And a Partridge In a Pear Tree

On the third day before Christmas, I truly did this stuff:

Eight loaves of bread
Five dozen sugar cookies
Five homemade ornaments
Three loads of laundry
Two loads of dishes
One pot of chili

But, sadly, no wrapping presents.  Yet.  The night, she is still young.

Christmas Carol FAIL

Dear Mrs. P,

I am SO sorry that we didn't make it to your house tonight.

I had mixed up my children's teachers--we got Mrs. H's address from her at SEPs.  When I went to find the address from SEPs, to my surprise it matched the address for Mrs. H--not your address. "No problem," I thought.  "I will just google Mrs. P and find her address that way."

Guess what?  There is a [your exact name] in Salem, Utah.  There is also a [your exact name] in Payson, Utah.  Neither of the ones we found were you, unfortunately.  (But we did carol to a lovely woman in Payson who is undergoing heart surgery on Friday.  So perhaps we were able to add a little Christmas cheer to her.)

Is there another evening this week that we can come?  If not, I understand.  We are really sorry about missing you tonight.

Keryn Ross

directionally and address-ally challenged

Some Holiday Cheer

I'm off being very busy (and my children aren't even teenagers yet, oh my!), but I thought you'd enjoy this link to "27 worst nativity sets".  It's inspiring.  I think #34 is my favorite.

Happy Sigh

Today has been a very nice day.

It started out nice when we were all miraculously ready for church at 8:35.  And I woke up at 7:45.  And Bradley was at a meeting.  AND there was no yelling.  So, definitely a miracle.

It turned even nicer when, upon arriving at church, we were informed that because the boiler servicing most of the church was broken, we would only be holding sacrament meeting today.  (The chapel has a separate heater.)  Don't get me wrong--I love church.  But right now Yummy is at the stage where she's too young to go to nursery, but too old, bored, and loud to stay in my classes.  So the last two hours of church are spent wrestling with her right now away.  I was thrilled to be spared that!

When we arrived home after choir (held in the chapel) and scout committee meeting (held in the gym), it was only eleven in the morning!  I took the extra time and made two batches of bread for Christmas gifts.

And then we went Christmas caroling!  We visited five families, and...drumroll please...ALL five were home.  That NEVER happens.

It was great.  We had a wonderful time, and it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

Primarily Speaking...

I've started this post six times already, and I've erased them all.  I think my brain is fried.

So I will just say that we spent the day up at Primary Children's Hospital, having Gee's routine yearly bladder check.  It was about as fun as you might expect, and I am emotionally drained.  Some of the results weren't as great as we could like, and it is possible an MRI is in his near future.  Yay.

(But not to worry:  None of the results are very very scary, just potentially point to surgery in the next couple of months.)

But I have to tell you--in the waiting room before his CMG, there was a cute little two or three year old boy with adorable brown curls.  He was bouncing around, playing with the toys, and every so often his mother would gently correct or redirect him.  "Master, let the other little boys play with that," or "Master, don't tap on the fish tank."  

"That can't be his name," I thought to myself.  "I must be hearing it wrong.  Perhaps it is Mateo or Matthew or Aston or something."

Something you should know:  At Primary, when your child is going to have surgery, you wear a name tag with your child's first and last name written on it, so the nurses and assistants and everyone know who they need to talk to.

So I ever so casually turned around to check out the mother's name tag.  And what was written on the tag?

"Master Bang"

I...I don't even know what to do with that name.  Who DOES that?

Non-standard Gingerbread Man

Today is shaping up to be a semi-difficult day (Stubborn child? Check! Call from school? Check! Lunchtime detention? Check! Exasperated mother? Check!), so let's have a little moment of levity before we plunge once more, dear friends, into the fray.

While I was at the school dealing with the above mentioned situation, Gee's preschool teacher stopped me in the hall.  "Come down to class when you are done here," she whispered.  "I have a funny story to tell you."

In desperate need of something humorous, I duly stopped by.  As I arrived, Miss E. was carefully taking m&m decorated gingerbread men off a cookie sheet.  She waved me over.

"This one is Gee's," she said, pointing to a fairly unexceptional gingerbread man.  "While he was decorating it, he--" she paused to stifle laughter.  "He put a candy right here,"--pointing between the poor defenseless cookie's legs--"and said, 'And here is his [anatomically correct word for the body part found there].' We just about died laughing!"

The classroom assistant, Grandma B., chimed in.  "We convinced him that we didn't need that one there, and moved the candy to a different place.  But you can still see the indentation!"

And, sure enough, you can.

Good to know that my discussion of body parts (preparatory to the catheter regime we are about to start) has sunk in.  Now, to teach him a little discretion.

Christmas Shopping, or my Grinch-y post for the season

I am almost done with Christmas shopping, hooray!  I need to buy a new scripture case for Zee (the one we gave him for his baptism is too small), and a few extended family gifts need to be selected and obtained, but for the kids, I am DONE.

And I did 90% of it from home, online.  I love Amazon.  (Swoon.)

Of course, I need to wrap all of it now.  It's all sitting in boxes in the corner of my room--fortunately my children aren't particularly snoopy.  (I imagine that this year is the last year I can get away with hiding things in plain sight.)

But do you know what the problem with finishing your Christmas shopping early?

Fickle children.

Last year it was the Pillow Pet.  Two days before Christmas, my children were watching television and one of those dreadful commercials came on.  "It's a pillow!  It's a pet!  It's a Pillow Pet!"  And the clambering began:  "Ooooh, Momma, I want Santa to bring me one of those!"  "I want a Pillow Pet for Christmas!"  "Pillow Pet Pillow Pet PillowPetPillowPet!"

I had to put my foot down and tell them that Santa was not bringing them expensive, overhyped pillows for Christmas.  There was sadness, at least until the next shiny thing distracted them.

And of course they were perfectly happy come Christmas morning, with the gifts they received.

This year it is Gee who is giving me fits.  He has decided he wants a camera, like Zee got for his birthday.  Nevermind he hasn't so much as mentioned a camera until three days ago.  No, a camera is what he has his little heart set on for Christmas morning.

The problem is I already bought his birthday and Christmas presents.  I even ordered a special rescue helicopter Duplo Lego set from the Lego company in Europe, for heaven's sake.  (Okay, they probably have a warehouse here in the United States.)  I have no intention of buying a digital camera for my almost-five-year-old boy who can't keep track of his free Burger King toy from day to day.

So now I need to break it to him that Santa won't be bringing him a camera for Christmas.  The thing is, I know that he will love the gifts I got for him.  I want him to be prepared so he won't be disappointed Christmas morning.

Wow.  Parenthood is full of sometimes unexpected pitfalls.  Good thing those kids are so darn cute.

I Didn't Die

Hi.

How are you doing?

Me, I'm fine.  A shocking slacker, but fine.  Good even.  Perhaps even fabulous.

You don't want to read about how busy I've been (which, looking back, isn't even that busy.  How pathetic!), so let's skip all that stuff and get to the goods.  I promise I will post all about Thanksgiving, our totally awesome and stomach-flu-filled trip to Colorado (and I'm not even being sarcastic about the awesomeness of it), Gee's favorite new outfit, scouts, school, science fair...not because you, Gentle Reader, particularly care, but because this is a journal for my family.  And it must be kept up, for the children for heaven's sake.

So:  About the sodium hypochlorite accident.  I survived, you see.  I never even bruised, except the tiniest bit under my eye.  And I have dark raccoon circles under my eyes anyway, so you couldn't tell.  I was very swollen for the first 48 hours, slightly swollen for the next two days after that, and then on the fifth day only I could tell it was still swollen.  The most fascinating (and most disgusting) part was when I would gently press on the swollen parts.  They would CRINKLE loud enough for people standing next to me to hear.  (I totally grossed out my sisters in Colorado with this trick.)  It sounded and felt like I was popping little bubbles, like in bubble wrap.  Gross!  (But secretly so cool.)

I had a little pain on the day of the incident, and that night my arms and legs kept falling asleep, no matter how I moved them.  It was clear to me that they were swelling up a little (maybe from the steroid?), so I nervously removed my rings, but kept my watch on to have a marker of the amount of swelling.  But then I fell asleep, and when I awoke I was still alive and my limbs were back to normal.  Oh, and when we went over the two really high passes in Colorado (Vail and Loveland), I felt pressure in the swollen parts, but it was never painful.

So there you go:  What to Expect When You Have a Sodium Hypochlorite Accident.  Perhaps I should consolidate it into an e-book and sell it on Amazon, for all 14 people per year who might need it.

It is the autumn of odd medical events, for I had my very first migraine on Sunday.  It started with an aura (bright lights in my left eye), and then, over an hour, I started to feel a tightening on the right side of my head.  Then the headache came, but fortunately I was able to take some ibuprofen and sleep it off (yay for Sunday naps and awesome husbands!).  After five hours, it was mostly gone.  I feel really lucky, because if it was a migraine, it was a really mild one.  I do sincerely hope that it is my first and last, because I somehow doubt they will always occur so obliging right after church and my husband's meetings.

The sprained ankle, the dental incident, and the migraine.  Let's stop there, shall we, before I end up with gout.