Another trip to Nan's-OLD POST

Old Post: 12/09/11

Will be moved shortly

For those of you who don't know who Nanette is, she is my sister right next in line after me in our family of 8.  She lives in Camarillo and just like I wrote in my Rants and Musings Post about our Non-Traditional Traditions, whenever I go to California, I always make a trip to her house, sometimes two or three times.  I'm gonna copy and paste what I wrote then because I'd just be repeating myself...

-I always visit Nanette's B&B.  Her house is so amazing to stay at.  She's the most awesome host, makes the most amazing food, shows you amazing epiphanies she's had you want to become a better person, and makes you feel totally at home, but doesn't make you feel like you are getting in the way with her daily life. You sort of just join in with her goings-on (you actually become a part of it... she has you come to her block party craft days, school singalongs, and drives around to see their Christmas lights).  She also tries to help you get stuff crossed off your "list", gives you coupons for buying presents, and on top of that plans extra fun outings. I might get stressed out with hosting like she does, but if she is, she never lets on. I love her kids with all my heart and I love hanging out with her husband Myles cuz he's seriously a cool cat and so laid back... yet such a task accomplisher as well.

Two days after we arrived in California, the girls were whisked off by Southwest Airlines to Utah to see their father.  It was just Spencer and I so I hopped on the Amtrak train since Nanette's house is about 1 1/2 hours from my mom's and I didn't have a car, it's the best way to travel there.  Tell me you could only imagine Spencer's excitement with this trip.

Getting there was interesting. It was raining and we had to park pretty far away.  I had only one bag for both Spencer and I, but I also had both our coats, my laptop bag and even considered bringing a stroller.  I thought I had plenty of time but couldn't get the ticket machine working.  Little did I know the ticket machine was not for the train I wanted and a nice woman pointed me to the ticket office (that clearly had NO sign saying ticket office).  I was used to train travel being in Europe but all of this threw me off a little. So as I'm lugging everything around, all spencer wants to do is jump in the puddles.  

I get into the ticket office and there is some lady asking a bunch of "would be" questions about a trip a few days later. I was really stressed but finally the ticket agent asked her to let a few people get tickets.  The train literally pulled into the station as he was printing out  my tickets and I was dragging Spencer by his arm to jump onto the train.  Thank goodness for a little elderly couple that needed extra assistance or I would not have made it.  Sorry, but as you can tell, I had no time for pictures.

Spencer, of course was doing his "shakey man" as we call it, and was in total shock and excitement. He's used to trains but it seems like he gets just as excited each and every time.  I had brought our iPad so he spent most of the time watching movies or looking out the window for more trains when we'd pull into another station.  Seriously, Nan, this is the only way to travel.

In Camarillo waiting for Nanny to pick us up...

A picture Nanette took as she was driving up.

Cousins!!!!!

I'm sad I didn't take more pictures while we were there.  I started to get into Instagram, so I posted a lot on there.  for those of you with an iDevice, Instagram is pretty amazing. I won't go off on too much of a tangent, but it's all about pictures, and most people think it makes good photos look bad, but it's actually making your crappy cameraphone pictures look better.  But there is a newsfeed to see your friends' pictures and comment on them. I'm actually loving it more than Facebook.  Anyway, it would be great to see some of you on there.

Okay, so here are the limited pictures I have at Nan's house. Some of the things we did were take walks to the park,

Christmas shopping (it's a bummer when babies fall asleep in the car on the way to go shopping),

make Christmas goodies, get over jetlag,

(yes that's me next to him, I think this was about 2 p.m.)

attempt to stay up late but we always fell asleep early, me next to Spencer, her next to her kids or at the computer, and we attempted to attend the Startup Cookie Exchange (our extended family's annual get together).

These were my cookies that I had on a nice tray but they kept sliding around so I dumped them onto a cookie sheet. I ended up overbaking them so they were hard.  I tossed them eventually, but not until I was fed up of holding the cookie sheet on my lap.

The minute we got onto the freeway it was stopped traffic. It basically would have taken us 3 hours to get there so we got off the freeway and tried to kill time shopping.  We ended up at TJ Maxx which was very dangerous to be at.  Spencer found an entire Thomas section with every track set he has seen on his fliers.  He literally started dumping them into my cart.

(Don't worry, I didn't get all of these, but I did get quite a few. It was tempting that they had so many of the ones we'd usually have to buy online.)

Spencer spent a lot of time obsessing over this track that Nanette has.

This is Spencer at Nan's house cleaning up the wooden track so he can have the blue track again.  You can't hear it but he's singing, "Clean Up, Clean Up."

Nanny loves Spencer and Spencer LOVES Auntie Nanny.  They both bonded a lot while we were there. It was really cute to watch.

Saying goodbye and going on the train...this is in Camarillo.

Saying Goodbye... We were a little nervous we had gotten on the wrong train.

Arriving in Fullerton to seriously beautiful weather.

Church Christmas Party-OLD

Old Post: 12/3/2011

Will be moved shortly

Okay, so I'm totally playing catch up for the time in Germany before we left to the states for Christmas. How am I doin? I'm pretty much rockin, right? :)

So, a few days before we left, our church ward was having their Christmas party. Each auxiliary was in charge of one area.  Because I am in the Primary (the little kids, up to age 12), they put us in charge of the decorations. We were instructed to use very limited funds, make things out of paper and make it look homey.  The overall theme was Christmas Morning.

Lauren and I came up with the idea to have a fireplace, a wreath made out of all the Primary children's hands, and an ornament wall.  We had a ton of other really great ideas, but not enough time.  Suffice it to say, we were pretty proud of ourselves. Check out my rockin fireplace.  Woo!  Xanthe made the fire.  We did a pretty good job, right? :)

And before any of the church members not in our ward freak out that we used the chapel for our party, our ward building is very small and we use every space we can.  Soemthing I didn't get a picture of was the coloring stockings and cups of crayons that were placed on all the tables for the kids (and the adults did it too) to color while they were waiting.  The tables were covered in paper so they could draw on those as well. Then when they were finished, they came up to put their stockings on the ward fireplace.  You'll be able to see the stockings hung up 3 pictures down.  You can also see in this picture the wrapping paper covered hymn books the girls had the idea to do for the Young Women/Men singing. Cute idea.

This was after we finished setting up the night before. The paper links that are hanging on the wall didn't stay taped to the stucco wall (we already knew they wouldn't) so they became part of the table runner down the  middle.

This was the only picture I had of the wreath up above the front.  I also didn't get a picture of the ornament tree, but Lauren had taken pictures of every single kid and then made it into an ornament tree.  I'm bummed I didn't get a picture. It turned out really great.  P.S. that's the back of Lauren's head. :)

We had a little bit of a program after eating breakfast.  A few of the Young Women got up and spoke about their favorite Christmas tradition, Xanthe and Xoe were two of them.   Then the youth got up and sang O Little Town of Bethlehem.

You know how most kids ages 0-4 are deathly afraid of Santa, and you get those pictures of them being forced to sit on Santa's lap? Not Spencer.  He was so enthralled.  He didn't really have an idea of who Santa was so this year I just gave him a brief overview and got him a little excited.  I had no idea how excited he would get.  This picture is of him about ready to wet himself over having to wait even one extra minute to see him.  

A child in heaven. And what do you think was the only thing he asked Santa for?   Trains, obviously.  Oh, and train track.

Loving his treat from Santa.

Young Women in Excellence-OLD

Old Post: 11/17/11

Will be moved shortly

In our church, when the boys and girls turn 12, they enter a program called Young Women/Young Men.  The girls work out of a book called "Personal Progress" with values in the areas of: Faith, Divine Nature, Individual Worth, Knowledge, Choice & Accountability, Good Works, Integrity and Virtue.  When they have finished a certain amount in each area (which is usually by the time they are in their last year of high school), they work on a project that has a number of hours (I think it's 10 hours in each area). They then receive a medallion called the Young Women Medallion.  At the end of each year, they hold a banquet showing the goals they've worked on up to that point.

I have a picture of all the girls but I am wondering where it is.  I've organized all my files but can't find that picture.  Anyway, imagine there's a picture of a bunch of teenage girls here. :)

The start of one of their projects. Making a quilt.  (I had material to make one that my mom sent me, but as part of their project I felt like they needed to have experience picking the fabrics out, figuring out how much we need and cutting it into squares).  This is Xoe's material.

This is Xanthe's material.

Pictures of family

These are their journals the girls all made to record what they've done throughout the year.  They also had a goal to read the Book of Mormon in 100 days and record their thoughts about their readings.  Then pick a favorite scripture hero and share why.

Sarah Busby, a good friend of mine, and I.

 

Xoe & Morgan Myers. She's a Senior in High School and the girls love her to death. She's a really great example for them.