Another Month Gone By

So I've tried to update this a few times and last night I was ready to publish and the internet went down and I lost a lot of my post.  Then we got it up and running and I finished it again and the computer completely crashed and died a sad and unfortunate death.  I was in no mood for anything but a pity party.  I don'[t know if everything is lost for good or not, but thankfully blogger saved most of everything and I'm able to now finish this (fingers crossed) from our laptop...If you're reading this I guess all went well.  I just hope you know the sacrifice I went through to get this thing posted ;)

Let's see, another month has gone by and here I am trying to catch up again.  And once again I find myself smiling at the things I would have otherwise forgotten.

Jonathan came in for breakfast one morning with his spurs on.  Lane was completely fascinated by them as soon as he heard their jingling when he walked through the door.

I've been doing a lot of leather work lately, including starting on the saddles.  I have a hard time making decisions as it is; I'm the lady that holds up the line in Baskin Robins because I'm weighing my decision between mint chip and cookie dough as if the world relied on it. So naturally I had a really hard time deciding on a final design for my saddle.  After all, if all goes well it should last the rest of my life plus some, so that's a hard decision to make.  Anyway, the sketch above is basically what I've decided on.  I'll change a few things, but I think I'll be really happy with how it turns out :) 

I love it when it fluffy snowflakes are all clumped together and look like huge feathers falling out of the sky. 

We've had a few family members in need of a smile, so we traced Maggie's head and arms and sent them a hug from her.  It might have been the best way we've spent a Sunday afternoon in a while.  Maggie loved drawing her face and tracing the letters.  

Poor, poor boy.  I think this happens at some point to every boy with an older sister.

Lane's super long lashes.  People are always making remarks about how long they are.  

Maggie's cute horse drawing.

My mom just celebrated her 60th birthday.  I painted her this picture, which represents one of her favorite childhood memories that she's working to turn into a picture book.  This will hopefully keep her motivated.

I've been driving the tractor in the morning for Jonathan while he feeds.  My little helpers love to ride along and watch the cows.  Maggie and I have been naming all the cows that are anything other than plain black. Her best friend's middle name is Sue, so almost every name she comes up with ends with Sue. So I had to chuckled when I asked her what she wanted to name a particular cow and she answered, "Dinner Sue."

She's actually been on a roll lately.  One day she held up a pop can that was on the table and asked, "Mom, which animal makes Coke?"  

Leading up to the primary program we'd ask her what her part was to see if she had it memorized. One day when I asked her, she said, "I can be kind to my friends and say hi to them."  Then she looked at me and said, "you keep asking me that!  How do you not know it by now?"

Another day she said, "Mom, did you know that H says 'hhhhhuh'?  You know, like when you get done running, 'hhhhuh hhhhuh hhhhuh hhhuh'.  I knew I was out of shape, but I didn't know it was that bad ;)

 I must admit, we get some remarkable sunsets and sunrises here :)

This year we spent Thanksgiving with Jonathan's family and then did Thanksgiving again with my family on Saturday.  I was especially Thankful for two ovens; it made baking three batches of rolls much faster :)  

The candles on my mom's birthday cake were sparklers and maybe it was just me, but I was very nervous about them starting the carpet on fire while we were singing to her.  We had a surprise party for her and then gave her a total of sixty gifts.  

Jonathan's boss gave us a prime rib roast for Thanksgiving and I cooked it for our post-Thanksgiving-Thanksgiving with my family.  Cooking a $71 chunk of meat is a little intimidating, but it turned out good.  It was a little over done in my opinion, but I also like my meat on the juicy (read: delicious) end of the spectrum :)

Lane was ready to eat :)

This girl...sometimes I don't know what I'm going to do with her.  On this particular day she used a marker as lipstick, and the marker didn't wash off either.  And of course it was a day we had to go somewhere, so she ended up having blue lips all day.

Slem the elf is back!  Maybe I'm the only one that really struggles with this, but I want my kids to feel the magic and excitement of Christmas, but I also don't want it to distract from the real meaning of Christmas.  I also don't want to tie everything together to the point that when they start to doubt Santa, they also start to doubt Christ.  And I'll probably always struggle with finding a balance. Anyway, this year Slem came with a letter from Santa that told the kids he picked our family for Slem because he wants us to help remind Slem what the true meaning of Christmas is.  Slem gets into mischief and doesn't always make the best decisions, so Santa wanted Slem to observe a family centered on Christ.  Slem showed up with some scripture verses to read and corresponding pieces from our nativity set.  First we got the star for the top of the tree and read about Samuel the Lamanite.  Then we got Mary and Joseph, then baby Jesus, next came the shepherd's, and finally the wisemen to complete the set. I think it helped start the season on the right foot without putting the total focus on Santa. I really liked setting up the nativity a few pieces at a time in chronological order, and I think it will be a new tradition.    

Slem was resting on the handle to the cupboard, and without realizing it I accidentally shut his head in the cupboard when I opened and shut the cupboard next to him.  Maggie was really worried about what happened to him when she noticed and pointed it out to me.  I told her that he just wanted to see what was in there :)  

Lane loves watching the cows when we feed.  It's just me and him in the tractor when Maggie's at preschool.  Every once in a while he gets in the way or grabs a hold of the steering wheel and won't let me steer, but he's a good little buddy most of the time.

Slem's back to his usual mischief.  The kids got a kick out of him peeking through the side of the cereal box :)

Maggie singing in the ward Christmas party.  OUr ward put together a little skit of How The Grinch Stole Christmas, complete with someone wearing a Grinch suit.  As soon as he came on stage, Lane and a few others his age were immediately terrified.  It took the rest of the evening to get Lane to trust us that it was safe to go back into the cultural hall.  Poor guy, we never knew a ward Christmas party could be traumatizing.  It was all actually rather comical (yeah, I'm a mom of no sympathy...)

They handed out these tiny honey bears as gifts.  I love anything miniature, so this naturally is pretty high up on my "Cutest Things Ever" list.

This birthday cake was for a boy in our ward.  From this angle it looks pretty good; from a more eye-level point of view the ball looked sadly deflated.  Live and learn...the next cake I make that has a ball on it will be made a little differently.

Our neighbor flagged us down on our way to church and told us an accident had shut the interstate down.  Hearsay told us it was a jack-knifed semi, but no one ever knew for certain.  Anyway, Maggie was pretty confused why we were turning around instead of going to church.  We explained the situation to her and she told us we should just get out and walk.  She's a dedicated primary attender :)  We didn't walk, instead we waited an hour, checked the UDOT traffic report and headed back on our way so Jonathan could teach his primary lesson.  Apparently there's an unwritten law among the people of this tiny town that if the interstate shuts down and prevents said valley from attending church, no one shall try to make their way to church once the highway is back open.  My friend knew we were going to try and make it so Jonathan could teach and asked me to text her if we made it through the canyon okay.  Apparently after I texted her, word got around that we had made it to church and others either felt obligated to come as well, or said we made them look bad for staying home the other two hours.  The teasing was all in good fun, but next time I guess we'll think twice before making our way down after the highway opens ;)  Bishop did thank Jonathan for bringing half the ward to church with him, since there were quite a few that showed up after us and the attendance was pretty sparse without our valley.