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The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Weekly Happenings: This past week started off with a pretty momentous occasion. We were able to go to the Alamodome and see President Nelson (the prophet and president of our church), Elder Bednar (a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for our church), Elder Ochoa (a local leader for our church), and all of their wives speak. Even though it was a bit crazy (there were almost 24,000 people there), it was so great. The spirit was very strong and it made an impression on all of us (well, maybe not Abigail, but that was to be expected). Elder and Sister Ochoa both shared their conversion stories as well as their testimonies. Sister Bednar talked about some things she learned from a time they lived in Texas that she related to the Gospel (I don’t remember all of them, but two of them were to find joy and to always try to be a good representative of the Gospel). Elder Bednar talked about being fully committed to the Gospel. Sister Nelson talked about what it’s like to be married to the prophet (and about how he receives revelations at all hours of the night sometimes 😊). President Nelson talked about how we all have challenges and limitations and how we need to be patient and trust in the Lord during those tough times. The choir sang one of my favorite songs: It Is Well With My Soul (the Mack Wilburg arrangement). It was a wonderful night! I found a pretty good article about the even which you can read more about here. After that night, the rest of the week was pretty average, with the exception that it ended with Thanksgiving fun (we went over to our bishop’s house and enjoyed the meal with them and another family) and getting to put up Christmas decorations. I love this time of year!

The Weekly Weather: Brisk, dry, and mild. Typical late fall weather for us!

What Paul’s Been Up To: Aside from work, he was pretty busy not only helping to put up our home decorations (he always tackles the outside) but he also helped to put up the neighborhood decorations as well. I think he’s looking forward to relaxing the rest of the day and tomorrow!

What Sarah’s Been Up To: I made my very first pie completely from scratch for Thanksgiving and it turned out great! As for Christmas stuff, I had the fun task of getting to decorate the inside. It’s always fun to see the kids’ eyes light up as stuff comes out. Abigail kept saying, “Wow! Wooooah!”, which was fantastic for my momma-heart to hear.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He enjoyed having a short week at school, loved getting to play with friends on Thanksgiving, and really soaked up some “Momma-Joseph time” when we got to decorate the tree last night after Abigail went to bed. Oh, and he absolutely loved getting to put the mini tree up in his room.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s been quite the ham this week. She also surprised me the other day. When I told her that it was nap time, she got pretty upset and cried out, I kid you not, “No! I no tired!” Yup. A full-on sentence (a bit garbled, but I could tell exACTly what she said). Once I got her calmed down, she ended up sleeping for two and a half hours, so I guess she was tired after all. 😉 This morning, she popped up in her crib when I went to get her up for the day and the first thing that flew out of her mouth was, “Tree? Tree?!” She’s in love with the Christmas tree. Her favorite ornaments (that she’s allowed to touch, ha) are a little mailbox one, a wooden reindeer one (that she calls a cow), and a red satin one (I can’t really fault her there; it is pretty shiny and soft).

This Week in Pictures:

Sometimes one wakes up before one is ready. Luckily, there is usually a Momma to snuggle with when that happens!

She’s constantly on the move, but I had to snap this picture. This is one of my favorite dresses on her and the little cardigan just pushes it over the edge!

Waiting for the devotional to begin. Abigail was rather intrigued with the seats (even though she did get slightly stuck a couple of times).

We didn’t want to get there as early as we would have needed to get good seats because that would have been too long for the kids (Abigail barely made it as it was), so we ended up pretty high up. They did have big screens so that we could still get a good view of the speakers and choir.

Paul zoomed in a bit to get a picture of the actual stage.

A portion of President Nelson’s talk. Many of the General Authorities for our church have a Facebook page (that is run by an approved third-party) and this was posted on his Facebook page.

This was a portion of Elder Bednar’s talk.

My very first all-from-scratch pie. I was pleased with how well it turned out.

The piano decorations. A lot of childhood memories rest on there.

Here’s the house all lit up. I love that Paul does the column as well as the windows that face the street (those he does on the inside. since they’re too high up to do on the outside).

I also love that he makes the garage door look like a giant present. He uses red duct tape and for the vertical line, he makes sure to do each panel individually so that the door can still function. The projectors are fun, too!

Tree! We made sure to put the (thus far) Abigail-proof ornaments on the bottom part. Paul also bungee-corded it to the table.

A Nice Cool Week

Weekly Happenings: The week started out with Veterans’ Day. Paul didn’t have work, so we attended the Veterans’ Day assembly at Joseph’s school. I think it’s really neat how much patriotism is present here. The middle of the week was rather average, so we made up for it by popping over to the zoo this morning. The kids loved it as usual. Abigail was a bit miffed that I put her in the stroller. The last few times, we’ve let her walk, but today I didn’t feel like trying to keep up with her. We made it up to her (and as a special treat for Joseph as well) by riding the train after we were done at the zoo. The train was all decked out for Christmas (as was the zoo). Tonight kicks off Zoo Lights. Members get to go see it a week before it opens to the general public. We went early last year, but felt that this year we could wait until later. We didn’t really feel like dealing with the crowds that tend to occur at the beginning of events like this. We’ll probably wait until December to actually go. The fun part about the train ride today was that since it was already transformed into the “Polar Express”, the kids got jingle bell bracelets. They loved that part!

The Weekly Weather: The beginning of the week was downright cold. We had below-freezing temperatures overnight a couple of nights and the mornings were even too cold for us to walk to school. The end of the week (and today especially) were closer to what I’m used to for fall in South Texas: sunny and temps in the 50s-60s.

What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s been working on sprucing up the neighborhood holiday decorations since he’ll be putting them up next week. He’s also been busy at work, of course.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Not too much on my part other than my normal things.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He had a fun week at school. He did a cool project for GT, had fun in his class, and is really looking forward to this next week since he has it off, haha. I think it’s nice that the kids get the entire week off for Thanksgiving. It makes it easier for those who are traveling.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s been her regular happy-go-lucky self. She has also gone back to napping on a daily basis after a couple of rough days (she didn’t want to nap but she really needed to…but she refused to…yeah, one of those things).

This Week in Pictures:

At the conclusion of the Veterans’ Day assembly the kids gave each veteran a flag. Abigail pretty much claimed Paul’s once we got home.

As part of the GT program at school, Joseph made this model of a moonscape, showing the different moon landings (the gold star is where he would land if he could). The text is sentences that he came up with about the moon. I love that he’s getting challenged in a fun way!

Chilly mornings mean needing to bundle up a bit for school drop-off.

I told her it was nap time and she did this: she said “no”, turned around, and sat down on her bike. Maybe she thought a sit-in would yield the result of no nap time? Not when you’re less than 25 lbs., love. Luckily she happily went into her crib and slept a blessed 2.5 hours.

I told her we were going to go to Target. She took the bag from me, put it on her shoulder, and was ready to go!

Our yummy dinner last night. I grated fresh garlic into the dough as I was making it and it was such a good addition!

I let Abigail his the button for our zoo train “selfie”. We got a last minute addition to the photo, though!

Hanging out by the river (right outside the zoo and the zoo train station).

Bike Rodeos and Ponytails, Oh My!

Weekly Happenings: This past week was a pretty average one. Joseph participated in the annual “bike rodeo” at his school. They had certain tasks they were supposed to do (ride in a straight line, go in-between cones, ride in a circle, etc.) and whoever had the most points won (points were also awarded for items on the bike like reflectors, a bell, and things like that). Since Joseph still has his training wheels on his bike, he wasn’t able to compete, per se, but he still got to ride in it and got a spirit stick (a small piece of embroidered fabric that the kids at his school collect…he likes to get the ones from the library whenever he turns in a reading log, so a bike rodeo one was icing on the cake), which he was pretty happy about. Also this week, I’ve been trying better to actually do something with Abigail’s hair every day. It’s still rather short , so she’ll still get mistaken for a boy rather often. I’ve been practicing with what I call a “whale spout” ponytail. Funny enough, as soon as I started to do that, no more mistakes have been made, haha.

The Weekly Weather: It was rather warm at the beginning of the week, but has since cooled down nicely. We’ve also had a bit of rain, which is always appreciated.

What Paul’s Been Up To: Work, working on the little free library, and getting the neighborhood Christmas decorations out of storage so that he can have them spruced up enough to install in two weeks (they usually decorate the entrances the Saturday after Thanksgiving). He has to take advantage of sunny days between rain storms.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: I’ve pretty much been just pluggin’ along, doin’ the mom thing. 🙂

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He thoroughly enjoyed the bike rodeo (this was the first year he was able to participate). He also enjoyed riding his bike around the neighborhood on one of the clear days we had this past week. Other than that, his days have been full of school, reading fun books, playing games, and entertaining his sister.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s been her regular happy self, for the most part. There has been a slight increase in “demanding-ness”, but I figure that comes with the territory. She will be two in just over a month, after all. Both yesterday and today she refused to go in for a nap. Yesterday she seemed fine without it (and so far today seems okay), so we’ll see how it goes, but she might be stopping naps (enter big sigh here from Momma, but I’ll deal, haha). Joseph stopped about this time, so I can’t say that I’m awfully surprised, but I was hoping to stretch it out a little bit longer.

This Week in Pictures: