Sunday Thoughts

So it's official, our entire Primary Presidency was released today (that was what last week's 8:00am appointment was about). I was a wreck about it last Saturday--I cried off and on all day (this was surprising to me), but did okay at church the next day and have been fine all week so I figured I'd gotten the tears out of my system. But no...as soon as they officially released us in Sacrament Meeting today the tears returned. Then I held steady during primary as I sat in the back with the new presidency giving them info and answering questions. But then during senior primary our chorister (who is the Bishop's wife and has been like a 5th presidency member) had us come sit up front so the primary kids could sing our favorite songs to us. Let me tell you, it was NOT pretty. Not only did I cry, I did the full-on ugly-faced sobbing cry in front of everyone. (Luckily, the primary president was bawling too.) Someone threw us a packet of tissues (thank heaven) and we just sobbed as we sang those songs.

{Photo not taken today, but this is what it looks like in there.}

I chose..."We'll Bring the World His Truth" (the chorus can make me cry any day)
Ilima chose..."Beautiful Savior"
Tonya chose..."I Know That My Savior Loves Me"
Our fabulous secretary Brittany was home with her week old baby, so she didn't get to participate in this sob fest.

After we sang these three songs, the chorister had us all sing "Scripture Power" to help lighten the mood a bit, but it ended up making us cry harder because each time the kids sang the words "scripture power" they held up their scriptures. It was awesome to sit up front like that and face a room full of 60+ kids singing an amazing song and happily holding up their scriptures. It was a great way to end our three year run as a primary presidency.

Also a great part of this experience, was that Jalayne (our chorister) explained how as a members of the church we promise to serve the Lord in any way asked of us, and that for the past three years it has been our job to pray, plan, teach and serve the children of our ward, but that now that time is over and four other women get the chance to do this. I know this is true, and I know these 4 women will do an amazing job as well. I have loved serving in primary far more than I ever thought possible, and I have been surprised by the flood of emotion I have experienced as part of closing this chapter in my life. I know they already have a new job planned for me because I missed a call from the Bishopric this morning (the volume on my phone was too low). I'm both nervous and excited for what it will be, but know that I will end up falling in love with it too.

Here are the Top Ten things I have loved about serving in primary.


1. The pure doctrine taught and sung each week; I always feel the Spirit in primary.


2. For the past two years our family has been in Senior primary together. Randy has been a teacher and the kids were both in their classes (Landon moved out of primary in August when he turned 12).

3. The kids. I can honestly say I love each and every child in our primary and know them by name. I always stand at the door to greet them by name as they walk in each week.


4. I have loved taking photos of the things we do in primary. The kids are so sweet and primary is a big part of their lives, so it has been fun to be the one documenting that for our ward. The pictures have been displayed on our back bulletin board and the ward newsletter, and I give them to their families when they come down from the bulletin board.


5. I have loved serving with really great people. Our entire presidency served all the way, none of us were slackers and we were able to call really great teachers (2 for each class) to guide the kids. I would often look around the room and be moved to tears by the strength I saw there; particularly in senior primary where we had many strong, male teachers (rare in primary) to serve as good examples to the kids.

6. Memorizing The Articles of Faith has been a great thing for our primary and for our family. It was our primary's goal for 2009, and it is something we accomplished as a family and continue to review each Sunday during Family Home Evening.


7. I have felt great power from memorizing 12 Scripture Mastery verses this year and I have been super impressed with all the kids who have done this as well. We have 3 year olds who are able to recite long verses because their parents have worked with them.


8. I have been so impressed with our Bishopric and their involvement and love for the primary kids. They have taken turns coming in on the first Sunday of each month to give the kids a Bishopric Message, and they always do a fabulous job.


9. I wrote and organized 3 Primary Programs over these years and have a great appreciation for all that goes into those. I enjoyed the experiences and will miss not writing next year's program and the photo slide show party we had to celebrate finishing the program each year.


10. Mostly I have loved the kids and their sweet innocence. They soak up the gospel and thrive in primary, it has been wonderful to be a part of their journey.

**Thoughts??**

Comment Window Tidbit: I feel so emotionally drained from all this crying. I need to go to bed and sleep the sleep of the dead until I feel better.

Christmas Eve Family Fest

This week has been crazy busy and the time (and blogging) clearly got away from me, so I'm skipping ahead to our Christmas Eve festivities.


Randy and I worked together the morning of Christmas Eve to make sure we finished wrapping all the gifts we needed for the family exchange, and then for the kids so that we wouldn't have to come home late that night to finish anything. Randy is a master gift wrapper, so I would find the boxes for each gift, then do the ribbon and the tags for each gift so that he wouldn't have to stop wrapping...it took 2 hours but we finished just in time!


This was the pleasing basket of gifts ready to be loaded into the car.


Somehow we managed to have time to make "turtles" to bring with us. Since Rolos were sold out every time I looked for them, we used Caramel Kisses instead. They were still really good, but the caramel was far more oozing and messy.


Christmas is one of the rare times Andrew gets really excited for family gatherings (he's not usually a fan of the chaos and the noise) so he had been pacing back and forth and watching out the windows for everyone to get there.


Andrew's preferred method of stair descent is to slide down on his bum...so funny.


The kitchen table is now the "kids' table" for meals since there are 8 of them; the adults eat in the dining room.


I never know what I'm going to get when I do a self-portrait with Andrew. Apparently this time he is expressing a "take it or leave it" type look.

Olivia made Christmas cards for everyone in the family.

Oh pebble ice, how I love you!

The 24th is also Austin's birthday (he was 3 months premature) and he was concerned about where his birthday celebration was going to fit into the day's agenda, so he proposed this agenda and gave it to my dad. (Click on photo to enlarge.)


Andrew was so anxious to open presents that he kept coming into the dining room (we sat and talked in there for a long time) to hug my dad and remind him that he was waiting (my dad was laughing at something Adam said).


Eventually we gathered in the kitchen to let Austin open his birthday presents and to sing our birthday song to him.

Andrew checked in again.

Randy was in day 2 of a "man cold" so it wasn't surprising to find him snoring in the next room even though the house was very loud.


Later we all went downstairs to read scriptures; my dad took this very seriously and had prepared this poster of scripture references.


Andrew cracked us up by taking Robyn's video camera and filming. He has never done this before and was so funny about it. I'm sure she's going to end up with a lot of footage of his hand waving really close to the lens.


Reading the scriptural account of Christ's birth was sweet, as was hearing the kids take turns reading verses. I felt the Spirit and teared up a few times, it was nice that the kids were old enough to participate fully in this experience.


After about an hour of scripture reading the kids (especially Andrew) were going crazy and couldn't contain their excitement over the presents any longer. We let Andrew go first, so we piled his presents up and let him tear into them. We saved the best for last...Volume 1 of America's Funniest Home Videos 4-disc DVD set...it's 430 minutes of crotch-pounding hilarity that Andrew will love.


After that, the kids took turns opening gifts from youngest to oldest (Ashley, Megan, Olivia, Tess, Austin, Whitney, Bella then Landon). These were the presents my parents got for them, plus the ones from our exchange, plus Lori (very generously) got presents for everyone.


Whitney was thrilled with the Veterinary Clinic my parents gave her. Sure, it's a PlayMobile toy meant for children 4 and up but the way she plays means it will adapt and go the distance.

A self-portrait of Adam and I.

Landon's big gift from my parents was this fabulous hiking backpack that will serve him well for his next 6 years of Scout Campouts and hikes, woohoo!


Lori gave me these two goodies so I could have "a girl's night in"...of course these are two of my favorite things.

Adam and I had each others' names for the gift exchange.

He gave me this HUGE bag of daffodil bulbs, a heavy duty vase and a nice scarf. I gave him a book I heard about on NPR and his favorite candy (Bottlecaps and Mike & Ikes).


By the time we were done with the opening of gifts it was time to eat again!


I was in charge of bringing a salad (which I hate being in charge of) and got extremely flustered when my salad dressing tasted too vinegary and when hardly anyone ate salad because there were too many tasty options!

We didn't end up leaving my parents' house until after 10:00pm and then had to drive home in the fog (not my favorite thing). It was a scary ride home but it had been a really great day.

**How was your Christmas Eve?
Did you do any of these things?**

Comment Window Tidbit: I'm trying really hard not to be disappointed that I didn't blog for 4 days. I kept thinking I'd be able to do so, but then couldn't.

Wordless Wednesday

Comment Window Tidbit: I've been in such a time warp this week that I had to double check (at 10:25pm) to make sure it was Wednesday.

Finally!

The strangely warm December weather we've been having has been producing rain instead of snow, and has had some members of the family very concerned about whether we'd be having a white Christmas or not, so we were all surprised and happy when we woke up this morning to find this!


Goodness gracious, how did this happen while we were sleeping?


There wasn't an ounce of snow on the ground the day before.

This is how it's supposed to look in December.

The kids were outside playing in it by 8:15am!

Since Randy's car is in the shop (can you believe both of our cars have had to go in this month?!), I just had him take my car today, so the kids and I enjoyed a stay-home day of coziness (with some shower and water heater repair going on with the landlord here). Good times.

**Will your Christmas be white?**

Comment Window Tidbit: I wrote our Christmas letter today, so there's a chance our cards will go out BEFORE Christmas...good grief!

Creative Friday--Jump Start to Vacation Edition

Since Randy had all of last week off from work, that meant that Landon and I could head over to Michelle's house just after 4:00 for a late-night Creative Friday and fabulous kick-off to our Christmas Vacation. (I would like to do this regularly, but that would mean Whitney coming home to an empty house and being alone for a couple hours until Randy gets home, plus it would conflict with game night.)


Michelle was busy getting presents ready to ship when I arrived, so I helped her get those packaged (it's helpful to have extra hands when using packing tape) then we ran to Harmon's to mail them. She has such a good thing going with that, no pesky post-office lines and it's so close to her house! Also, I'm quite sure Michelle's presents are prettier than most.


Michelle used her cute plate from Jenn to display the extremely tasty cookies she recently discovered. I am happy to confirm that they are indeed wonderful and that I ate far too many. (I checked to make sure we have pretzels on hand just this morning, though it will be dangerous for me to have these around.)


Eva returned home from a friend's house and shimmied her way into Michelle's typing arms, then began reading Michelle's email!


These are unusual sights for our Creative Friday table, but I was working on my Sharing Time activity for primary so I had scriptures and the children's song book out.


I received a phone call from the Bishopric counselor over primary asking me to come in at 8:00am on Saturday morning to meet with him. I'm embarrassed to say that my first response was, "You want me to come in at 8 in the morning on a Saturday?!" He just laughed and said, "Oh that's right, you're not a morning person", but he didn't change the time. After that phone call I felt panicked and flushed (as this photo documents) as I speculated why he would be calling me in; it messed with my head the rest of the evening.


Michelle made Wimmer Truc for dinner and it was oh so good!

The boys played Rock Band in the next room.

Michelle had to make some repairs to this darling Christmas house she bought for her neighbor, which was actually the 2nd one she bought because she somehow managed to run over the first one with her van!


I ended up finishing my Sharing Time activity (and the cookies) and wrote several thank you notes as well, woohoo!

Here are my envelopes from the evening.

**Do you enjoy wrapping presents?
Does your grocery store have a mailing center?
Have you experienced this kind of panicked flush?

Comment Window Tidbit: Today is my first official day off from work and I feel like I need to make the most of it!