Gerrit's work has the most impressive of snack shelves.
This is the kind of thing you miss out on when you have been a stay-at-home mom for eleven and a half years and a work-from-home employee for the last nine years. What's a girl need to do to get that kind of snack cupboard? All I get are snacks that I buy for myself but get eaten by my kids unless I hide the food.
Most people cycle with their feet.
Not Elliott.
He decided that he was going to make our exercise bike work with his hands only for a full hour.
He succeeded!
Every year when I get new pictures, I get the chance to see the ones from previous years because I store them all in the same frames. This year, I decided to take some pictures of what I see when I open those frames.
The past eleven years of Miles!
These kids say the funniest of things! Miles is funny when he tries to tell jokes, and Elliott is funny when he is not trying to be funny at all.
Miles was telling me several of this category of joke:
*Want to hear a space joke? Sorry, I still need to plan-et.
*Want to hear a computer joke? Can't tell you, I'm still processing it.
*Want to hear a volcano joke? I haven't finished it, but I bet when I'm done you'll lava it!
Elliott desperately wanted to join in.
*Want to hear a plane joke? Sorry, I'm still plane-ing on it.
When this worked so well and we all laughed, he started telling all the jokes he could think of. Alas, this included punch lines like "I'm still orange juicing on it." Not quite as successful!
Elliott walked up to me holding Hugging Bear up to his face.
Look, Mom! I have a "bear"d!
I told Elliott we were having pie for dinner because I made leek and white bean mini-galettes.
Elliott: This can't be pie because pie does NOT have healthy stuff on it
I had to run some quick errands when the kids were home with colds. I put Miles in charge because I was only gone for half an hour. The older two kids thought I was only gone for five minutes.
Me: See, you didn't even know I was gone!
Elliott. "Mommy, I knew you were gone because I was literally calling your name over and over"
You kind of need to hear his delivery to see why this was funny. He wasn't sad or scared at all, just very matter of fact that clearly, someone did know I was gone and he needed me to know his evidence.
It wouldn't be December without a lot of special treats!
December starts out for us with Gerrit's birthday on the 6th and Brooke's birthday on the 7th, so I always make a special cake. This year's cake was a browned butter rice krispie treat cake. It has brown butter vanilla cake layers, homemade marshmallow fluff, rice krispie treats, and brown butter frosting.
I also made them a yummy chicken taco pizza and an avocado salad, but didn't get any pictures of those.
It wouldn't be Christmas without my yearly cookie and candy making!
The last time I made English toffee was a decade ago and it was a crystallized disaster. I was so thrilled when this worked out and was delicious!
Christmas M & M cookies.
Cherry icebox ribbons
Brooke kindly gave us Luminaria passes this year, so we went early in December to avoid A) potentially colder weather and B) potentially larger crowds near Christmas.
Does the tooth fairy have a frequent customer card?
If she does, Miles needs one. He just lost all four of his top canines and first molars in the course of three days! He lost his two bottom molars a month ago, and his bottom canines are wiggly. That's a lot of teeth in a very short amount of time!
A lot of Utah County has been built up very recently, but you can still see some beautiful old pioneer architecture if you know where to look. This particular house is one of my favorites.
It's in downtown Provo, and it's across the street from one of my favorite fabric/gift stores. I looked it up once and I found out it was owned by one of the Jesse Knight family members. He was a hugely wealthy pioneer mining company owner. I guess wealth can buy you an onion dome roof!
We had a small Thanksgiving with just our family this year. We've had a few smaller Thanksgivings with just one or two visitors, but this was our first year doing just us. I decided it was a good year to break from tradition! I don't love leftover turkey and I would have been looking at months of leftovers with only the five of us eating.
We still had our traditional cheese plate because Miles would be heartbroken without it.
For our main course, I made a chicken potpie galette, Gerrit's favorite sweet potato souffle, roasted brussels sprouts, and pomegranate. That pomegranate was going to be fruit salad but then I didn't feel like it.
Of course we were going to have pie! I thought that two pies would be bordering on too much. That was not at all the right assumption. I easily could have made one more pie and possibly even two more.
These were pumpkin praline and French apple tart.
We were able to share some food with Brooke and then have her come over for some masks-on, socially distant games the next day, so we did still have some family!
I love President Nelson and I am so grateful we have a prophet! I decided to follow his most recent counsel to share gratitude on social media on my Instagram Stories. My Facebook has felt like a really toxic place in the last several months, and I was just not up to the type of social interaction that might come by posting these on Facebook. The only downside with Instagram stories is that they disappear within 24 hours, so I'm posting them here to have them permanently.
I decided to look for the small things in each day that I am grateful for. I'm pretty good at remembering big categories like my family and the gospel...but can easily get bogged down in small hard things, so I though this would be the most helpful for me.
Day One: Grateful for a game night with my sister and the technology to do it from different states. Miles wrote a whole rhyming scavenger hunt for all of the younger cousins!
Day Two: Grateful for sewing. Sewing is my creative outlet, my stress relief, has introduced me to wonderful people, and teaches me all the time about progress and patience.
Day Three: Grateful for puzzles. I love all kinds of word puzzles, crosswords, logic puzzles, and escape room puzzles. We do a lot of puzzles from the Sunday New York Times and we also did our Toronto Finders Seekers. They're a mental break for me and also a way to bond with my kids.
Day Four: Grateful that the tooth fairy managed to make it before Miles woke up :) Also so grateful for libraries, for books for me, books for all the kids, and all their YouTube programming.
Day Six: Grateful for humor. Sometimes all I need is to read or watch something funny! For example, this Psych sign in the Harmon's bakery department completely turned around what started out a very stressful grocery trip.
Day Seven: Grateful for food. I've loved cooking for a long time!
