Weekly Review December 30 '11

My last weekly review for 2011! Where did the year go? When I left off last week I had a batch of cookie dough in the fridge waiting to be made into cookies. We did that Saturday morning--the photo above is the end result.

For lunch we drove out to the pizza place where Scott worked for a while--we wanted to give his boss a plate of goodies and invite him to church. (He didn't come, but we tried!) His boss was happy to see us and gave us a gift certificate to come back for another meal for free. We had pizza, subs, and gyros for lunch--very yummy! It was a much more relaxing Christmas Eve than many we've had because we weren't cooking a fancy dinner. We had a simple "Bethlehem" meal instead--flat bread, humus, olives, clementines, dried fruit & nuts, cheese, crackers, and summer sausage. Most of us didn't eat much since we were still pretty full from lunch. Tanner & Frank delivered the last 12 Days of Christmas treat; then we watched Joy to the World (the church's video that includes reading the Christmas story from the scriptures and music by the Tabernacle Choir) and everyone got to open one present before bed. Seth took forever to fall asleep so we sent the other boys to bed, too--they wanted to stay up to be "elves".

Frank, Seth, and Snickers--relaxing on Christmas Eve

I woke up by 6:00, so I decided to get my shower out of the way--we knew the morning would be a little rushed with church at 11:00, and I needed to be there early. The boys didn't get up until about 7:30, so that was a good choice. Everyone seemed to be happy with their presents.

Jared got this nerf gun from his brothers--he has quite a collection! ( I guess this one is actually a disc shooter, not a dart gun.)

Seth's loot from everybody--Santa, us, brothers, grandparents...he was pretty spoiled.

Scott playing "transformers" with Seth.

Tanner tries out the new keyboard. The older boys got this and a Kinect for their XBox. That's mostly what they got, along with a few movies and games. They did not expect to get a keyboard so it was fun to surprise them! (We got a great deal online on Black Friday.)

I got a--project! Yes, that's a dollhouse. I've been wanting one for years and when I got a 50% off coupon for the only store in Frederick that sells dollhouses, I tipped "Santa" off and he took the hint. The problem is, there really is no place in this house for me to build it. (The instructions say you need a large space that won't be disturbed--doesn't exist!) So I am going to have to find someone willing to loan me their basement or I'm just going to have to wait until the older boys move out of the house and use one of their rooms! It'll be fun to build...someday.

Frank opening his metal detector. He was supposed to get one for his birthday this year, but he never got around to picking one out before he got laid off. So it had to wait and became a combined birthday / Christmas present.

After opening gifts and playing for a while, everyone else got showered and we went to church. I was singing four songs in a quartet as part of the prelude and Jared was helping with ushering. Our bishop had planned things out to help set the tone for a reverent and extra special Sacrament Meeting...a lot of the YM and YW were going to open the doors for people as they arrived and there was going to be 10 minutes of organ prelude followed by our quartet for 10 minutes before the meeting started. Unfortunately, the other ward which meets in our building (at 9:00) had an extra long sacrament meeting so when we arrived at 10:40 they were just ending and then they all stood around in the chapel visiting so it was basically bedlam for a while since our ward members were all arriving and trying to get to their seats and the other ward's members were blocking all the aisles and foyers. Oh well! I don't think the organ prelude happened at all, but our quartet got to start about 5 minutes to 11:00 and the meeting was really spiritual and uplifting anyway in spite of the rough start. It was nice afterwards to wish a lot of people Merry Christmas--we love our ward family!

After that we hurried home to change and get some rolls in the oven before going to have dinner with our friends, the Pedersens. They had us over for Thanksgiving, also. We had a nice ham dinner and pulled "crackers" too. It was fun--we all had to wear our paper hats from our crackers during dinner. The missionaries serving in our ward were there also. We were just a bunch of people without any family around banding together! :) It was a different Christmas but we enjoyed it.

Frank had Monday off, so we just hung out, relaxed, and played new games. (We did get some laundry done, too--weren't totally lazy!) Frank had to work the rest of the week so we didn't have any big plans. It was nice for the boys and I not to have to get up at a certain time in the mornings. I had a list of things I wanted to get accomplished over the break so I worked on those things. I didn't get a lot of it done, but it was a pretty ambitious list. At least I got started!

I had a visiting teaching appointment Tuesday morning and yesterday I took advantage of the boys being home to babysit and went to the temple. The traffic was horrible both ways, so that ended up taking up most of the day. They only have sessions every hour during the day time on week days, and I just missed one session so had to wait an hour for the next one. It was worth the wait, though! Last night I took Scott to buy some shoes--he had a gift card to spend.

The boys had several social events--Tanner spent the night at his friend Taylor's house on Tuesday and he has another sleep over at Ryan's house tonight. Scott played basketball with friends this morning, went to lunch, and now he and Allie are at a movie. All three boys went to a movie night last night with friends in the ward. They got home just after midnight--I never heard them come in! I woke up after 1:00 and had to go downstairs to see if they made it home--when I saw their shoes and cell phones lying around, I knew they were home! I didn't go back to sleep for hours after that, unfortunately.

We enjoyed watching BYU play their bowl game this afternoon. Well, maybe "enjoy" is not the correct word since we groaned through so much of it, but we couldn't find much fault with the defense and there were some pretty awesome offensive plays (although they were few and far between) and we are just happy that they managed to pull off a win in the end. If they were going for suspenseful, they certainly met that goal!

The weather has continued to be mostly mild this week. We had rain some days. Yesterday it was colder and it did actually snow--but only briefly. Today it is back into the 50s again. No complaints from me!

Seth is getting very independent lately. He was the first one up most mornings. This morning I didn't wake up until 8:00 (after my bad night) and I found him downstairs playing a game on the Wii--he turned it on and got it going all by himself. Yesterday while I was drying my hair (and no one else was up yet) I heard him moving things around. I went downstairs to see what was up and he had pulled most of the kitchen chairs into the living room, grouped them around the coffee table, put one of his blankets on the table for a "table cloth", and had just pulled 6 plates out of the cupboard so he could set the table. Then he put a piece of cheese on each plate. He woke up the older boys, saying "Get up! I made dinner!" I was impressed he managed to do all that himself--got out the correct number of plates for our family (he didn't know Frank was already at work) and the "table cloth" was even on the table nice and straight! I should have got a picture, but I was trying to get out the door to go to the temple. (If I'd known the traffic was going to be so bad, I would have taken the time to take the picture!)

Best wishes to all of you for a Happy New Year--welcome 2012!

Weekly Review December 23 '11

Winter break or spring break? If it weren't for the Christmas decor everywhere, I would definitely guess spring break! We are having such mild weather--many days this week the temperature was in the high 50's. It even got up to nearly 70 one day--ironically, that was on the 21st; the first day of winter! We've had quite a bit of rain as well. If it were colder, we'd definitely be having a white Christmas this year. The boys have been known to complain, but I don't mind one bit!

The weather was chilly enough that we did wear coats when we went to the temple grounds last Friday, as you can see from the photos. We had some family drama as we were getting ready to leave and Scott and Tanner decided to stay home, but the two younger boys came with Frank and I. The visitor's center is always all decked out with many beautiful trees. All the local stakes are responsible to decorate a tree. Here is Seth standing in front of our stake's tree:

And here is Seth trying out the camel by the nativity:

The lights are so beautiful! I didn't have a tripod with me, though, so unfortunately my pictures are pretty blurry:

Besides enjoying the lights, we also attended a concert done by a handbell choir--it was great! Jared and I saw the nativity set exhibit also. Frank stayed with Seth and let him wander through the visitor's center while we did that because Seth was getting pretty restless. The nativity set exhibit is done every year and includes sets from all over the world. They are always so amazing! (There are different ones every year, too.) Unfortunately I didn't have the camera with me when I was in the exhibit; I left it with Frank. One of my favorites was one that was black and white photographs of people in nativity dress attached to simple wood blocks. I think it would be cool to make one of those using photographs of family members. Another one was hanging on the wall--three framed pictures. One picture was a sillhouette of Mary, Joseph & baby Jesus, another was a sillhouette of the 3 wise men, and the third was a sillhouette of the angel and the shepherds. Behind each sillhouette was a copy of the sheet music for a different Christmas song. I also really loved a set from the Netherlands that was white and blue; it looked like fine china. It's always so interesting to see how the different cultures interpret the nativity.

Saturday was a busy day. Scott had a basketball game at 10:00. His team lost and he tweaked his knee a bit but he still was in good spirits about it. The boys did cleaning and organizing in their rooms. I can't say that their rooms are up to my standards, but they do look a lot better than they did. We cleaned the kitchen floor and cleaned the oven. My visiting teachers had me and the other two women they visit over for lunch; it was very nice!

Sunday was busy too--after church the boys had a practice for a song, then we had tithing settlement, and then I had another song practice. By the time I got home, it was time to start making dinner! We had another family in our ward over for dinner. They brought the dessert. They also brought us a bunch of rolls in a basket made out of bread (it was a work of art; wish I'd taken a picture of it) and this beautiful poinsettia plant:

We had a nice dinner and visit with them. Snickers was looking festive in his Christmas bandana:

He loves to sit on Frank's lap; he is looking up at Frank in adoration! In these pictures he is snuggling:

It is hard to get a good picture of Snickers because his eyes reflect the light from the flash. You'll have to trust me; he looks very cute!

The rest of the week was busy also. I'm really glad I got all my shopping done earlier! Monday morning I went to the church to help watch kids for moms who needed to get shopping or other Christmas projects done. There were a lot of women from the ward there to help so I didn't really end up doing much--most of the time we just visited! I also worked on stuff for YW that day, and of course that evening we had family night.

On Tuesday I went to the used book store again to look for some books for Scott--he is taking an AP Literature class next semester and they gave him a list of about 14 books that they are going to read for the class. He is supposed to read as many as possible before the class even starts. (He did read a few over the summer.) They want him to have his own copy of the books if possible so that he can write notes in them and so forth, so I thought if I could find used copies that would be much more economical. It was a good idea--I found all the books on the list except for two and they were each $3 or less. As usual, I didn't make it out of there without buying a couple of books for myself as well--but I was pretty good this time! I also had choir practice that night, Scott was gone all evening doing the sound for a show, and Frank & Tanner went home teaching. Frank and I also went to look at a house. We are not really ready to begin house searching in earnest yet, but this particular house was a really good deal so Frank wanted to go look at it. I should say look at it again, because we actually looked at it nearly a year ago. Yes, it is still on the market--and the price has dropped over $40,000 since the last time we looked at it. At the new price it would be very "do-able" for us and it still looks good--only needs minor work done--and it's big. Bigger than we need, actually. The catch is that there is already an offer on it, so the chances of us being able to actually buy it are pretty slim. We considered putting in an offer, but because another offer is already under consideration our realtor said they would not even look at an offer with a contingency that we sell our current house. We're not comfortable making an offer without that contingency in the current market so we are just going to wait and see if the other offer works out and then go from there. We aren't feeling ready to put our house on the market yet anyway.

Frank was starting to feel worse again on Tuesday and by Wednesday morning he really felt sick. He went to work that morning but after a couple of hours he was so miserable he decided to come home and go back to the doctor. His cough never did go away and besides that he had chills and his whole face was hurting. Not surprisingly, the doctor diagnosed a massive sinus infection. He put Frank on two different medications--one of them a very powerful antibiotic. Frank was pretty much down flat the rest of the day, but the medicine did it's trick and by Thursday morning he was vastly improved and able to go back to work. He is still coughing a lot, though. Hopefully he will get completely well soon; he has been sick for over 3 weeks now!

Meanwhile, Wednesday was a pretty busy day for everyone else. Scott went home teaching and Tanner made cookies for a school party the following day. That evening we all (even Frank, in spite of how sick he was) went over to the church for Scott's Eagle Court of Honor. His good friend David was also receiving his Eagle scout award. The meeting started a half hour late and Seth could not hold still to save his soul, but it was still a very nice ceremony. Among other things, they had 3 of the men who had worked with the boys in scouts talk about the boys and some of their experiences together, and they had some very nice (and sometimes funny) things to say about Scott and David. Afterwards, we had refreshments. David's family and our family went in together to get a cake:

Happy Eagle Scouts (and yes, that is Jared being crazy in the background):

Our three scouts (don't they look great?):

We let them be crazy for this one. (I said it wasn't a good idea to take the photograph in front of that picture of Christ, but they wouldn't move.):

Scott with Allie:

The two new Eagle scouts feeling giddy:

Sorry, I didn't manage to get a photo without a "fist pound":

Proud parents (see my new mother's pin?):

Seth wanted me to take his picture, too:

We are glad Scott finally reached this milestone! They asked him to say a few words and he thanked a lot of the people there for helping him to reach this goal, but especially his mom who kept pushing him (nagging would probably be a more accurate word, but he was nice enough not to use it) all those times when he wanted to give up. He got that right! ;)

We were tired when we got to bed but a good night's sleep was not on the cards--Seth threw up at about 1:00 in the morning so we were up a while with him and had some cleaning up to do. At least this time when I went in his room to find out why he was crying (and I could tell from the sound of his crying that it was not just a nightmare) and asked him what was wrong his response was "I need a bucket!" So we are getting there--at least he recognized the nauseous feeling and knew that it would be best not to throw up all over his bed even though we still didn't make it to the bathroom (or get a bucket) in time. That's a step in the right direction, right? Thankfully, this was one of those illnesses where they get sick pretty spectacularly just once in the night and then they go back to sleep and by morning you'd never know they were sick at all! By the time we got him cleaned up and settled down, though, I was wide awake and took quite a while to go back to sleep so it was a short night, as far as sleep goes. Seth didn't wake up until nearly 9:00 the next morning so I let him sleep. I took our car pool boy, Javier, to school at the right time but left Jared with Seth until he woke up. He actually woke up while I was gone so when I got home I got Seth in his coat and shoes and we went right back to the school--Jared was only about 15 minutes late. I kept Seth home, of course, but he never had any more problems. He sipped soda and by mid morning was ready for some scrambled eggs. By evening he was bouncing off the walls. Here he is with Tanner and Jared, watching "How to Train Your Dragon" on the touch screen computer. They looked so cute, the three of them together, that I took some photos:

Thursday was the last day of school for the kids, and they got out two hours early. Frank had a dentist appointment after work; his teeth are in great shape, thankfully. I made three batches of candy. Today we all enjoyed sleeping in, except for Frank--he still had to go to work. They shooed him out of there very early, though--he was on his way home by 11:30. I enjoyed grapefruit from Mesa, Arizona for breakfast--thanks to Erick & Liz, who sent us a box of citrus from there! I was a cookie making machine today. I spent all afternoon and into the evening making 4 batches of cookies. I still have one batch to finish tomorrow--I put the dough in the refrigerator. Here are the guys making the traditional paintbrush cookies:

I am now exhausted and every bone in my body aches from being on my feet most of the day. Remind me to never open a bakery! But here are the results of my two days of cookie and candy making:

Paintbrush cookies, spice cookies, snickerdoodles, chocolate fudge, butterscotch / peanut butter fudge, and buckeyes...yummy!

I made a lot because we are giving some of it away. The boys helped with the paintbrush cookies and Frank helped me with most of the other batches, which I appreciate! Now we are waiting up for Scott to get home--he went with Allie and some friends on a double date. They went to see the lights at the temple.

Tomorrow will hopefully be a bit more relaxing. Some friends invited us to dinner on Christmas day, so we are not cooking a fancy dinner tomorrow as we normally do. We will have a simple "Bethlehem" meal instead, which is what we normally do on Christmas day. This Christmas is going to be quite different from most since we have church also, but I think it is going to be very nice. I really like it when Christmas falls on Sunday.

We will be thinking of all of you and hope that you have a wonderful Christmas. We love you!

Weekly Review December 16, 11

Here is our house, looking "Christmas-y"!

This week was busy also, but it didn't seem quite as crazy as last week. I was home a bit more, at
least.

Last Saturday was kind of a relaxing day in a way--Frank was working most of the day and the
other car was in the shop so I didn't have transportaion and therefore had a good excuse to stay home! I did get a lot of things done around here, but it seemed restful for a change. Frank was doing work for a couple of companies that he did work for while he was unemployed. They wanted him to continue to do some jobs for him after he got his full time job, and since it is all things he can do after hours and on week ends, he agreed. More work has come his way during the last couple of weeks and it looks like he will have maintenance work to do for five different companies from now on. Is it a coincidence that this extra work has come to us right as we are entering the college / mission years for our boys? We don't think so--and we are very grateful!!

The Expedition was in the shop to have the heater looked at. Last winter the heater didn't seem to be working very effectively, and now it has quit working entirely. (We wish we'd had it looked at before now, but once we quit needing the heater, we forgot it wasn't working very well--until we needed it again!) Air blows through the vents, but it never warms up. The news about the heater is bad--the heat coil needs to be replaced. The heat coil costs less that $25, but apparently it is located in a very difficult spot so that the whole dashboard has to be taken apart to replace it, which takes hours and hours. So the labor to get it fixed would be between $1200 and $1500. The guy at the shop recommended we sell the car to someone in Florida, where they don't need the heater. We really don't want to do that, though. The rest of the car is fine and we only have about 3 more payments to make on it. So we're looking into other options. Frank read online that there is another way to get to the coil without taking the dashboard apart so we're going to try to find someone who is willing to try that out. In the meantime, we have had some cold mornings but overall the weather has been quite mild for this time of year, and we are grateful for that!
Ironically, the heat in Frank's car isn't working well either. The heater is fine, but the fan only
works occasionally so the air is warm but there is no way to blow all that warm air into the car. It's not as cold as my car, but it isn't nearly as warm as it could be. We need to get the fan replaced. I'm hopeful that it won't be as expensive as the Expedition repair.

Scott had a basketball game on Saturday but he didn't make it--he was too tired because of the show he's been working on at school. We heard later that his team won their game. He says they only win when he isn't there so maybe he should stop going to games! :) Saturday was also the annual "Museums by Candlelight" event here in Frederick but we didn't make it to that. Frank got home a lot later than he'd planned (early evening rather than early afternoon) so he was
tired. Besides that, it was the last night for the show Scott was helping with and he really wanted us to come see it, so I went to that instead. Frank wanted to go, but decided he'd better not because he still had a pretty wicked cough (still does). The show was done by the high school show choir and was called "Holidaypalooza". It was basically a bunch of Christmas songs--a few
done by the whole group, interspersed (sp?) with lots of solos, duets, and small groups. There were about four or five of the girls (Scott's friend, Collette, who is in the Frederick Ward was one of them) who are really quite talented with beautiful voices, but overall I was disappointed in the local talent! I still really enjoyed the evening, though. The enthusiasm of the kids made up for a lot! And that kid who did the sound did a fantastic job...oh yeah, that was Scott! :) He helped with the set, also, which looked very nice.

Our Sacrament Meeting on Sunday was done completely by the youth. It was very nice. Scott gave a talk; he did a good job. I'm still adjusting to not having a lot to do during meetings on Sundays. It seems strange to sit and listen to lessons, instead of giving them! (Nice for a change, though.) After church Scott had BYC and I had a song practice. The rest of the day was relaxing; we had family night also.

I had a presidency meeting on Monday, book club and choir practice on Tuesday, and YW on Wednesday. For YW we went caroling--it was combined activity with the YM. For book club we did a used book gift exchange; that's become a tradition for us every Christmas. I went to our local used book store to find something to give for that and not only found a couple of good books to give away, but also found 4 books in a series of 7 that I've been wanting to get for a long time--and they were only $3 each! (The Williamsburg series, Mom; remember that series?) I really love that store; I always find great books there for really cheap.

In between all of that and the usual chores, I also wrapped presents, made several phone calls related to doctor appointments (oh the joys of switching health insurance plans), cleaned out my closet, and spent a good portion of yesterday cleaning out Seth's room. His room was long overdue for a purge--I was surprised at how much baby stuff was still stashed in there! One other observation on that project: I suspect that toy cars have found a way to breed, because there were certainly a ton of them in his car bin that I have never seen before. Besides all those activities, we also began our 12 Days of Christmas service project on Tuesday, so we have been doing that each evening. Yesterday afternoon we took all the boys shopping so they could get Christmas presents for each other. Then we came home and did more wrapping!

Today I had a lot of errands to run--bank, pharmacy, Costco, a trip to Goodwill with 3 bags of stuff from Seth's room, and put air in the Expedition tires. The two front tires need to be replaced, I'm afraid. We are planning to go to the temple grounds tonight to see the lights and to attend a concert.

Scott had another busy week. The holiday show is over now, but he was asked to help with the sound for a couple of other events at the high school this week. He will probably be doing more of that throughout the school year. He will get paid for some of them, which is nice. Scott went to Institute with a friend on Thursday evening. His good friend Allie is home for Christmas (she's been out in Utah at LDS Business College) so I expect we will not be seeing a lot of him the next few weeks.

Frank received good news at work this week--they said they have decided to start the paperwork process to get him hired as a Marriott employee because everyone on his team agrees that they want him to stay. After our last experience with Marriott paperwork, I expect that it will take at least 6 weeks before he is actually a Marriott employee, but it is nice to know that they definitely want him to stay and that they're starting the process.

Recently Frank acquired another computer for us. One of his clients had a computer with a crashed hard drive. The hard drive was beyond fixing, but Frank happened to have a hard drive here at home he'd picked up somewhere along the way so he replaced the bad hard drive with the one we had. (The client decided they didn't want to bother to get the computer fixed and told Frank he could have it.) Now the computer works fine, and it is a very nice touch screen computer. The boys love it! Here is Seth, showing it off:

We are really lucky that Frank is so talented at fixing computers! We have picked up a lot of nice computers this way. (The price we pay in return is that we have a house full of computer cords and various computer parts. They have completely taken over Frank's office and are now working their way up the stairs! Really, I should post pictures--you would not believe it! No one is bothered much by this except me.)

Well, only one more week until Christmas! It is hard for me to believe. This was my wrapping / organizing week. Next week is my baking week. I think that's all I have left to do to be ready. My goal for next week is to have less bickering and tension in our home--it's been unusually difficult the last few weeks, for some reason. Just wanted you to know we are not perfect! :)

The History Behind Our Christmas Tree

Here is a picture of our Christmas tree that I took this morning. (It's kind of dark.) I've seen a lot of trees that are beautiful works of art. That is not the case with our tree, but I love our tree because our tree has lots of memories wrapped up in it. Our tree has soul! That's because every ornament on our tree is unique and many of them represent a certain year in the life of our family. When Frank and I got married, we decided to get one new ornament for our Christmas tree each year. We tried to find an ornament that would represent an event from that year or something important that had happened to us. In some cases, our year's ornament was something I made myself or else an ornament that was given to us. A few ornaments even came from before we got married. Here is the first one:

I got this ornament at Christmas in 1989 while I was on my mission, serving in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It is a representation of a "Moravian star". I had never heard of the Moravian church before coming to Winston-Salem, but there are many members of this church in that area. Many Moravians hang a white, lighted version of this star over their front doors.

I got this ornament at a gift shop in Brevard, North Carolina in December 1990 while I was still on my mission. I thought it was beautiful, and I also liked that it had the cardinal on it, which is the North Carolina state bird. It's nice to have an ornament from Brevard because Frank and I met in Brevard. (The next month, actually--in January 1991.)

I don't have an ornament from 1991, but in 1992 we started our "yearly ornament" tradition in earnest. Of course, this year we had to have an ornament for "Our First Christmas Together" since we got married in 1992. My mother in law got this ornament for us.

We bought our first car in 1993, so our ornament for this year is a car. (Up until then, we were driving cars that belonged to my parents--a silver VW Rabbit and a tan Ford Astro. They were very generous to let us use their cars! I don't know what we would have done without them.) Our first car was not a 1959 sky blue Thunderbird, but it was blue--a 1989 Hyundai Sonata. It was a great car!

I made this ornament in 1994 out of wooden beads. This was also the year we became parents! Pretty momentous, but we didn't find an ornament to represent that. We did add two "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments to our tree that year, but they belong to Scott, not to us.

I made this icicle ornament out of beads the Christmas of 1995. It was fairly simple to make and turned out pretty (it's kind of washed out in the photo). I also made a bell out of beads this year. It was much more complicated than the icicle and turned out beautiful, but unfortunately, it broke several years later and I haven't been able to figure out how to put it back together. I still have it though--I can't bear to part with it because it took so much effort to make!

Tanner joined our family in 1996. He also had a "Baby's First Christmas" ornament. We took a vacation to Washington / Oregon / Idaho this year, but we forgot to get an ornament so the only ornament we added to our tree this year was the gingerbread boy shown above, which was given to us by a neighbor. Sorry, that is not a very good picture!

In 1997, we moved from Utah to New York state. This ornament represents the traditionally harsh winters of western New York, although actually the winter we spent in New York wasn't too bad. We've had more snow in Maryland than we had in New York that year. Frank was very disappointed!

The Christmas we were in New York, I was invited to an ornament exchange party by one of the women in the Fayette Ward. This party had become a tradition in that area; I think it is nice that they invited me, a newcomer. The rule was that the ornaments had to be homemade. There were about 14 people at the party so I have several beautiful hand made ornaments on our tree from that year. I love hanging them up because they remind me of the many wonderful friends I made during the time we lived in New York. The clothespin reindeer above is the ornament I chose to make for the exchange--I had a few left over.

In 1998, we visited New York City (Erick & his family came with us) and saw the Statue of Liberty, so our ornament came from there this year.

I also made this ribbon ball ornament in 1998. I still remember making it because I was very pregnant with Jared at the time and I remember my back was hurting and I was very uncomfortable! But the end result was worth it, I thought.

Our ornament for 1999 was this Delaware Quarter ornament. That's because we lived in Delaware the whole year in 1999. (Moved there in October 1998 and moved away in March 2000.) This ornament is one of Jared's favorites because he was born in Delaware.

We purchased our first house in 2000 when we moved to Maryland, so our ornament for this year is a house. I couldn't find a house that looks like our townhouse, but I thought this little house was cute.

The year 2001 was our first whole year living in Frederick, Maryland so I purchased this "Clustered Spires" ornament. Historic downtown Frederick has many beautiful old churches and the skyline really does look like the one portrayed in this ornament. The phrase "Clustered Spires" comes from the poem "Barbara Fritchie" by John Greenleaf Whittier: "Up from the meadows rich with corn, / Clear in the cool September morn, / The clustered spires of Frederick stand / Green-walled by the hills of Maryland..." Look it up and read it! It's about a legendary event that happened in Frederick during the Civil War.

We took a crazy weekend trip to Nauvoo, Illinois in the spring of 2002 so that we could attend the openhouse for the newly rebuilt Nauvoo temple. I wanted the boys to be able to see the inside of a temple and this particular temple was very special, of course. I was thrilled when my parents sent us this ornament for Christmas--a perfect reminder of something important we did in 2002.

We took a trip to New England in 2003 to visit Hans in Boston. We also visited Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont as well as driving through Connecticut and Rhode Island. We visited many interesting places including the Joseph Smith birthplace and the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream factory (both in Vermont), which is where we got this ornament. It reminds us of this special trip.

My Mom & Dad came to visit us in 2004. One of the places we visited was Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello, near Richmond, Virginia. We got this ornament there.

We visited Utah in 2005, but didn't get an ornament there. However, a friend gave us this ornament when she visited Philadelphia. We watched her three boys for a few days so that she could take this trip with her husband.

In 2006, we took the boys up to the Palmyra New York area and visited all the church historical sites up there. Although we used to live in this area, we wanted to go again because Jared had never been there and the older boys were too young to remember most of those places. We also loved seeing the Palmyra Temple, which was built after we moved away. We got this Sacred Grove ornament to remember our visit to the area. I like the fact that this ornament represents a miracle, also because we found out we were expecting Seth this year, and that was a miracle too!

Seth joined our family in 2007, so we weren't able to take a vacation this year. However, in November we visited nearby Washington DC and took a tour of the Capitol Building--one of the things we had not done in DC yet.

We visited Frank's family in North Carolina during the summer of 2008. One of the things we did while we were there is we camped for a couple of days. I couldn't find an ornament representing camping, so I got this photo ornament and put in a picture of the boys taken in front of our little cabin.

We have two ornaments for 2009. The first one has a photo of Snickers, because he joined our family in January 2009, when he was 6 weeks old.

We also visited Hans and Griffin in the Boston area in August of 2009. One of the things we did while we were there is to visit the Minute Man National Historical Park near Concord. We got this ornament there.

We had a wonderful family reunion in Utah in June 2010. We did a lot of fun things while we were in Utah; one of them was to visit the BYU campus (old stomping grounds for Frank & I). We got this ornament to represent our trip to Utah.

That brings us to this year, 2011! Our ornament this year is very special. We were not able to go on a vacation this year and when I thought back over this year I was kind of stumped about what to do for an ornament. The most significant thing that happened to us this year was we were unemployed for 4 months but what kind of an ornament could represent that? (And who wants to commemorate unemployment anyway?) Then I saw this watering can ornament at the store and this phrase from Malachi 3:10 popped into my head: "...and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." What a perfect thing to remember about this year...that in spite of unemployment, we were incredibly blessed that we never were in want in any way. It was truly a miracle and I feel so grateful every time I think about it. This is what I want to remember about this year...and never forget! So I bought the watering can, created a label with the words from Malachi on it, and added a Christmas pick to make it look more "Christmas-y".

So there you have it! We have many other ornaments that have been given to us over the years to round out our tree. Each of the boys also has an ornament for each year of his life, given to him by Grandma & Grandpa Pew. There are stories behind many of those, as well. Our tree is not a color-coordinated work of beauty, but it is a hodgepodge of family memories, and that's why I love it!