew take a turn opening a box.

We sold the TV we won from Toyota on Craig's list last week for $850, our full listing price.   I'd posted it on our neighborhood website for only $800.  Needless to say we were pretty happy about the extra $50.  The night before it sold though I had just relented and told Justin I would let him hang it above our mantle, replacing our 46" TV.  So glad it didn't come to that.

Our new 65" TV arrived last week.  We set it up in the bonus room and to be honest, instead of being overwhelmed with its size, my first thought was that we could have actually gone bigger.  It's a great fit though and it looks awesome. We'll be hanging out in the bonus room a lot more now.  As we were getting ready to open the box it was in I was reminded of this picture of Jason we took when we bought our 46” TV.

Our new one is just a tad bit bigger.

This past Saturday was our ward Christmas breakfast.  Only Katie and Drew were feeling up for sitting on Santa's lap.  

Though I was able to get all the kids to stand in for a group shot.  

If it looks like we just rolled out of bed it’s because we did.  The breakfast started at 8am and we live 20 minutes from the church.  We didn’t stress about getting there on time, but it was still an early morning for us.  Switching to 9am church in January is going to be painful.  Really, really painful.

Basketball season is underway.  Abigail practices three days a week and has already played two games.  The whole family went to her game on Saturday night and she didn't disappoint.  She scored 10 of the twenty-something points for her team.  While we were at church on Sunday her team played their third game of the season (their first loss). 

Abigail was asked to play the prelude music at church on Sunday.  I think it was one of the noisiest pre-sacrament meetings cause from our pew in the back I could hardly hear her.  From what I heard from others though she did great.  

The kids are excited for their last few days of school.  Today Abigail had a field trip to a skating rink in Bellevue then at art club this afternoon she made gingerbread houses.  Carly is baking cookies tomorrow and wrapping gifts for a family in need that her class adopted – both Jason and Carly have movie days on Friday.  Doesn’t sound like they’ll be much going on educationally, but they’ll be good and ready for a fun Christmas break.