One Second a Day, 2024

 

One Second a Day tradition continues - for the seventh year!

Happy Anniversaries and Almost No Photos

Happy Anniversary to Troy. We celebrated 27 years on Monday the 30th. That was the day that the Romneys returned to their southern home. Not that we saw them - my kids were busy sleeping and Troy and I were busy having jobs. It was a busy day for both of us. I covered my unit on my own and was in full swing for all of the hours, even staying later than normal. By the time I got home, neither Troy nor I were very excited about the thought of leaving the house. We ordered Indian food - enough for the whole family - and watched more of LOTR. It's been a slow year for getting the movies watched -  with people coming and going and our children having lives outside of our house, we just haven't watched as quickly as usual. So we were all ready to nothing but eat delicious food and watching movies. I haven't eaten that much food in a long time. I was both happy and a little sorry. 

Did we take photos? No we did not. Just know that I love my husband more now than I have ever loved him, and consider myself to be incredibly blessed to have him. Troy, I adore you. 

Another anniversary (kind of) was the celebration of the New Year. Again, I took no photos. We gathered at the home some friends in the neighborhood, who invited over as many people as they could fit in the house. There was a kitchen full of treats and tidbits to enjoy, games at the table, a fire in the fireplace, and friends everywhere. I brought some knitting thinking that I'd just find a quiet corner to rest in. However, I made two fatal flaws. For one thing, I brought a new project (a sweater for Troy), and it needed intense attention. Not going to happen. Also, there were so many wonderful friends there. I just sat still and talked and talked and talked until I pretty much lost my voice. It was a wonderful evening. A warm celebration of a year to be grateful for, even though there were some really hard things. Hard in that they were overwhelming - the room project, getting Chase home from his mission, getting Romney home from school and feeling better, starting a new job, taking classes, all the things. Plus the loss of Troy's friend Chris. It was a really big year. That's one of the things I love so much about the holidays. It's a time to just be joyful and reflective and ponder on the year that has passed and celebrate its completion, for all the good and bad and tough and challenging and beautiful that it contained. 

I'll include one photo - not really an anniversary, but a Christmas date that Romney and Nicholas celebrated together. They went on a walk, played games, went out for a fancy dinner, and built models at his house. They are so cute. And so I will end this year by posting a photo of them.

I express profound gratitude for my husband and my children, our home, our jobs, our friends, and our faith. Happy New Year. 

May 2025 see many joys come your way!

Ok one more family photo because I love them all so much.

A Post-Christmas Christmas Visit

If our St. George cousins were hoping to visit a snowy Salt Lake, they were sadly disappointed. Instead we provided them with a soggy rainy weekend. I was happy for the rain. Rain in December means snow in the mountains and clean air in the valley. Lovely. 

I don't like it when Christmas is over. So happily, we had more Christmas to celebrate with the Romneys. They arrived on Friday night, and though Sheri tried to get us to wait until Sunday to exchange our gifts for each other, the rest of us used our best peer pressure skills to open gifts that night. I love that we still have cousins we exchange presents with.

I was pretty excited about the things we picked out for them. For Peter, new sunglasses and a t-shirt from The Point (although I'm still waiting for the t-shirt to get here.) For Sheri, also new sunglasses and a cute drinking glass embossed with the title, "Chaos Coordinator." Which she truly is. Siena recently told me that she's obsessed with sharks. And she loves the color yellow. So I got my artist friend to sculpt a yellow shark, plus I found yellow shark earrings on Etsy. For Cara, who loves manatees and makeup, I got a microwaveable lavender-filled manatee stuffie and some lip gloss. Iva is in love with Winnie the Pooh, and I couldn't pass up this adorable jellycat Pooh Bear, as well as some sparkly markers. Sam got his dream come true - his own bag of Takis plus a book and a fidget toy. The takis were gone in under an hour.

 

They gave Troy some terrific biking socks, me some lovely fancy moisturizers and a butter ornament which made us all bust up because Sheri thinks I use too much butter and I don't think she uses enough. Chase got climbing gear, Romney hasn't gotten her gift yet (dang that mail!), and Emma got the coolest paintable dragon figure meant for holding a D20 die. So cool!

We really had a delightful weekend. They stayed all the way until Monday. We went ice skating. (Well, they did. Plus Romney. Troy and Emma and I watched.) We played a ton of games in the living room, both the board variety and video variety. We went to City Creek Mall and visited the candy windows at Macy's and Temple Square. Romney took Siena roller skating and we ate good food and I think I loaded and unloaded the dishwasher three times a day. It's what the holidays are for. Bless this family that loves us as much as we love them.

 

 

 

THE Bowl

On my Christmas wish list was a mixing bowl. Not just any mixing bowl, though. I wanted a BIG mixing bowl. And I really love stoneware mixing bowls - the kind that look like they should be sitting on the workbench of a farm house out on the prairie. 

I looked at the different sizes online - and found a 12", 14" and the mother of all mothers, 16". I was really sure I wanted the 16" bowl but it was out of stock. Troy got me the 12" to open on Christmas morning while we waited for the 16 incher to be back in stock.

On Christmas morning when I opened the 12" bowl I realized that I might have underestimated the size of these bowls. The 12" bowl was actually pretty big and I wondered just how big my 16" was going to be.

A few days later I heard a knock on the front door, and when I went to go answer it, I saw a delivery man heading back to his truck. I was so excited! It was here!

Then I opened the door. And found THE HUGEST box.

And what was buried in all those packing peanuts? Well, it was a bowl. 16" in diameter. And deep enough for me to bathe in. It is so huge. I can barely hold it.

It's actually kind of comical. I still walk by it and start giggling at its sheer size. I know I wasn't expecting it to be as deep as it is. I had been thinking that it would be nice and broad across the top and much more shallow. But oh no. It's as deep as it is wide and our family might just move into it. 

Troy and I have both wondered if it's more bowl than we really want. But there are times when I truly want a massive bowl. In fact I have a big metal one in the attic that's hard to get to and not pretty at all and doesn't fit on a kitchen shelf. THIS bowl fits on a shelf. So I'm keeping her. (Name suggestions welcome.) And I'll be letting that other (nameless) one go.

Christmas at Work

I haven't had a job at a place that is open over the holidays in over 22 years. I worked at the kids' school for a while of course, but that meant that I had a big long Christmas break just like the kids did. But now at my big-girl hospital job there really isn't a Christmas break. Christmas Eve and Day are both holidays of course, but some people do get assigned to work anyway. Luckily it wasn't my turn for that this year. Probably next year though. I did have to work the day after Christmas, and it was tough to get out of bed!

It was actually kind of fun though. A huge part of our staff had taken most of the week off, so there weren't many of us around. And in my part of the hospital we had very few patients at all. So I helped with the clean up of extra Christmas gifts and the sorting of the donations. Man alive it's overwhelming as well as touching to see the vast number of things that get donated. My coworker Ashley and I were so tired and sweaty by the end of the day.

It's really different to be involved with the hospital at Christmas time. In some ways, it's a lot of fun. A fancy meal or two, staff parties, gorgeous decorations, people decked out in holiday sweaters and hats all the time. A sparkly gift shop. But also, it's sobering. You are witness to a lot of families who have big things going on. It makes the true spirit of Christmas really come through, seeing people in pain and in need. Adds some sobering thought to the holiday, and why I'm really grateful for what we are truly celebrating.

Merry Christmas, 2024!

As it turned out, we did not have to rouse all of the kids out of bed for Christmas morning. We only had to rouse one of them. The girls were up and moving on their own but Chase was dead to the world, so around 8am they started to nudge him awake. I feel like there have been years when all three kids were bouncing on our bed before 7am. I feel like 8 is a good compromise.

So I had seen an idea on social media for family members to write notes to each other on Christmas Eve, and put the notes in one another's stockings. Then on Christmas morning, everyone can begin the day by reading the notes. I thought it sounded so sweet. But like I said, on Christmas Eve night, we were all so tired that we decided to alter the plan a little. After we gathered in the kitchen and made our annual walk-with-eyes-closed to the living room, we got cozy in our usual spots and then instead of diving right into our stockings, we took a few minutes to go around the room and each say what we loved and admired about one another. 

I'm telling you, it was the very best part of my Christmas Day. There was such a special feeling in our family as we went around and expressed love for each other. We were all in tears. I especially loved hearing what the kids had to say to their dad. I feel like dads often go under-appreciated, and to hear the kids tell Troy what an example he is to them and how much they want to be like him was just so beautiful. I hope we always do something like this at some point during our Christmas celebrations. 

Then of course came the stockings. I found these little lego Dungeons and Dragons surprise mini figure packages - that was a favorite stocking stuffer this year for sure.

 

Another really fun thing was that each of the kids picked out gifts for everyone in the family. When they were younger we had them draw names and just give to one person. But now that the two bigger kids have jobs, they really wanted to choose gifts for each person in the family, and they were super thoughtful. Chase found this delightful book for me, not knowing that those stories had been a big part of my childhood.

Romney picked out this handmade hurricane lamp from This is the Place Park - it's so cool. We are all excited to put it to use:

 

She made us giggle by wrapping her gifts to us in silly bags:

 

 

She gave Chase a dinosaur-shaped climbing gear bag, and Emma a hilarious sad-turtle purse that she was dying over, as you can see:

 

Emma gave legos to her siblings, a LOTR hoodie and mug to Troy, and a Snow White figurine to me. Chase gave a beautiful Ansel Adams book to Troy and paintable DnD figures to his sisters. Romney gave me a Jane Austen trivia game and some delightful Edward Gorey postcards. I loved seeing their thoughtfulness.

Other gifts from the year were a rain gauge, a pocket knife and an auto tool box for Troy. For Chase, a climbing harness, climbing pants and a manga set. For Romney, earrings, a cool long coat, bath bombs and a Purple Pillow. For Emma, more legos, cropped hoodies, and a couple of pretty rings. And for me? I got a pair of Duck Feet shoes, my absolute favorite. Plus a bluetooth speaker for my office and a stoneware mixing bowl. I'm very spoiled.

Later in the day, Romney's friends popped over to eat some of our leftover biscuits and gravy (the kids don't want anything else on Christmas morning!) and exchange gifts. They had decided to do a lego exchange and I thought it was so sweet that they got together at our house to build legos for a bit. Romney's boyfriend came first and he had thoughtful little gifts for each of us. So cute.

In the afternoon Troy and Chase went to pick up Grandma while I worked on dinner. Grilled pork loin, vegetables and roasted potatoes. And of course a movie - we watched Klaus, a favorite. 

We had a few other visitors as well - the Neilsons came with warm sweet rolls, the Romneys came with a plant and cards for the kids. A busy boisterous day with lots of love and friends and family.

Finally in the evening we got the house settled down and dishes done. We gathered around the table to light the candles on our Emmanuel Wreath. Each candle represents one of the names of Jesus found in scriptures, and each name is associated with a specific verse or two. We light the candles, read the verse, and talk about what that name of the savior means to us. Redeemer, Advocate, Wonderful Counselor. I'm glad we saved this for Christmas night.

And then. And THEN. Oh no, we were not done with our day yet. 

Time to begin The Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship of the Ring, Disc One.

I think I fell asleep.