Thanksgiving Leftovers

I finally plugged my phone into the computer and downloaded a whole bunch of photos and realized that I forgot to blog about the rest of the Thanksgiving Weekend we had with Peter and Sheri! I know it was a long time ago, but who cares. I just wanted to share a story about our nutty day.

So the day after Thanksgiving - Black Friday - usually a pretty crazy day, no?  Yes!  And what did we do?  Left the house and went down town! Like a bunch of morons!  We mostly went because my sweet little niece Siena (you know...the one who already wasn't feeling well as evidenced by her ralphing at dinner?) had her heart absolutely set on visiting the Church History Museum down town where there is a darling kids' area to play in.  We, as seems to be our pattern, tried to make a day of it.

We started by enjoying a trax train ride from the UofU stadium to down town.  The kids thought that was pretty cool.  That took us pretty near the City Creek mall and these big windows at Macy's where there have been built some giant candy displays.  We thought the kids might enjoy that so we started off.  We realized how close we were to both lunch time and the food court so it seemed logical to grab a little food first.  Then Sheri pointed out that we would be walking right by the Disney store on our way and shouldn't we just stop in for a second?  It was then that I realized her ploy!  I think she must have been scheming all day long, figuring out how to get me to a mall and into a kids store on Black Friday.  Tricky girl.  Here's her face when I called her on it:

Who ME?

I am ashamed...

Just kidding.  Sort of.  She swears it was just coincidence but I'll never know the real truth.  ;)  After a few extremely crowded minutes at the Disney Store we made it to the food court for lunch and the play area.  I love watching Gregor with his baby niece.  It's pretty cute watching him take care of her.

We finally made it to the windows:

Still looking slightly green....

All Candy!!

Then we walked through Temple Square, out the west gates toward the museum where we saw this:

It was closed.  For another YEAR.  Poor Siena promptly dissolved into a giant tear-puddle.  Poor thing!  That was all she could handle.  Luckily Peter had joined us in his car and so he just picked her up, walked to his car and drove her straight home.  She was sound asleep by the time the rest of us arrived there after another long walk and a train ride where my kids attempted some train surfing:

Another memorable outing.  We got home and let kids be tired and lazy and exhausted until dark fell and then we headed up to see the members-only preview night for the Zoo Lights.  What a great year to go!  It was SO WARM!  I'm used to Zoo Lights being kind of miserable with cold kids who get colder when they take off their gloves to eat a treat and then get sticky and even colder.  Not this year!  They barely even needed coats.  Of course, now that it's almost Christmas Eve I'm lamenting the warm December with not a dot of snow and t-shirt temps, but that's another story.

We went back the next day to actually see some animals....and enjoyed a very quiet afternoon at the zoo.  We had the whole train to just ourselves!

Okay, I feel better.  Sorry I had to revert back to November for a minute, we're back now.

A Downtown Family Date

I'm so lucky to have The Becky. This goes without saying, really, and I'm lucky to have her for so very many reasons. But at Christmas time, one of the reasons I'm extra EXTRA lucky is that she always seems to be able to slip me a few precious and coveted tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square Christmas Concert. It is always a wonderful evening out. This year I was pretty darn excited to get a chance to go. Who was the special guest, you may ask? Well, after the show two years ago with Tom Brokaw telling the most touching story ever about the Candy Bomber from World War II, I wasn't sure I'd ever love another show as much. Then I heard that this year's guests would be Santino Fontana (the voice of Hans from Frozen) and the Sesame Street Muppets. The Muppets! As in Big Bird, Ernie and Bert, Cookie Monster, Grover, Elmo....the Sesame Street Muppets! Having grown up as a dedicated Sesame Street watcher the thought of seeing a few of those characters live tickled me as much as seeing any star out there. Maybe I'd be more excited to see the Avengers, but I'm not sure. I don't think they'll be singing with the choir any time soon anyway.

It's usually the case that only kids age 8 and older are permitted into the concert so I was pretty sad and felt awfully guilty about having to find a babysitter for little Skippidy. I hated the thought of leaving her out. And actually, Becky told me she might only be able to get me one or two tickets so then we'd have to leave all three kids home. But I was grateful for any tickets at all. Becky called me the week of the concert to let me know what tickets she was able to get. She excitedly told me she was able to get us five tickets. I asked her if she thought we might be able to sneak Skippidy in and pass her off as a very small 8 year old.... chances seemed pretty slim, not to mention not very honest. She then let me know that this year because the special guests were from Sesame Street we'd be allowed to bring kids ages 5 and up. My heart soared. I was so excited thinking about taking our whole family to the concert and it was indeed wonderful.

We decided to make an evening of it. Apparently so did every other concert attender, but that was ok. We tried to get downtown pretty early, and luckily Troy found us some good parking deep in the bowels of the City Creek Shopping Center that other drivers had not discovered yet. We decided to eat dinner in the City Creek food court....along with about 30,000 other people. It was pretty packed. Troy and Bitty found us a table while Gregor (this is Stomper's new online name as per his request - I'll write about where that came from later) and Skippidy and I bought a large amount of Chinese shrimp and noodles.

After our dinner we just walked from City Creek over to Temple Square so we could officially See the Lights at Temple Square. They are so beautiful but due to the crowds we don't always come down and see them. It was a nice walk and we got to the conference center in plenty of time to get seats and settle in for an absolutely delightful evening.

The first muppet to appear on stage was Big Bird. I'm not going to lie. I was totally excited to see him  - way more than my kids were. I loved Sesame Street, and seeing that wonderful bird with billows of yellow feathers floating along as he walked on those massive orange legs was kind of emotional for me. I got a little teary. Let's be honest. I get teary for just about anything. And now we can add this to the list. Big Bird makes me cry.

Thank you thank you The Becky. We had so much fun.

Fearless Hunters

Another year, another trek to the great white north to hunt the mighty Christmas tree.  I guess the north wasn't exactly white.  We're having a pretty green Christmas this year so far (ever the hopeful optimist am I) but we did manage to find some snow in the high hills above Bear Lake.

We so love our annual tradition with the dear Burnetts.  This was our sixth year going - it would have been our seventh if I hadn't been too wimpy to go the year Skippidy was an infant.  Every year we've been to the cabin owned by Mary's brother and his friend, but that cabin is no longer under this brother's ownership - he sold his portion and bought a very large piece of property nearby.  He has plans for a lodge-type building up in the hills, but until that's done, there is still a place for friends and family to stay - a tiny little cabin just at the entrance to the property, aptly named The Gatehouse.  When I say tiny, I do mean tiny, but it is truly the most darling snug little cabin around.  There's a bedroom, a bathroom, a little kitchen and living room which is completely filled with one giant couch. There's also a loft area, and thanks to that, there's just enough room for two families of five who really like each other to enjoy a weekend together in the hills.  

We had a lovely weekend together.  We cooked meals which involved lots of improvising because this cabin didn't have quite the stock that the old one did.  We watched Christmas movies and pulled out our knitting while the kids beaded bracelets.  We admired Jarvis for making it up the very muddy roads to the cabin.  I did the driving at night up those muddy roads and I admire myself a little bit too for not panicking and getting us stuck in this serious mud.  We slept in piles of people on mats all over the house.  We hunted the hills for just the right tree and once again picked one that was only about 2 1/2 feet too tall.  It's a beaut.  Cheers to another wonderful year together.  

Bread of Ginger, House of Candy

I think Misty and I had to reschedule our gingerbread house-making night three times before we finally were able to find a date that worked for both of us, and that was before December even started.  What do you mean, the holidays are crazy? No idea. We thought about maybe 4 different nights in December and none of them were free for us both, so we finally picked the last Sunday in November, which ended up being a great idea - the night before December 1st, just the right night to kick off Christmas.

We had a great dinner together, we enjoyed musical performances - all the Mayfield girls singing and playing together as well as a very rocking' guitar solo from their 16 year old son, who was encouraged by his father to crank up the distortion.  We are not the parents our parents were, I suppose.  Turn up the volume on that ACDC, boy!

So I felt extra dumb this year.  Misty didn't even decorate a house! She was nice and let her kids do it! But I, like always, shoved mini gingerbread houses, candy and frosting at my kids to distract them while I just let myself go to my own personal happy place obsessing over symmetry and matching color schemes.  Oh well, so be it.  I just love any chance we get to spend with the Mayfields.