Calm after the Storm

The whirlwind of the holidays and a bout of the flu and finally a chance to catch up.

The few days before Christmas was a mad rush to finish making pajamas and putting together the kids' 2009 scrapbooks. James pitched in several hours to help so we could continue our tradition of opening up cozy, new PJs and a scrapbook for each child to lay around and look at on Christmas Eve.
Hyrum also got a badly needed haircut on Christmas Eve.



On Christmas morning, the kids were up at 2:30 and every hour thereafter until everybody else got up around 7 o'clock. I don't know what a hangover feels like, but that's the best way I know how to describe what I felt like on Christmas. Despite the "hangover," it was so fun to have everyone together at Mom and Dad's on Christmas day. Dax and Jennifer even came down for awhile.

We came home and unpacked and packed back up to head for winter fun at Camp Zarahemla.


There wasn't as much snow as we expected, but enough for some good sledding. We all had some good rides, but Sariah was the funnest to watch. She was tireless, and gutsy. No tears, even with the crashes.

We came home the morning of New Year's Eve, unpacked, and packed back up to head out to Dad and Mom's. It had started snowing pretty good and once we got out on the roads and realized how bad it was we wondered if we should chance it. The kids protested turning around, so with a prayer a maximum speed of 30 miles an hour we trekked on. As we crept toward our final destination, I knew we had made the right decision when I could see three large bodies with headlamps rolling the biggest snowball I had ever seen in the dark. Got the kids all dressed up in their snow clothes and within an hour they and Dax, Kase, Vard, and James had built the biggest snowman ever...ten foot five inches!


In this photo they are measuring their final engineered masterpiece. (For scaling purposes, those with headlamps are all well over six feet tall.) The nighttime snowman building experience was a memorable New Year's Eve for all.

New Year's Day found us playing basketball and eating pizza as usual. Enjoying the final hours of being together.

During the course of the whirlwind we were sleeping in very common quarters and Hyrum got into some BAD sleeping habits as I would cater to his cry not wanting to wake up others. The last night we slept away from home he was up every hour! With that, I was ready to come home and get life back in order.

So, Monday morning with that January burst of energy to clean up, clear out, and make fresh I was up and running. By Monday night, I was throwing up and as sick as I've been for a very long time. Now that I've been through it while James took care of me, and vice versa, we're hoping for a new Monday tomorrow to start fresh.