Christmas

We had a truly wonderful Christmas, quiet, cozy and happy.

Decorating cookies on Christmas Eve

Lucy's version of "decorating"

The layout before kids got to it
Lucy and the new chair she was very excited about (but it was from the dollar store, so it broke before the day was out).

David loves Christmas! (Temporarily Unclassified Information)


We got some wonderfully generous and unexpected gifts at the last minute from a Secret Santa, and should that person be a reader of my blog, I wish to thank them deeply for their kindness. There was a loud, quick banging on our door around 9ish Christmas eve that startled us a great deal, and once we figured out what was going on and we brought in the box, I was at first confused, because I thought we'd put together a respectable Christmas layout this year and wondered why we'd been chosen. But then we both read the note, which was clearly from a ward member and was so sweet and loving. We both felt so touched as we realized that it was not a gift of charity so much as one of heartfelt love and appreciation. It must have been the season, because we were both a little weepy over it. I'm sure I've overstepped my wifely confidentiality agreement by sharing that fact with you.

Looking over the past year, I am happy to say that I actually met some of my goals for this year, which generally just doesn't happen. This was the year I really started my family history because of the Stake and Ward goals, and I was able to submit around 60 names for temple work. I finished this fun family tree for my in-laws with eight solid generations from my children:

We gave it to them framed, with poster copies for David's brothers and sister. I felt really happy that I actually did what I set out to do. It's pretty pathetic that keeping a promise to myself is so rare, but it is what it is.

It's motivated me to timidly make more promises to myself for the coming year. I definitely want to continue the family history hour on Sundays, especially with the new fancy consolidated program coming out next month.

But, as for adding new things, the primary one is to build structure in my own life and in my home, because with that structure comes comfort and all of the other things we need to be doing, like exercise, diet (food planning), etc. I find that if just have the discipline to make and keep a dedicated time for something that needs doing, it just happens (like this family journal), and I don't have to fret and worry about it. I'm trying to do that with more things, like family and individual scripture study and prayer. We've done a lot better with FHE this year but still have room for improvement.

So, in addition to structure I'm going to try to learn to be softspoken. There I've said it, it's out there. May the force be with me.

My concrete goal for this year to see if we can't try out a volunteer program Ben thought up. You can find out all about it on our progress blog:

http://suburbanharvest.blogspot.com/

The website is almost ready to go up, just waiting until we want to spend the money for hosting.

I'm excited about it because I think it will help Ben understand better how to organize his plans and ideas and manage a project (since he's so convinced he'll be a self-employed inventor like his Grandpa Wise and I'd like to help him succeed where Gpa did not do so well). It also really touches on things I care about and I believe it provides a needed service. We'll have to see how it goes.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!