Christmas 2011

 West Valley Breakfast with Santa.

 Temple Square.

 Christmas Eve at Grandma Olson's house.

 Christmas morning - followed by Christmas morning casserole - the best food of the holiday.

Get me out of the monkey suit!  Ellie wore a dress 2 days in a row.  It almost killed her.

I have cute kids and an ugly Christmas tree this year!  We had a nice time with Chris' family on Christmas eve and my family on Christmas day.

Too bad there is a true line in one of the Christmas songs, "Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again!"  I'm just in a bad mood and not able to be patient with the boys.  They will be ready to get away from me and go back to school next week.

There are no repeats

Sometimes I have a singing time go so well, that I hold on to the idea and do it again.  Last year for Christmas I did a little singing program for the kids using ornaments and a little nativity scene.  I assigned a song to each piece.  It felt so spiritual and reverent that day!  I came away feeling great! 

Well, like I said in the title - there are no repeats.  I guess our ward was feeling a little rowdy today.  Sacrament meeting was kind of loud.  The primary room was missing the music stand and table - in fact most rooms were missing their tables because the Spanish branch didn't put them away after their party last night.  Primary was just plain crazy. 

I can see how it can happen.  It is a busy time of year.  People are out and about.  Kids don't get enough sleep.  The morning rush of getting to church (we were actually late).  But I was a little hurt when junior primary booed me.  I learned a long time ago not to ask them yes or no questions because they always yell no.  But today we had some extra time and I suggested that we sing the last song I had planned one more time and they booed me.  What's a chorister to do?  I hope I handled it ok.  I calmly said they had to stop and I don't like being booed and that they had to sing the song anyway.

So I should have planned a more exciting singing time for today.  Who can guess what the mood will be for any given week?  I can't.

Just call me the Grinch

It is just too early for all this Christmas. I’m not ready. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t
want to put up decorations and I don’t want to keep my one year old out of the decorations.
Why do they start it up earlier every year? Do you remember how exciting it was when FM 100
started their 100 hours of Christmas? Yes, just 100 hours. Not 100 days. I woke up with a
candy hang over the day after Halloween to Christmas music and it made me sick. Do you
remember when Black Friday started on Friday? I do. I remember. Maybe 36 is getting really
old.

My boys could have gigantic Christmas lists. I’m a scary mom. I squash their lists regularly. I
want to hear what they want, but I don’t think they should want every Star Wars Lego set ever
sold. They seriously think that Santa has unlimited funds! At some point I asked them if they
had ever been let down by Santa. I don’t suggest asking this question. Well, yes! “Don’t you
remember mom? I didn’t get the exact Lego set I asked for the day before Christmas last year.”
Or “I wanted this (whatever, I don’t remember), but I got it from Grandma, not Santa.” So I tell
them now that they just have to trust Santa and be happy with getting something. Then I bring
up How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Those little Whos still celebrated without a Christmas crumb!


My sweet 7 year old loves to decorate and change the house. He can see all the trees in the
windows and lights on the roof. He talked Chris into putting up the outside lights. Good idea to
do it before it snows and he can’t get on the roof. Bad idea that we have to turn them on already.
Frosty is tied to the porch with a bungee cord. The wind kept ripping him off the porch last year
so I took matters into my own hands.


I’m not always this ornery. The lack of sleep (baby still gets up in the night) and constant hide
and seek is getting to me. I think Christmas was easier with a fussy 2 month old than a wild one
year old. Ellie moves everything around. I think the Tree is going to be a nightmare this year.
The boys were very mild babies. Steven tried to pull the lights off and I used twisty ties to keep
them on. I don’t think Isaac touched the tree. I can’t let the boys down. They need a tree!
But they won’t get one until December 10th.

Merry Music

This week I have been thinking about which songs I want to teach in primary.  Last year we got to the last 2 weeks and only knew a few Christmas Songs.  I spent a lot of time on Where Love Is after the program.  Last year we learned the first verse to Stars Were Gleaming.  It is a fun song with lots of rhyming words and pictures I could draw on the board.  We tried it today and Yay!  The kids remembered most of it.  Today we learned Once Within A Lowly Stable.  I have a terrible habit of leaving for church with only a small idea of how I want to do singing time.  Somehow the spirit still guides me and primary turns out okay. 

This song talks about a stable, sheep and oxen, loving mother, baby, manger, Mary Mother, and Baby Fair.  So I pulled those words from the song and wrote them on some 1/2 index cards.  At the library I found two pictures of the Nativity and I lightly taped the words - with numbers on the other side - to the pictures.  I had the primary listen while I sang the song and asked them to tell me the word behind each number.  I sang it until all the words were showing, then had them sing with me a few more times while we took all the words off.

Junior primary understood right away what I wanted and made the connection between the picture and where I had the cards taped.  Good for them!  One song down, two or three to go.  Next week I want to do Samuel Tells of the Baby Jesus. For the opening song this month we are singing The Shepherd's Carol and for an activity song we are doing one verse a week of Have a Very Merry Christmas!

Cream Puffs

This is one of my favorite deserts.  My mom let me make them all the time as a teenager.  This is from a great cookbook called Hilton Family Cookbook of the Century.  It actually has a menu for the entire year.  I should try following it sometime to eliminate the question "What's for Dinner?" 

Cream Puffs:

1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1/4 t. salt
1 cup flour (they say sifted, but I never do)
4 large eggs

In a sauce pan, heat water, butter and salt to a boil.  Reduce heat and stir in flour with wooden spoon until mixture forms a ball.  Remove from heat.  Put dough in mixer (I just use my hand mixer in the same saucepan) and add eggs one at a time beating well after each addition.  Drop onto a greased baking sheet (by teaspoon or tablespoon depending on the size you want) and bake at 400 for 10 minutes.  Lower heat to 350 and bake for 25 minutes.  Puffs are ready when double in size and golden brown.  Slit top and fill with filling.

I like to fill mine with vanilla pudding blended with 1 cup whipping cream whipped and sweetened.

Some day I want to try them with chicken salad or something savory.  If you want to make eclairs use a pastry bag with a big tip to put them on the baking sheet and then cover with chocolate frosting.  Enjoy!

Primary Singing Time

I have been our ward's Primary Chorister for one and a half years now.  I love my church calling.  I get to sing, and laugh, and play games while the rest of you look up scriptures and listen to lessons.  I have found so many cute blogs by primary choristers who share their brilliant ideas with the cyber world.  Some of them have saved me at 11 pm on a Saturday night.  So I want to share some of my Singing Time philosophy on my blog.

• First: I keep it simple.  Simple props and games.  I use things that I normally have in my house.  I use the chalkboard almost every Sunday.  Most of the time if Junior primary loves something the Senior primary will love it to.  I am often surprised at how fast Junior primary will catch on, even if I think an idea is too challenging or if they have to read.  I rarely change things for the 2 different groups.  My favorite way to teach a song is to draw pictures on the board that represent the words or phrases of the song.  Each time they sing it I take something off.  By the time everything is erased everyone knows the song.

• Second: FUN.  If it isn't fun I get a little scary.  I like to have the children sing in different voices, or pick songs in different ways.  I like to move and call on as many kids as possible.  My favorite trusty tool is a set of crazy cubes that our pianist made and let me use.  They are a styrophome blocks covered in fabric with little see through windows.  I put little cards in the windows for my selections that week.  I have one for the song and one for the way to sing the song.  The only drawback to this is you can't always choose appropriate ways to sing the songs.  Hillbilly did not go over very well with some of our teachers. 

• Third: Repeat.  We sing many of the same songs for the entire month.  I want my primary to learn as many songs from the songbook as possible, not just the ones suggested for the program or the standards everyone knows.  We do the same opening/reverence song, article of faith, and activity song every Sunday for a month.  By the end of the month the kids know new songs.  My primary president suggested this idea for the reverence song and I loved it so much I expanded it to several songs.  Fast Sunday is the hardest with this idea because it involves me singing and the kids listening to learn 3 new songs.

If I have something turn out well in the future I will post it.  I learned so much as a new chorister reading about what other people do.

Bear Lake

My Dad could go to sleep anywhere!

This shady character has decided not to shave till he returns to Bear Lake.  It's itching him so he can't wait for scout camp. At least that gives him one reason to look forward to scout camp.

Come in for a break.  The boys loved swimming in the lake this year.  Isaac liked Uncle Ron's wave runners, he wanted to go fast.  I've mellowed out in my old age.  I didn't even tip us off.  Both boys jumped the waves with me the next day in the wind.

I take horrible pictures of myself.  Anyone want some curly hair?

Snack time! Very full beach this year.  All the tourists migrated to the North Shore where there is a little bit of sand. We ended up at the very end of the state park and had to steal a table from some people who left. Guess the sun was too much for them. We always bring our own shade. We kind of like the low years when we can drive down the boat dock and park right next to the picnic table.

It's a good thing my sister sent me a picture!  I think we forgot to use the camera.  Not even one picture of Ellie in her little swimming suit that was so cute.

My family loves to camp at Bear Lake.  We go to the campsites up St. Charles canyon on the Idaho side.  We usually love it up there.  They have decided not to provide garbage service anymore which is a bunch of GARBAGE. There was so much water everywhere this year.  We didn't even take the kids down to see the creek.  All that water equals lots of mosquitoes too.  The boys and I hiked down from the cave and were swarmed the whole way.  Steven cried the whole way and thought we would die from bites.  He hardly had any, I had 20 on one arm and many more in other places. Camping with a crawler is not so much fun.  Luckily there are lots of arms wanting to hold the baby when she lets them.

Enough complaining though.  I love spending time with my family.  We eat so much great food and just enjoy being together.  We used to play games, but that gets hard to do with little kids.  I did get in some games of Uno and Farkle with the boys. Chris was very happy with our new trailer.  Nothing broke like on trips with the old one.  And it is much lighter and easier for our truck to pull. That's our vacation in a blog.