More Holiday Fun

Christmas got into full gear once everyone started to arrive.  "Everyone" is my sister Sue and her husband Dave, and their friend, Malick, followed by my parents a few days later.  Dave is in the National Guard, and is in Officer Training Camp down in Fort Benning, GA, so we were lucky enough for them to drive up and spend Christmas at our house. 

Malick is also in OTC (see how good I am with the lingo?  But actually, not at all.  I'm really half guessing, and Susannah is going to have to correct me) and is an international officer from The Republic of the Gambia, referred to "the Gambia" for short. 

Not being from here, he didn't have anywhere to go for Christmas, and so he would have had to spend the whole two weeks of leave by himself on the base.  Not exactly full of the Christmas cheer, you might say.  Dave and Sue, in their generous spirit, wanted to do something about that, so they called up and asked if he could come with them, and we were glad of the opportunity.

They arrived Tuesday night, and we didn't do a whole lot the first couple of days, mostly just hung out and watched movies, particularly our perennial favorite, "A Christmas Story."  The season's just not complete without hearing, "I triple-dog-dare ya!" 

[Sidebar: for some reason we haven't watched any of the Christmas movies that Jeff and I usually make a point to watch, like "White Christmas," or "Miracle on 34th Street," because Jeff has been so busy with Bishopric stuff, and helping the Bishop with tithing settlement, but somehow we were able to find the time to watch that classic holiday movie, "Better off Dead."  --It is too a holiday movie!  Don't you remember him unwrapping TV dinners Christmas morning?  Ahh, good times, good times.]

Anyway, Malick was a good sport about all of it.  The girls glommed on to him within 5 minutes of his arrival, and were constantly asking for an airplane ride, or sitting on his lap while we watched a movie, or whatever.  He is Muslim, so most of what we were doing was fairly new to him, but he seemed to enjoy it.  We didn't curtail any of our family traditions, but always gave him the option to participate, and he usually did.

When my parents got there Thursday afternoon we started the activities off with a bang, frosting the sugar cookies that Sue and Dave had mixed together while I was picking Mom and Dad up at the airport, and ending with a re-enactment of the Joseph Smith story in honor of his birthday on the 23rd, just before bedtime.  Like I said, we didn't hold back.  :o)

For Christmas eve day we decided that most of us would get sick, so my mom, Sue, and Jarom, all had high fevers, sore throats, and hacking coughs, while the rest of us all had running noses, regular coughs, and enough green snot to start selling it on ebay, if there ever was a market for that kind of thing.

Everyone was able to pretty much pull it together with the help of medication, except for poor Jarom who tried very hard to be festive, but spent most of the special Christmas Eve dinner (Irish seafood chowder. . .YUM!!) with his head down, and couldn't stay awake for the reading of the Christmas story and singing Christmas hymns.

I personally had a wonderful time, and got teary-eyed several times as I looked around and saw my family gathered around the piano, singing, just as I had hoped when we first bought the house.

Christmas Eve wasn't actually that stressful, mostly because Jeff and I have finally clued in, and wrapped our presents the week before.  So all we really had to do was get the presents from the attic, and fill the stockings.  With everyone's stuff around the tree, as you can see, our cup runneth over.  :o)

Christmas morning was fun, as always, and took a little longer than usual, mostly because we had so many more people, which was great, especially because our kids had to wait for other people to open their gifts, and couldn't just rip into stuff without thinking.  Well, there was some ripping, but they had to wait to do it.

We had our traditional Christmas breakfast of sweet rolls, grapefruit, and hot chocolate, made even yummier by the presence of "Angelina's", hot chocolate from Paris, France, courtesy of my mother from her last trip to visit Sue there.  It is very rich, and very wonderful, and made Christmas very special.

Christmas dinner was yummy too, very traditional, giving Malick his first taste of American turkey.  Note how poor Jarom is practically unconscious, even though we're having some of his absolute favorite things to eat.
The rest of Christmas day was very low-key, just playing with new toys, chatting, and doing a puzzle from "Santa," another one of our family traditions.  All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas, and it was wonderful to have everyone here.

Next up. . .SNOW!!

Holiday Stuff

We tried not to do a whole, whole lot this Christmas, but we did manage to squeeze in our Ward Christmas Party (they do a breakfast instead of dinner--genius!) where Kelcey was an angel in the Nativity, had our annual "Grown-ups Only" Christmas party, which was a ton of fun, took a quick trip to the mall to talk to Santa,

saw the Nutcracker

and went to "Lights on the Neuse," a really great farm where you take a hayride through the woods and look at all their light displays.

I wanted to post a picture of the first stop on the tour: Santa's Workshop from Hell, complete with demonic elves, a Santa with glowing eyes (I kid you not!) and the overwhelming smell of diesel exhaust (aka, fire and brimstone) due to the tractor being parked in a barn for several minutes while we contemplated our eventual demise, all to the tune of, "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake. . ."  I'm telling you, freakiest Christmas thing ever. 

But it's all part of the experience, right?  And the rest of it is actually quite cute, and not weird at all.

However, pictures of this holiday extravaganza will not be forthcoming because I forgot the camera in the car, I was too cold to go get it, and all we had was Jeff's iphone--which, while it seems to be almost magic, somehow can not capture how freaky it all is.

So that's the report of our activities up until everyone got here, but I will wait to post about all that fantastic fun-ness.

Since When is Christmas Too Religious?

Kelcey had her Christmas program at her preschool last Friday.  They sang "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," and "Frosty the Snowman."  All cute songs, all perennial favorites, but not one religious song in the bunch. 

Which honestly surprises me, because the preschool is run by the Baptist Church in Knightdale, and they have chapel every week, and teach bible stories as part of the curriculum.  So it's not like they're trying to be politically correct, or anything. 

So why is it weird to sing religious songs at Christmas, all of a sudden?  They can sing "Happy Birthday," to the baby Jesus at the end of the program, but "Silent Night," is too loaded with meaning, somehow? 

Although, to give them the benefit of the doubt, they might do it that way because they think that the kids know the popular songs better.  And, thank heavens, at least they aren't singing Mariah Carey songs in the chapel any more. 

'Cause I don't care what religion you are, that's just wrong.  :o}

So here's Kelcey in her program this year.  She's the cute blond one in the back who's just mouthing the words, because she didn't want to stay, and mom had to bribe her with promises of candy from Target as soon as it was over.  Yup, I am that mom, the one who stoops to petty bribery to get her children to cooperate.

I'm pro-marriage, but not anti-anything

Well, readers, if you are like me, (and who knows, you might not be like me at all, but we'll pretend for a minute, shall we?) you have had a bit of a hard time trying to explain about the Church and the gay marriage issue, especially in the face of Prop 8 and the aftermath. Although, granted, we didn't have as much brouhaha on this side of the country (thank heavens for Southern Baptists, huh?).

Anyway, I was reading in Mormon Times, the LDS section of the Deseret News that is published every Sunday. There is a series of articles that is running now, by Linda and Richard Eyre, about LDS parenting that I am very much enjoying. They have been talking about why Mormons have a positive view of sex, why we need to help our children understand that, and how older kids can wait for the right time, with the right person.

One of the latest articles had the most fantastic explanation for why we don't support gay marriage that I have ever read, and I thought that I should share it with you. Just in case you're like me.


I've included the text of the article so you can read it, but I've also included the link, in case you'd like it. Use spiritual message to share same-sex marriage beliefs Mormon Times

So, here ya go:

We don't want our column to be thought of as always being about sexually related subjects (click here and here for the last two editions about the distinctive Mormon paradigm regarding sex), but there is one more related topic that has to be mentioned in this context.

Gay marriage.

Because we travel and speak with as many people as we do, and because people generally know we are Mormons, and because they know about Prop. 8, the subject comes up a lot. Sometimes it comes up in a hostile way: "How can you be so intolerant and insensitive?" Sometimes it comes up curiously: "Why does your church get involved in the gay marriage debate?"
Here's what we've learned: Political arguments or "historical" answers don't work!

You can talk till you are blue in the face about how marriage has always been between a man and a woman, or about how we should honor the California popular vote, or about how kids could become gender-confused, and you will just sound more narrow and prejudiced and homophobic than ever to your opponent.

The only answer or explanation that works is a spiritual one.

We've taken to just saying, "Let me just spend a minute telling you about a spiritual belief that I think will explain our position." Then we say something like this:
Mormons have a highly family-centric theology, believing that God is literally our Spiritual Father and that we lived as spirit persons with our heavenly parents before coming to this earth. Marriage and procreation provide the physical bodies that allow additional spiritual siblings to come from the spiritual pre-life into mortality. And we believe that families can continue to be together in the hereafter.

In this context, marriage between a man and a woman, and having children together, lies at the center of God's plan and is a core purpose and reason for this earth and our life on it. Hopefully, understanding that Mormons have these beliefs makes it easier for you to see why we want to protect the institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and for you to understand that our church is not anti-gay but pro-marriage.

We always try to mention that we view all people as our brothers and sisters and we add our personal belief that we favor full-rights-giving civil unions, and that it is the divine and eternally purposed concept of marriage that we are trying to protect.

Making a spiritual statement like this usually ends the debate. It doesn't win the debate or convert or even interest people in our beliefs, but it raises the conversation to a level where at least people can agree to disagree. Whether someone is intrigued by the belief, or whether he or she thinks we are crazy, it's hard to go back to a political argument after you've made a spiritual statement, and in the context of what we believe about the purpose and plan of mortality and eternity others can at best respect us, and at worst at least grasp why we have to try to protect traditional marriage.

And here's another benefit of taking this approach: If you make this kind of spiritual statement, what you have done is essentially share your testimony about the Plan of Salvation and about the central part that family plays in that plan. And that is a good thing!

Beautiful Girl

I forgot to include these when I posted the pcitures of us at Topsail, but then I thought that they were so fantastic that they deserved a post of their own. 

I mean really, could she be any more beautiful?  Even with her wonky teeth? I seriously don't know how we got such good looking kids.  I think that Jeff and I are fairly attractive, but somehow our kids ended up completely, amazingly,beautiful.  I just keep hoping that the girls have inherited Jeff's legs, which are much better than mine. :o

Topsail Island

I have had a request for more beach photos, and I am nothing if not accomodating, so here you go!  :o)

Really, I should have had these posted several months ago, but I wasn't keeping up with my blog then, and now I'm very much enjoying it for some reason, so we won't worry about the fact that it's December, and we went to Topsail in July, right?  Of course, right!

And was that a run-on sentence, or what?

How awesome am I?

I spent all morning making treats to give away to various and sundry this holiday season. 

I made peppermint bark (always a favorite because it's yummy AND easy) and I'm even making my Christmas truffles, that I haven't made in over 2 years, because they are so much work and take 3 days to put all together.  Here they are about midway through. 

I just have to cover them with chocolate, but that won't be until tomorrow.  Or the next day. 

Anyway, so the question is, how awesome am I?  I am so awesome that in order to get the treats done, I haven't folded my laundry yet, so there was only enough clothes for the two oldest kids to wear to school.  Which all means that my other children are still in their pj's.  At 3:30 in the afternoon. 

See?  Didn't I tell you I was awesome?  :o)