Festival of Lights

The Temple Visitor Center hosts concerts every night in December in conjunction with the Festival of Lights and they ask each stakeholder to provide dinner one or two nights for the missionaries serving there. I signed up for the first night on December 5th and since Susanne handled it all last year and Sarah was put in charge of the parking attendants, I handled this one. 

I first reached out to all the families of missionaries serving from our stake, and then I hit up Pax and LP. We did soup, salad, bread, and desserts and everyone stepped up and it was great and easy to drop it all off. And I got to see our Suitland Stake tree. 

I dropped the food off and then went to the space car for a minute and saw a fox running through the parking lot! We always think of Harvey whenever we see foxes (which I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen one) and this felt like a hug from all my heavenly family. 

I drove up in my exercise gear and went for a run. 

That’s a view of the temple I’ve never seen before. 

I worshipped in the temple and then went back to the visitor center to pickup the crockpots and dishes. These cute missionaries were just barely getting their dinner so I grabbed a shot of them. They were part of the “Polynesian Cousins” show and Matt thought that was the funniest thing ever. 

So beautiful. I need to figure out how they put their lights up, they’re perfect. 

St Nicholas came the next morning. 

Adi 🤦‍♀️ 

And Frankie. 🤗

My mom got these for each of us a few years ago and I somehow ended up with 2. Now that we’re orphans these things have become even more meaningful, so I checked to see who wanted it. It was Amy. Good thing I haven’t been to NY 8 times in the last month. 🤦‍♀️ 

Back to the grind

December 1st was a Sunday which meant I was able to go to our ward with the fam. Adi drove and I cruised in the back with these fools. 

I hadn’t been to our ward in several weeks and it was so nice, it was a really lovely day of rest. 

I always get the girls 3 advent calendars and let them rotate opening them. This year I got them a crossstich calendar that I thought looked so fun. Delaney tried the first day, but it was harder than I thought it would be. Specifically getting the needle through the fabric, which was surprising. Can you guess how far we’ve gotten since then? 😒

We also sprung for a fun, giant Harry and David adventure calendar. The days have been delicious. 

They also got a Sephora one and my dad had gotten us a cute Taylor Swift one. ❤️ I’ve never met an advent calendar I didn’t like. 

We had a surprise from Johnna when we went to piano that Monday. She got us the prettiest bouquet of cupcakes and an ornament. 

We cried together and then when we went back to the car we promptly helped ourselves to a cupcake. They were as delicious as they were beautiful! Johnna is amazing. I disagree with her about a lot of things, *and also* she has a heart of gold. She’s one of the most giving people I know. Lots of things can be true at the same time. 

❤️ 😢 

There are a lot of moving party’s from now until Christmas, and I messed up one of them that day. I thought Delaney was supposed to be at balled at 4 instead of 6 for Nutcracker rehearsal, but thankfully I checked right before Delaney went in, and realized it was Friday she needed to be there early for. So lemonade from lemons, we went shopping. We’re so excited to have a girl baby to shop for!-

D wanted to get this for the boys so we checked with Lu and they already have it. 

I have been looking for a Norfolk pine garland for awhile and the one I want from Hobby Lobby has been sold out. So I finally ordered one off a Facebook ad, and then when it didn’t arrive after a week, I started to get suspicious. Sure enough, it was from china and I knew it was going to be terrible quality. This is not what was advertised. I reached out to them and they offered to refund me 20%, which honestly, fine. 🤷‍♀️

I’m trying to up my elf game this year. I have fun when I have ideas and am prepared, so I screenshotted a bunch of ideas over thanksgiving break and I’m going through them each day. 

I was talking to Lexi on the 3rd and we were both talking about how we weren’t ready for Christmas. Her because they’re moving and me because I spent all of November in NY. Anyway, I offhandedly mentioned we didn’t even have our regular chocolate advent calendars, and when I got home from relief society that night, these were on our porch. I have never door dashed anything, so I couldn’t believe it and didn’t know how they’d managed it. 🤣 I have the most thoughtful kids. 

What’s really funny about this is that i wrote this sign around midnight and I was pretty tired. On my was walking past to my bed I looked at it one more time and realized I had written “shark infested water.” 🤣 Kind of defeats the purpose, so I changed it to “croc infested.”

I went a lovely RS Christmas party that night. I love to go to different ones around the stake, but only managed to make it to my own wards, which is ok. 

We brought socks and had a little gift exchange and enjoyed yummy snacks. 

New York wrap up

Sandy, Matt, and Frankie went to Tractor Supply early Friday so Amy and I went for a walk. We ended up going 6 miles and it felt so good to be outside moving since it had rained all day Thursday. 

Our big outing for the day was to go see Wicked. (Sonic was the most accessible prop for posing)

On my last trip north we’d gotten everyone matching sweaters, so this was an obvious day to twin. 

I thought the movie was so fun and had a really great message but the other adults found it boring. And that is evidence 1 million that when it comes to movies in a theater I am a simple dog, I just like being there. 

Our boy bookends are always an little unruly. 

We were at a mall and Adi really wanted to go to Marshall’s, so then this happened. 

They were working it and owning it. 

The theater was 30 minutes away and there were 9 of us so we squeezed into the minivan and everyone was adorable. 

This blury shot was right before i accidentally squeezed the special Wicked soda cup I was holding between my legs and got a seat full of cold and sticky soda. I went to take a shower and Matt cleaned it up for me. Uncomfortable ride home. 🤣

The next morning this crew was up early for some reason so I found them watching a movie in the movie room. We packed and got on the road at our goal time of 10. 

It started off promising but pretty quickly we hit some slow downs. It was never completely stopped, but it was pretty slow in parts. We stopped a few times for food and bathrooms breaks and finally rolled up into Annapolis around 4, when we should have been getting home. I had been texting Alecia earlier and she mentioned cafe rio and I got excited and had to stop there for dinner. We were almost done eating when the Darrow’s walked in. I was so surprised since they had so much farther to drive, I thought they’d be a couple hours behind us. Different roads and different traffic, and fine, different stopping habits. 🤣 Anyway, I hadn’t seen them in forever so we stayed and visited while they ate. We unpacked the car and went straight to bed, we were so tired, which really is the story of the holiday season. Running to all of the fun and good and sometimes not fun but important things we fill our lives with until we crash into our beds. Everyone and their brother being either really sick or just a touch sick (except me somehow!) doesn’t help. Anyway, we had a lovely trip and I’m so glad we made the last minute decision to go. It was just the change of scenery and pace that I needed.  

Thanksgiving 2024

It was so fun to watch the parade after having seen all the balloons! We think we saw every balloon and almost every float. Fat George came right up to me and cuddled for hours. 

Kristi came over with her girl dog Sasha and Sandy’s dogs kept trying to get to know her if you know what I mean. These non animal owning girls could not get it together everyone the dogs tried to get friendly. 🤣🤷‍♀️

There was some back popping and game playing going on. 

Also some sibling orphans sharing thanksgiving photos. #thesunwillcomeouttomorrow

… 👆🏼literally because it rained all day on thanksgiving. 

I found myself playing games with the kids and Frankie chatted with Amy and Sandy while they cooked and all of that resulted in the first time in at least 25 years that I didn’t raise a finger for thanksgiving dinner. It was weird and wonderful. 

It was a very simple and pared down thanksgiving, and Amy assured me it was fine to play with the kids. 

Crazies. 

Because they have a table with a bench seat there was a lot of sliding out from under the table. 

Lest you think we’re total bums, the Rays did do the cleanup, (they mostly cleaned as they went so it wasn’t a lot). A few more games and another late night talking and that ended our first holiday without our dad. It was a little subdued, but not because it was sad, only because it was simple. 

Parade Balloon Inflation

My biggest driving force in our last minute decision to go to NY for thanksgiving was to see the parade floats being blown up. It feels like inching closer to being able to see the actual parade and that’s a bucket list item. 

We took the train into the city and it was so easy! The station is 10 minutes from Amy’s house and less than an hour train ride. 

It was Matts first time at Grand Central Station and he was stoked. He was signing up to win a trip to Costa Rica while we grabbed a pic of their Christmas tree. 

Last time I was in the city I had the best bagels from a little place called Ess-a-bagel, so that was my first priority. 

Amy took the kids window shopping and Matt and I hoofed it over there. 

Little angels waiting patiently for their bagels. 

We met up with them there and almost everyone enjoyed their bagels. Max was disappointed that his chocolate chip cream cheese bagel tasted like cheesecake. 🤣

We took in the sights and got hot chocolate and took a bunch of pictures of the Louis Vuitton “building.” 

Max and Delaney hiding behind Matt and I. 

And then Matt not getting the memo to scooch over. Group picture taking is never boring. 

The whole walk smelled SO good! It was this delicious Christmas smell from my childhood Christmas scratch and sniff books. It took awhile before we figured out that they were piping the scent from these displays every block or so. I know some people don’t like artificial scents or they get a headache, but I love them! This was such a fun addition to the day. 

Just before 2 we cued up with thousands of holiday goers to see the balloons. 

They literally just corralled everyone and we weren’t totally sure what was going on. 

We did the “suspect” challenge and laughed at/with each other while we waited. 

Whenever i take a group selfie I ask everyone to make sure they can see their face because it’s too much for one person to keep track of. This crew isn’t great at that. 

An hour in and the old confetti proved v fun. 

We went through a security gate and then crisscrossed through lines delineated by this fencing. 

An hour and 15 minutes and there’s the turkey!

It was really fun to see these giant balloons we’ve watched on tv every year!

For the boys who were minions for Halloween. 

It was also fun on thanksgiving when we found that we really had seen all the balloons. 

Bluey is so popular that they didn’t even lift her and there were still tons of people taking pictures. 🙋‍♀️



Adi had said she didn’t feel great about 30 minutes into our ballooning, and when this bench was open she asked if we could take a little break. I felt bad for her because she had been pretty sick all week and very tired, but she wanted to see the floats so we let her come. 

We let her rest for a bit and continued our tour. 

Poor baby. ❤️

Jolly green giant! 💚 

We saw skme dancers practicing and then Santa’s float was last. 

Adi had really started to not feel well, so we decided not to stay in the city for dinner and started making our way to the train station. She said “I’m gonna throw up!” and Amy tried to steer her to the gutter and I tried to steer her away from people but opposite to the gutter and she spewed right on the sidewalk. We were able to sit her down and she went a few more times in the gutter. We called Ubers and got her to the train station as fast as we could and luckily it was an express train so we made it home in 30 minutes. After she threw up she felt better, but still. 🤢 

We set the kids up with pizza and the adults headed out for a delicious Mexican dinner and then home for games and late night talks about Sister Wives and other important things. 

Meanwhile in Alabama the crew went to the drive in to see Moana. 

I love that while I was in NY with my sissy, Alexis and Christian were together with their families in AL together. I love that my kids love each other, and even though the girls are weirdly mean to each other outside of our home (and at seminary 🤷‍♀️) they, 75% of the time get along really well and I know they’ll be just like this when they grow up. 

I love a good drive in and thanksgiving and family time.