Pre Christmas December

With Thanksgiving thoroughly celebrated we felt free to get out our tree...

 ...and make ready for Christmas!  The string lights made me miss Colette very much.

 I bought a Christmas blanket at Ooalmarrt.  The room felt exceptionally cozy afterwards...

 ...especially in the evenings when we were all together playing games, learning not to cry when things don't go our way.

 I made a tree skirt for the tree this year out of old yarn from Kaitlyn and Justin and Melanie's sweaters of years gone by.

 It turned out pretty cute.  Annie liked to wear it as a Christmas shawl.

 Drew and the kids put up the Christmas lights while I was sleeping one day.  Drew bought some icicles last year, so our house was very bright and sparkly.

 Our next door neighbors do a great job with their lights, and once the van Langens got their lights up our cul-de-sac was twinkling with Christmas cheer!

  

We kicked off December with a Messiah sing-along at the Richardson's house.

 Here are Drew and Spencer totally lost and cracking up during Let Us Break Their Bonds Asunder.

There were many more Christmas concerts and parties to get through.  First up was Vivien's Winter Celebration based off of "A Snowy Day."

She loved to sing Suzy Snowflake.

 And she got to play the drums for one of the songs.

Both of the kids had Christmas parties in their classrooms and they were both on the same day within an hour of each other.  I signed up to bring stuff to both of them.  But the day before the parties I picked Vivien up from school and she said, "I had a good day, but there were parts that were bad."  I asked her what the bad parts had been.  She said, "Well, no one from my family came to the class Christmas party."  Horrors!  I had put the wrong date for her party into my calendar.  I felt terrible.  And then we were super late to Rafe's party because it took FOREVER for the mashed potatoes to cook.  I totally earned Best Christmas Mom of 2019.  At least I got to sit through this interminable performance of Feliz Navidad.  Such a tedious song in its entirety.

Annie's preschool concert was much shorter.  Jingle bells is also tedious when you plow past the verses!  They made up for it with cuteness.

 My first concert with APO was a week or so later.  I took the picture below so you could see the sweet husbands that drive their wives to rehearsal and sit in the rocking chairs along the side and read while they wait.  You can see one through the harp strings.

 I got to sit right next to the harp for one of the concerts, which I loved.  Drew brought the kids for the first half (they were being too disruptive to stay for Dvorak), and Krista, Courtney and Michelle and Levi came to see the concert as well.  I felt very loved!  It is such a gift to play this music; it takes so many people's time, talents and cooperation.  I savor every run-through of every piece.

 Our Sunday concert was also the day of the Stake Christmas Program.  The kids sang When Joseph Went to Bethlehem beautifully, our string quartet wasn't awful, all the choir numbers rocked, and we got to sing our Silent Night, that I love.  It was also Courtney's second to last day in Albuquerque.  We were locker buddies at work and she drew me a bloon picture that makes me smile before every shift.  Except now it makes me cry because she's gone.  Boo hoo.

 Here she is leading the music in Primary.  My favorite Sunday was when she turned Primary into a show called "The Song's Not Wrong" and spent the whole time talking into a microphone in her best game show host voice and being generally silly.

 Here we are at the van Langens for some chocolate fondue.

 

And here we are playing games at the goodbye party that Drew made me rename the "Good Luck Party."  We were absolute fools and failed to get a picture of everyone.  This is the closest I got. 

 Here is our Albuquerque family tree that The McKenzie made.  She was up very late one night working on it.  There is a space for Courtney's baby to be.  She has a daughter egg and 4 son eggs ready and waiting to fill the spot!

We have moved a lot and said goodbye to many friends in our wanderings.  It is almost easier in some ways to move, because everything is different, and you expect to be lonely because you have to make all new friends, and there are all the distractions of getting settled into a new place.  But when you lose a sister-friend and your life is still the same, just without her, there's just a big empty hole in the fabric of your normal life.  You can't fix the hole, because nothing else is quite the same shape and color and pattern.  My analogy isn't working for me.  I need the stuff life is made out of to be something gelatinous, or a very viscous liquid instead of fabric, so you can take stuff out of it and it leaves a blank spot that slowly fills in over time, and you can add stuff to it that will make a big disruptive pile that eventually sinks down and gets incorporated into everything else.  Anyway.  I miss my friend.  So say we all.

Other Decembery things... Michelle invited me to come to her church's fancy Christmas event again.  Kayla (my nextdoor neighbors that are not the van Langens) came too.  I need to remember to cross my legs in pictures.  Or something.  Something more ladylike.

Michelle decorated the table.

Look at her pretty napkin folding!

Here she is hiding so they won't make her sing Christmas carols into the karaoke microphone.

After the event we were helping clean up a bit, but the trash cans were totally overflowing, so I grabbed two huge cans in my dress and my heels and wheeled them out to the dumpster.  I am good at cleaning up messes, because I make such huge ones at home all the time...

That was the paper mess I made cutting out the pattern for Vivien's Christmas sweatsuit.  The fabric was also messy to cut. Sheddy.

Aww, look how cute.  But guess what?  I'm an idiot and didn't follow the pattern instructions of how to lay out the pieces because I didn't want to waste any fabric, and I cut everything out on the wrong grain.  Do you know what doesn't fit over someone's head?  A sweatshirt cut on the wrong grain.  Vivien loved it anyway and carries it around like a lovey, or dresses up her stuffed animals with it.  She took it to school to show her classmates the sad mistake I made.

I was most discouraged, but I decided to try again.  So back to the fabric store for more wonderful plush fabric, and this time we did it correctly.  Annie models.

And Merrick also models.

They turned out so beautifully.  I was exceedingly proud.  I sent a picture to my friend Hillary who sews, because I had to share my triumph.  She texted back, "I am so impressed to the point of confusion.  You made these things?!!! They are beautiful and amazing!"  I loved the concept of being impressed to the point of confusion.

I was happy to finish it so I could clean up my living space.  I may need a sewing room in future...

I got a commission from Kaitlyn this year to make a tiny green alien for Justin.  (Disney is cracking down on people advertising patterns for Baby Yoda stuff, so people are getting creative with their titles.  I think this one is called "The Child" or something like that.)

I finished it while watching The Importance of Being Ernest with Courtney during her last week here.  We set it up by the television while we watched the rest of the movie and I kept making eye contact with it and squealing inside.

Santa also sent Annie's requested Gale from Frozen 2 over for my approval.  Fabrina the Elf fashioned a stretchy collar out of sweatshirt ribbing and chose a gorgeous snow organza for the air and pretty satin fabrics for the leaf cutouts.

They were stuck on with two sided webbing and then top-stitched in golden thread.  It's held up pretty well, except I think Fabrina may have been a little lazy and forgotten to adjust the serger settings, so the border isn't pretty and has come unraveled along one side. I'm sure it can be fixed.

Vivien wanted Bruni the Salamander from Frozen 2, but I found the toy Disney put out to be just generally not cute enough to spend money on.  So, Santa asked for my help this year in some pattern development.  I fashioned a model Bruni out of the kids' clay we still have from youchien and draped fabric over him.

Then I pinned into the clay to get the fabric to lay flat along the contours and marked it with a pencil to show the shape of the pieces and where the seams would go.

It is close to what I had tried to sketch out when I was puzzling on how to do it originally, but much more detailed.

Fabrina took my pattern and did the best she could with it.  She decided to stuff his tail and the bottom of his body with rice, so he is a nice weight.  I love how his little feet pads turned out.

The angle of his head to his body isn't perfect, and sewing the eyes on was extremely difficult for Fabrina and didn't turn out quite as planned, but I think all in all he turned out pretty cute.

And he looks way more like the actual character than the Disney one, in my humble opinion.  

Here is a little 360 view for you from Christmas morning.  

For friend gifts this year I made a bunch of music ornaments like the one I made for myself last year.

 

Other pre-Christmas things!  I got some running sandals so I can run "barefoot."  So far I've only worn them running twice (because I've only been running twice) and my calves have been SO SORE afterwards I have been disinclined to repeat the experience with any consistency. 

Also the Morgans brought me back a new purse from Peru when they went for the temple open house, so I said goodbye to my old one that was falling to bits.

Here is my friend Marianne's upstanding son Andrew getting his Eagle award.  The Beutlers got split into a different ward with the stake reorganization and I was very sad to lose their family.  Marianne was the Primary president before me and is an exceptionally organized and detail-oriented person.  I dropped about half the balls she had in the air when I took over, but she will still be my friend.

There's Drew in the Eagle's nest!  Had to take a picture cause who knows when this will happen again?

Here is Rafe climbing on this sculpture that's in the park across the street from their school.

Here are planking Barbies.

Here is our ward choir getting ready for our Christmas musical number.

Here is Annie Squish-Face going to preschool.

Here is Vivien doing her presentation on Abraham Lincoln.

En Español!

Here is a tiny boy hand with a treasure inside.

Here is a boy who is not at all sleepy at 10pm.

Here is a post-bath boy being read to by his big brother.  

Here is Vivien in her favorite nightgown.

"That's not as impressive as my loose tooth!"

He bit into a strawberry the next day and it came out.  When you can bite into a strawberry and lose your tooth, it's ready to come out!

We have been trying our best to combat all the winter bugs.  I have gotten sick SO MUCH THIS YEAR, I resorted to actually taking action to lessen symptoms (this is big for me).  I tried to get the kids to take some apple cider vinegar water.  Everyone did except Vivien, who gagged and spit it out all over the floor like a ninny.  

 My hair was looking for awhile like the Grim Reaper character from the Korean drama Bo made me watch.

It is better than the other bad-hair-days I get as my hair grows.

Drew shares his Google photos album with me.  He doesn't take many pictures, but he does save funny things, and I get an alert whenever he adds something new.  It's like I'm subscribed to a private Drew feed!  This was one of my very favorites from December. 

Couple other things to tuck in here at the bottom.

Annie was quizzing us on shapes.  She held up a rectangle and Merrick said, "A pillow!"

Rafe was trying to figure out what classifies as "uptown" and what is "downtown."  

Rafe: Is most of You-You Nork...

Me: New York?

Rafe: Yeah.  Is most of New York downtown?

Trying to teach the kids to cover their coughs.  Annie coughs into her elbow and says, "I coughed in my armpit that time!"  

We needed to drive over to Courtney's before they moved for some reason.  The kids really wanted to walk, so I let them walk ahead of me.  When I pulled up to the house Annie was in front, skipping and twirling and wearing her favorite royal purple crushed velvet dress with ruffly sleeves, Vivien was walking with her nose stuck in a book, Rafe was looking back at Merrick and cheering him on with a mouth open as wide as possible, and Merrick was keeping watch for me while shuffling along in his Ninja Turtle rain boots.  They are all so much their own little people!