Go Tell it on the Mountain!

The week before the week before Christmas there are usually a bunch of evening events.  Last week was like this and messed up evening sanity dining and relaxing.  The Christmas card was designed, sweatshop produced and mailed.  YEA!  

On Monday the girls and I went to see Rented Christmas, a cute musical West Jordan did about a single guy who rents everything he’d need for a “perfect Christmas” including a wife and 6 children.  Addie commented that she knew just how it was going to end.  Our neighbor was the lead character and he was entertaining. 

The Isaac got his hair cut.  I kept shrieking during the buzzing because there were so many long locks that fell.  In the end he looked different, as I expected, and older.  He looks a lot like the James Mair! 

Thursday we attended The Lower Lights Christmas concert at the Masonic Temple.  That music does something to my soul.  To describe it:  folksy familiar Mormon hymns. My favorite songs were, In the Bleak Midwinter, Stars of Glory, and Calling You and the revival style preaching at the end.   Go listen to I Saw Three Ships and you’ll see how the Virgin Mary and Christ were there on Christmas day on Christmas day…..

I am their only geeky groupie and while chatting with the wife of the redheaded vocal/guitarist, Paul, felt flushed with adrenaline.  When we left I saw the leader of the group, Ryan Tanner, and called out to him, “you did a great job!” like I knew him. Well, he's in my house at least once a day during December...

Sunday was the Mair Family Christmas party.  We missed the Campbells so minus them, how about  this crazy bunch?  Full of personality!  Stockton, you have perfect 70’s hair.   We were spoiled by Grandpa Mair and his new wife Audrey.  Thank you for gifts that my kids loved and a new pan set almost like the one I had bought two days before.  Great minds… 

The tree’s slowed way down on drinking water, it’ll make it barely to the big day!

Today Benjamin asked about Merry Christmas in Portuguese?  Feliz Natal /ben-humming/!  Be good so Papai Noel will bring you gifts. 

And it seems I can’t go one day without eating Pepperjack Cheese.  On eggs, and with celery! 

Merriest of Day to you all on the 25th!  I’m so excited for the energy and fun and for time to read and eat after the morning  chaos.   

Clips of the everyday….

So there has been great progress with our back splash.  But in my hurry to “slap it up” I didn’t have spacers on hand from where we had to cut the tile sheets.  So I checked the pantry and used Susann Mair’s plastic knife collection.   We hope to grout the whole thing this weekend.   The book club I’ve been with for years ate dinner this week at The Golden Phoenix.  They closed at 9 but let us talk until after 10!  I had made toffee to pass around and indulge on .  The cashier checking us out commented “it’s special, a once a year thing.” Family style Chinese food makes me swoon just thinking of the ricey rice texture and saucy sauces all a mess on my plate.  

 

This little guy gets out of the tub and is a puppy every time.  Stuart has been snapping pictures of Christmas with this hand-me-down camera.

The pomegranates are in season!  They’re a nut and a fruit.  They taste wonderful with cottage cheese or any cheese or all by its self.  I tasted pomegranate for the first time while attending college in Cedar City.  My roommate Jodi, was from Logandale, Nevada.  She brought some back after Christmas from her Pomegranate tree one weekend.  They look really good on the burnt sugar.  I’ve sat at this beloved computer on a country blue folding chair that was “just temporary”.  In the ‘as is’ section at IKEA I found a super decent black office chair that really looks awesome. 

This next week has many evening activities and the Christmas card has been created.  Look for it in the mail!  Do I have your address?  Oh I hope so, It’s a fun one! 

The week when Christmas came…

The season is here!  And if you want to know the truth, last week felt like a gift, right?  Thanksgiving was so early, anything I did last week was counted as getting ahead start on the Christmas expectations.  James and I started a tiled kitchen back splash and it’s about time, because the counter tops have been installed for over a year.    
Adelaide and I played Rock Around the Clock in Robyn’s duet piano recital.  It was really fun and now she’s working on the simplified Christmas hymns.  

Ben likes piano, he started lessons a few weeks ago from Catelyn, a 17 year old sweet heart, that likes White Collar (start at the beginning and pace yourself, right Vanessa?) as much as me and James.

We started eating like the French!!! Well, not the food or ridged rules, but from the book, French Kids Eat Everything I learned that at lunch, their biggest meal of the day, kids are required to "sit and dine" for 1/2 hour!  At dinner last week we set the timer for 30 minutes of rest and relaxation.  You know, eat slow, savor, converse, use manners…  No conclusions yet on if this half hour will stay but the kids really liked it.  However on Monday James and I were so relaxed after dinner we couldn’t clean it up.  A trick I took from Becky Beck was to have everyone share their high and low.  Kids love to share and it’s an official rule that you don’t have to have a low… 

Adelaide’s high every day was that she got to be a LUNCH WORKER!   She wore a  paper service man hat and wiped tables; fifth grade doesn’t get any better.

Stuart went to a birthday party on Saturday and gave, for the third time in two months, a trip to lunch at McDonalds.  We’ll be taking Josh, Noah and Cole for happy meals pretty soon.

Isaac watched me pack away all the bottles in the house, we do still have sippy cups though.  

Paige earned every X on a new job chart we tested out this week and was paid half her age in dollars on Sunday, before tithing settlement, where she tithed .30.
  
The Lutherans sold us our beautiful tree again this year which we had to screw two times to the stand because the first screw-in is, as always, crooked.  I can’t concentrate for more than ONE minute and holding a tree straight for James to screw takes a bit more than a minute (Adelaide helped the second time around).   A real tree does that to me…Ohhhh the excitement, towels down on burnt sugar to protect  it and LOTS of help offered by kids.   
I ate my weight, this time in artichoke dip (thank you Krissy!) and eggnog, at the 4th annual tree sniffing gathering.  Would you like to make a tree from an old Everyday Food Magazine?  Thank you Family Fun and all that came to take a whiff.
 
This week I’ll commit to a Christmas Card and make a list of stores to go visit.