I'll try and go in chronological order to keep things flowing!
November started out with Mom and Dad cheering on the Bronco's to another VICTORY against Fresno State. It was really cold and mom pretty much stayed bundled up with a warm blanket - except when the TV camera's came around, then she popped out so she looked like a happy fan (as you can tell from the 2 photos (on the right) below that were shown on TV and then screen shot/texted over to us.
Dad has done quite a bit of traveling over these 2 months. Mostly to Eastern Idaho (Rexburg and Idaho Falls area) but he also had a week in California. He purposefully flew in on an early flight so he could have a day of sightseeing!
By the middle of the month (November) Aubrie and Lexi had talked mom into decorating for Christmas! Since we knew we wouldn't be here for most of December, we had initially decided to only set up the tree - however that soon turned into decking out the banister, the entry way and another side table in the living room! We thought it would help keep dad feeling festive while we were gone (and maybe not so lonely?) before he flew out to Kearney to meet us.
Towards the end of the month, it was time to celebrate THANKSGIVING! Uncle Danny and Aunt Chita hosted it out at their house on the farm. Lots of family were over and everyone enjoyed themselves. It was a bit different as we didn't even say a blessing over the food or go around and say what we were thankful for - so we did this tradition in the car as a family on the way home :)
The girls are always actively engaged in arts and crafts, learning new things or even orchestrating synchronized "dance-type" routines on their scooters! We got several "Scooter Shows" - some by themselves and other times they'd recruit their friends to join in!
Ashley came to visit from Montana! She flew in on a Friday and stayed until the next weekend. While she was here we exchanged Christmas gifts! She was so thoughtful and generous to all of us (AMAZING aloe socks for mom, cute unicorn waterbottles filled with bathbombs and candy for the girls and then for all of the boys and dad, she got the newly released PS4 game - Red Dead Redemption <-- which was a huge hit to ALL of them!!). We got her Boise State gear and 2 tickets to the BSU Championship game. She, of course, took Ben and so they went with dad and tailgated all afternoon and cheered on the Broncos! Sadly, this time they were not victorious (and it was kind of miserable snowy weather!) but they all said that they had a great time! Ben and her also went on a double date with Claire and Asher and she and the girls + Nathan went to see the new Grinch movie. All of the kids also went to the Bowling Alley here in Nampa and bowled one afternoon and on another day we busted out the candy and decorated Ginger Bread Houses! One of the highlights of the week was when we went over to Caldwell to the Festival of Lights! It was seriously really impressive and got us all into the holiday spirit! We would have loved to have warmed up with some Hot Cocoa from one the booths that were set up - but at like $6/cup we opted to head home and drink some from the pantry! haha and Of course Monopoly was set up the entire time with several games being played throughout the week! We were all sad to see her go!
We finished up our first semester with the Saints and Scholars Co-op. There was a banquet on December 7th that we all attended as a family. Ben was recognized for reading/watching 10 Shakespeare plays, writing 10 papers throughout the semester, memorizing a soliloquy and fully participating in the weekly classes. The "Liberty Kids" class that mom taught got up and recited Paul Revere's Midnight Ride all together. We also had a Gingerbread Party on the last day of class which the girls really enjoyed!
Before leaving for Nebraska, we headed out to the farm one evening for dinner and a gift exchange with Grandma and Grandpa Vogt. We had a fun evening - especially when dad and the kids started showing grandma some funny videos on YouTube!
Mom and the kids headed off to Kearney, Nebraska to start the Christmas Celebrations on Wednesday, December 12th at 6am! It turned out to be a long, LONG day! Snowy conditions for the first 15 hours including a complete stop for over an hour on the freeway due to an overturned Semi that was blocking the road. 18 hours later and we finally pulled into Grandma and Grandpa's! But it was all completely worth it! The next 3 weeks were a whirlwind of memories and fun! Things like:
* Christmas Shopping!
* Menu making and grocery shopping
* cooking, cooking and more cooking!
* Morning walks with grandpa at the indoor track while grandma ran laps around us (literally! haha)
* Trip down to Lincoln to pick up Kat, Morgan and boys! While in Lincoln, we made a quick visit to Jared's office, Hope at her house and then did Shelby's Senior Pictures over at Pioneer Park. Then everyone (Jared's Family, Kat's family, grandma and I) all met back at JR and Lori's for a pizza dinner - Yum!
* More Christmas shopping
* Hallmark movies and Skinny Girl Lime flavored popcorn!
* Ben and Nathan spent most of their time on the Video Games (eeeeks! well.. it's WAS Christmas vacation, right?!?)
* McKendra and her best friend, Christa, spent quite a bit of time with us (or should I say with August and Seth!)... they had several get togethers and ate meals with us at the house frequently. They took Ben, Nathan and the girls and went sledding one afternoon. They performed songs for us during FHE and Christa taught Lexi how to play "Nearer My God to Thee" with boths hands.
* Dad flew in on Friday, December 21st
* Weekly FHE's
* Board Games - specifically CLUE and also the card game Sleeping Queens was a hit!
* The menfolk in the family had a Lord of the Rings Marathon that spanned several nights of movies for them!
* John, Grandpa and Jared went to the movies to see Aquaman
* Christmas Eve dinner and cooking
* Last minute Christmas shopping!
* Our Christmas Eve program - including a live Nativity and Talent Show.
* Grandma buying fun socks for every single family member to go along with a touching story about Socks that Lori read as part of our program.
* All grandkids opening up brand new (cute!) PJ's from grandma and grandpa - so they'd all look extra cute in pictures on Christmas morning ;)
* Christmas morning being filled with magic, excitement and awe! Our family took over the "Music Room" and it worked out really well to be in there! McKendra arrived early (even before any of us were awake and had to call us to go open up the front door for her! haha) and opened gifts with all of us :)
* Apparently I was just living in the moment on Christmas morning (which is a good thing for me to do since I typically am so worried about getting the "perfect shot") since I ended up with very few pictures of Christmas! But it was really wonderful and the feeling of happiness was in abundance! and because I don't have any pics of everyone's opened gifts - I'll give a quick rundown of their main things:
- AUGUST: He was a tough one this year and couldn't tell us what he wanted but he did get a sweet BSU pullover, shoes, clothing, some games and Money!
- SETH: a laptop, coat, clothing, games, College necessities and went to a Metallica Concert (with dad)
- BEN: PS4, several new games, Wahooz ticket, Adidas sandals and an Echo Dot
- NATHAN: PS4, several new games, Wahooz ticket, Echo Dot and a charging system for the PS4 controllers
- AUBRIE: Wahooz ticket, Echo Dot, Winter Boots, Clothes, Scrapbooking items (stickers, papers, glue, tape, scissors, 2 scrapbooks and 10 years of photos printed up!)
- LEXI: Wahooz ticket, Echo Dot, Winter Boots, Clothes, Scrapbooking items (stickers, papers, glue, tape, scissors, 2 scrapbooks and 10 years of photos printed up!)
- MOM: a new phone and case! yay!! winter boots, clothes/scarf, earrings from Aubrie, scented wax melts from Lexi and a super thoughtful/romantic gift from dad! He got a printout of the night sky on February 20, 1993 over the exact location where we had our first kiss with the inscription " all framed up!
- DAD: Clothing, Metallica Concert (with Seth), Motorhead and Metallica T-shirts, Carhart Hoodie and mom swapped photography to get his Iraqi palace chair reupholstered! yay!! oh, and the specific wallet he wanted and had been searching every store for months with no luck - yeah.. mom found that for him too!!
* We were really excited to give grandma and grandpa Carlson their gift - I had gone through the last 9 years of our blog and created a new book to be published with all of the Spiritually Speakings grouped together by category (ie: Personal Revelation, The Temple, Family History, Prayer, etc) and printed them (and us!) a copy of it. We had been reading the Stories of Faith from the Williams side of the family over and over and I thought what better stories of faith (to read over and over) with the kids than our OWN family's experiences!
* Christmas day was also the appointed day for all 26 to get family pictures done! Thankfully McKendra was there to be the photographer (so I didn't have to put the camera on a timer and keep running back and forth!) and we were able to get all sorts of wonderful pictures of different groupings and individual families.
* We also had the privilege of participating in a Family Council with every single adult (and older children) of the family. We focused on the new Home Centered, Church supported curriculum - Come, Follow Me that will start January 1, 2019. That was really special to be able to come together and counsel together! I loved it!
* and of course we can't forget that we were all able to say "Hi" and chat with Joseph Christmas night while serving in El Salvador via Skype!
* A BIG storm rolled in Christmas night and by the next morning it was raging! Uncle Morgan needed to get to the airport in Omaha and we weren't sure he'd make it! It took over an hour just to get the car out of the garage! Our van got stuck (which needed to be moved since we were parked behind the garage) and that took quite some time to dig out with everyone working on it! With grandma praying - Morgan was able to get out and made it on time to his flight! Over the next 24 hours, there were several more times of digging out and shoveling snow!
* Dad and I celebrated our 24th Wedding Anniversary on Dec. 28th. We ended up booking a flight to Florida the first week of February (well, booking mom a flight to accompany dad on his work trip to Florida - staying in the Waldorf Astoria! Exciting!). We figured we'd count that as our anniversary gift to each other, but did have a nice dinner at Old Chicago there in Kearney and then went back to the house and watched a movie with the family.
* Speaking of Anniversaries - December 31st was also the 50TH ANNIVERSARY of when Grandpa and Grandma first met at the New Years Eve Dance (in Burley - 1968). Grandpa gave the most heartfelt gift to grandma - a copy of his journal entry that first night along with the journal entry after their first official date! It was so sweet! They have ALWAYS been such great examples of a beautiful and happy marriage and I am blessed to have grown up with that love and example :) They are so cute and funny and had multiple gifts that they just kept pulling out and giving to each other throughout the night!
* New Years Eve was also August's 22nd birthday! Again, he wasn't quite sure what he wanted so more money it was! We'd had his "Birthday requested dinner" on Sunday evening (of lasagna and french bread) because we knew we were going to be having a plethora of snacks and goodies for New Years and didn't want to spoil all of that with a nutritious dinner! haha - part of the snacks and goodies was a chocolate cake that he requested and cookies 'n cream ice cream!
* It turns out that Christa's birthday is also on New Years Eve and since she was over, we had a double party! Fun!! We made her a pumpkin spice cake and they each blew out their candles at the same time... we got her a little journal and pen set and some candy.
* Since we were going to be driving back home to Idaho on the January 1st, we decided it'd be best to ring in the new year early so we could get to bed by 10:30pm... so at 10, we watched the huge celebration that England had put on and counted down to 2019!! Grandma had pulled out her fancy glasses and we all cheered and toasted with sparkling cider.
* Originally I wasn't too worried about driving home after staying up late - because we'd have myself, dad and Seth (and possibly Ben, if needed) to help drive us home! However, that driving scenario drastically changed when Grandma and Grandpa graciously gifted Seth with Great-Grandma Edie's 1999 Cadillac Deville! Classy! You'd never guess it was 20+ years old and he was super excited to have a car of his own to take to school! This meant a couple of things: Pro: MORE car space to get everything back home and no one would be squished on the 18 hour ride home! Con: Seth was really sick and so dad drove the Cadillac while I drove the van and we both had the drive the entire way back to Idaho! Luckily the weather was perfect, the roads were dry and we just zipped home! (well, if you call an 18 hour drive - "zipping home" - sidenote: it's supposed to only take about 17 hours but dad and I were very tired at one point and we pulled into a Rest Area and took a little nap to get refreshed!)
* And also (back on Christmas Eve) after our program portion, the kids exchanged and opened their traditional homemade sibling gifts! This is the 5th year we've done it and I really like how this encourages the kids to focus on each other and really try to think hard on what their one sibling would like that they could create/make. Here's what this year brought...
Spiritually Speaking...
Heavenly Father has been so SO good to us these last 2 months! I hope that I can remember all of the big AND little things!
For starters... I finished the Prophet's challenge or reading the Book of Mormon by the end of the year and underlining/highlighting every reference to Jesus Christ - and boy was there a lot! I really enjoyed doing this and I loved the direction and focus it provided each morning as I studied. I loved how the scriptures truly testify and turn our hearts to the Savior! I ended up taking a suggestion from grandma Carlson and read it on my phone so that all of my notes, highlights and tags would all be saved. In addition to the references to Christ, I tagged verses that had Doctrines and/or Principles in them and also a 3rd category to note Tactics the Adversary uses against us. I also made MANY notes of things that stood out and ways to liken certain scriptures to my life. Take 1st Nephi chapter 18 for example (this is the where Laman and Lemuel have tied Nephi up and the big storm rises up and the Liahona doesn't work anymore and they are pushed back on the waters for 3 days and they are threatened with destruction).In vs 11 it reads:
"And it came to pass that Laman and Lemuel did take me and bind me with cords, and they did treat me with much harshness; nevertheless, the Lord did suffer it that he might show forth his power, unto the fulfilling of his word which he had spoken concerning the wicked."
The Lord allowed something bad (evil) to happen so that He could show his power afterwards. A few verses later it talks about how much grief and sorrow the iniquity of Laman and Lemuel caused their parents and how even after seeing this affliction in their parents and their tears (and the tears of Nephi's wife and children) did not soften their hearts to loosen Nephi. I made another note there saying "We don't act "right" when Satan has a hold our hearts. Look at how far past feeling Laman and Lemuel were that the tears of the women, children nor of their parents softened their hearts! They were literally about to cause their parents deaths! Wow! Satan had a hold them big time!" I also made a second note along with this same verse (1 Nephi 18:17) how children can bring parents much happiness or grief depending on the choices that they make.
As I finished with this challenge and the reading, I took Moroni's challenge to pray about the Book of Mormon. As I knelt beside the bed in Grandma and Grandpa's house, I had tears streaming down my face as the Spirit witnessed to me (again) that what I had read was truth! This has been a wonderful experience and I'm thinking I'd like to re-read and really ponder all of the notes and tags I assigned.
I also wanted to report on my goal of attending 2 Endowment Sessions at the Temple each week... I'm happy to report that I DID THIS! Was it a sacrifice? Yes. Was I away from the family quite a bit? Yes. Was it worth it? DEFINITELY! I was able to 18 Family names through before leaving to Nebraska! I really enjoyed spending so much time at the Temple! I rotated between visiting the Boise and Meridian Temples - it's such a blessing to have both so close!
During one of the first visits, I had the impression that I should take a notebook and leave it in the car so that I could write down my impressions immediately after getting out of the Temple. While I did write down impressions after a few sessions, I'm really sad that I wasn't the most diligent with this as I'm sure that there could have been wonderful insights that I could have reflected upon for years to come. But you know what!? I'm going to take this as a learning experience and put that notebook with my Temple things so that I can keep recording impressions going forward!
I had an awesome Family History experience this month as well! After a couple of days of searching for some ancestors (specifically Nancy Branch's parents) - I found them!! I kept coming up with dead ends and then decided to just use GOOGLE them and see what happened and that eventually led me to them! The super amazing thing is that when I connected her to her mother - Winney Outlaw (born in 1775), that line opened up and was traced back all the way to the 1500's!! Plus how cool of a last name is OUTLAW!? haha While I was in the Temple shortly after finding these names I got the feeling/impression that if I would continue with my efforts and be diligent in searching that I would see the fruition of my Patriarchal Blessing that says "through my efforts many of those that have long been lost will be found"! I was super excited about finding this line and had to quickly get a hold of grandma (since I knew she'd been working on that line for quite some time!)... unfortunately the good news had to wait until the next morning as she had already gone to bed for the night! lol
Ben has also had quite the blessing this month! He has been avidly writing since he was 11/12 years old. When I say avidly - I mean pretty much daily! And all year long (no summer breaks for him! haha).... For the last 2-3 years, he's had the dream of publishing a book. He prays for it (which in turn has taught others in the family to pray for it, too!) In September he and I had a heart to heart where he shared his strong desire to be published again. The only (big!) problem was that I didn't know HOW to help him! We knew he'd need an Editor to get his book polished and ready for publishing but it turns out that they are quite pricey (like to the tune of $4K-$6K!). He reached out to Uncle Morgan's sister (who is a published author) and got some good feedback and encouragement from her - but we were still stuck on the next steps to take... until... I picked him up from Seminary one morning and he had this bewildered look on his face and he said "Our Prayers have been ANSWERED!!" At first I didn't know what he was talking about but then he shared how he'd been talking with some of the other kids from his Seminary class and it came out that he's been working on a trilogy and is hoping to get it published one day, etc... when one of the girls says "My mom can help you with that - she's a professional Editor and I'm sure she'd do it for you free!" I told him not to get his hopes up too high that she'll do it for free (since this was just her daughter offering her services free of charge! LOL)... so he reaches back out to her when we get home and says "Were you serious? Can your mom really help me?" and she then tells him that she's talked with her mom and while she can't do it for free, she can give him a big discount (since he is a young author and is trying to save up for his Mission). The mom asks for Ben to send over his first chapter to see what she thinks and by the next day, she's contacted with a rave review of his first chapter and wanting to set up a time for them to meet and discuss what she can do for him get this published! He/we couldn't believe it! So long story short she was impressed with his first chapter and was excited to take on this project (and at an 85% discount from her normal rate!) He felt so excited and blessed and has given countless acknowledgement to Heavenly Father that getting connected with Stacey has been a blessing and an answer to his prayers! Look for his first novel to hit the market by his next birthday - March 19th!
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