The Aftermath

Christmas has come and gone and overall it was a lovely holiday.  We had a few details floating, for instance since Sacrament meeting is the only meeting when Christmas lands on a Sunday and mom with Scott would be both opening gifts and eating dinner with us, we weren't sure when we wanted to go to church.

Our meeting was at 10:00 A.M. and I believe my mom's was at noon.  Obviously the noon meeting was enticing as it would allow us to open gifts and have breakfast without interruption.  I was strongly leaning towards the later Sacrament but Jane made the decision for us.  We had an opportunity to meet as a family with the Bishop last Sunday and when it was all done, Jane went up to the Bishop to ask him a very direct question.

Every Sunday there's a youth speaker, alternating between the young men and the young women and even though Jane is almost fourteen, she hadn't been given the chance to speak in church.  So she went up the Bishop and asked when she'd have that chance.  So she was given the very next Sunday, Christmas day with the theme being "The Christmas Story".  Decision, made 10:00 A.M. Sacrament meeting it is.

Presents were being opened here, at our house, which apparently caused my older brother a great deal of stress.  On top of Scott's autism, he is severely OCD (that's obsessive compulsive disorder) and he often feels compelled to have and/or do things in a very precise manner.  Scott understood he was spending the night with my mom for Christmas and he was very insistent that our mother was doing it wrong!  You see, mom failed to put the presents under the tree at her house.

Obviously she was confused.  Next year should be easier, this was the first Christmas with Scott spending Christmas morning with us and it was all new.  With a routine set, he'll expect to follow it next year. 

We ended up opening some gifts, having some breakfast (I tried two breakfast casseroles this year, one a sausage, cheese and egg combo, the other a sweet french toast, with pecans topping it, both keepers).  During breakfast, Ean took it upon himself to wildly open as many gifts of his that he could find.  It wasn't as bad as the year all three boys started ripping open anything wrapped, with regardless of who's name was on the package, but it was still pretty bad. 

After breakfast, the kids got ready for church, all three red headed boys were banned completely from the front room and we allowed the girls to play a little catch up and open a few more things. 

Sacrament was lovely.  Usually there's mostly musical numbers but this year there was the usual format of a youth speaker and two other adult speakers with some extra musical numbers.  The speakers kept their topics oriented on the Saviors birth and it was a beautiful meeting.  Jane did fabulous!  She read the Christmas story as it was written from my old children's Bible and then threw in her own thoughts.  She was insightful enough to say that the reason for Christmas has nothing to do with presents, trees and food and everything to do with Christ.  My absolute favorite moment when she referred to the wise men's gifts and blanked after "gold" and quickly ad libbed "and other stuff."

It was awesome.

We went home, changed and finished gifts as soon as Scott and mom returned.  Then it was general chaos as my mother left and I putzed around the kitchen getting dinner together.

Our kitchen table technically seats six, but we manage to cram our seven bodies around it and in a pinch when my mom is over, eight bodies.  With Scott attending dinner, it was very obvious that nine would be way to many around our pitiful kitchen table.  So we ate dinner at my mom's.  She had the ham and would put it in to heat while I provided everything else.  So I made good use of my new crock pot and cast iron skillet.  Please note that if you want the humor in Kent's gift of a cast iron skillet, look up my blog entry titled "Ace Hardware Hell", the irony is hysterical.

We invited Kent's family that was still in town to attend but Kent's grandmother was the only one able.  So filling out mom's table with ten seats, all the boys pinned against the back wall, we had a lovely dinner together.  My mother sets an impressive table, very stylish and it looked just lovely.

Kent's grandmother had a lovely time.  I am afraid I left some major clean-up in my mom's capable hands as I spent a good chunk of time explaining the various art pieces my mom had displayed. 

My mother's artwork is a walk down our family history, with several needlepoints designed and crafted by my grandmother, with some incredible pen and ink pieces by her.  My uncle's oil paints are also prominently displayed. 

It was a lovely Christmas.

So what's the aftermath?  Why, my house that was so meticulously cleaned for the celebration can't hardly be walked through.  It'll take the rest of the kids break to get it ship shape again.

If we can get them away from Transformer movies, books from partially read series and remote control cars.  Wish us luck.

Christmas

This is going to sound odd, since I just wrote about our seventeenth anniversary but this Christmas will be our eighteenth together.  The numbers get muddled when you're married nine days before a major Holiday, because that Holiday is counted at the very beginning.

Anyway you look at it, that's a lot of Christmases together. 

Our first Christmas was actually spent in Vermont.  It was a whirl-wind, affair, throwing together another reception, along with the holiday together.  It was also our honeymoon, spent ever so romantically, in my hometown, because we could only afford one trip and the chance to see my family and celebrate our wedding took precedence.

Luckily Kent fell in love with Vermont.  Unfortunately we didn't have very many Christmases there because it was just to hard financially to travel and Kent couldn't get time off, since he worked retail so many years.  There was one Christmas, the year before Kate was born when Jane was almost two, when we were able to travel.  What glorious memories.  My dad joked with his friends to not be surprised if the house wasn't standing on December 26th.  You see, on top of Jane, there were Malcolm's twin girls that year and somehow my dad could picture the worst with those girlies. 

Amazingly enough, the house DID stay standing, my mom was able to do super fun things, like decorate sugar cookies with three toddlers and we all had loads of fun.

It's hard to mesh family traditions when you're married.  His family did things a certain way, my family did things a different way and somewhere we had to meet in the middle.  We had some years with it all being confused.  We spent many years going up to Kent's parents to open gifts and that was a special time, but as our family expanded it wasn't practical.  We decided after we purchased this house a bit over a decade ago that it was time for new traditions and that's when we started spending Christmas morning at our house.

It made sense since Christmas day was becoming our family day, leaving Christmas eve evening with Kent's family.  It works out well, especially now that my mom is here because we can spend time with everyone without feeling rushed.

The last few years we've had Christmas dinner at our house, but somehow I forgot about having Scott this year!  So we'll have dinner at my mom's.  It's just not possible to seat nine people around our table made for six.  Yes you read that right, I said six.  We squeeze seven, daily because there's no choice, with me always being the one stuck on the awkward corner.  When mom comes, we somehow manage to add her but that's the limit.

So dinner at mom's it is but Christmas morning will be here, mom and Scott will be joining us.  It should be hectic and chaotic and memorable and fun!  This year Christmas is on a Sunday.  I love Christmas on a Sunday.  Just an hour of church with a mostly musical celebration of the birth of our Savior and Lord. 

Christmas was on a Sunday the year the twins were born. 

That was a weird Christmas.  I had given birth via an emergency c-section a mere four days before after being on bed-rest for almost three solid months.  Getting the twins here was an emotional journey, it was difficult and we didn't know if the twins would be ours to raise or not.  It was like a thousand pound weight was off my shoulders when they were finally safe out of the toxic environment that was their womb with it's malfunctioning placenta and sleeping, growing and developing under the care of the nicu nurses.

I had a lot to be thankful for that Christmas.  My little babies born eight weeks to early obviously couldn't come home yet.  Their first Christmas was spent with IVs and feeding tubes, lots of wires that would suddenly startle us with bells and whistles, usually alerting the nurses that someone's breathing had stopped.

Yet there was something special that year.  An outpouring of love from strangers for the nicu babies.  Blankets and homemade gifts appeared for our boys.  Gift bags and stuffed animals.  Those angels made a difficult time just a little easier and I'll be forever grateful for what they did at that time.

I was released from the hospital on Christmas Eve.  I moved very S.L.O.W. that year but we had three other children in need of some special time.  Thank heavens my mom was here to help. 

Thankfully we only had to spend that one year with children in the hospital.  This year has the bonus of the twins finally being old enough to appreciate the holiday without the wanton destruction of years past.  Amazingly enough the tree has remained standing, although the ornaments have been relentlessly rearranged, I don't know if they'll survive.

There's also been an almost never-ending barrage of newly made treasures added daily.  Ean has also discovered what the "blinking" bulbs look like and for two solid days, there was a new part of the tree blinking.  Thankfully he's stopped that.

If any surprises come up, I'll be sure to blog it.  We never know what our family has in store for us!

Merry Christmas!

Seventeen Years

Seventeen years ago at this very moment, I was picking up my wedding dress with my mom. 

Now I didn't love my wedding dress, but with only six weeks to throw together a wedding and until about six hours before, I lived in a different state, it was the best I could do.  My mom, dad and my wonderful Aunt RoseAnn, who surprised me by flying out from Vermont with my parents to attend my wedding had been in Idaho for a few hours.

My poor dad had been through the wringer.  Like seventeen years ago, it was a Thursday, I was married on Friday and my grandfather had died the previous Sunday.  So not even a week had passed and my dad flew to Florida from Albany N.Y. and back again, washed his laundry and flew out to Salt Lake, followed by that long drive to Idaho.  Truly an act of love, since my dad was unable to enter the temple to view my wedding.

I honestly expected him to stay with his mother instead of flying out here.  I knew he loved me but since he could only wait outside the temple, I wouldn't have been either surprised or hurt if that had been his choice but he chose me.

So what does that mean to me?  Well, I didn't know how deeply my dad loved me.  Oh I knew he loved me, but to choose to come to Idaho, it really touched my heart deeply. 

Well and my dad got to meet Kent. 

Kent, I fell in love with him so fast.  Everything was and is right about being his wife.  That doesn't mean my dad and Kent ever really had much to talk about.  Different beliefs concerning life, politics, religion, yet I could talk hours with either man.  So the common denominator was me.

I love Kent.  He's such a wonderful father, caring spouse, funny, so many wonderful qualities, how could I not fall in love.  And he loves me. 

I wish we could spend tomorrow together, but we seldom actually get to spend time together for our anniversary.  Hopefully we'll be able to carve out time for dinner together and if not, we'll make sure we connect this weekend.  The twins can't understand why we'd want to spend time alone without them but they'll just have to not understand.

I do enjoy conversation without talk of bathroom habits, toys, dirt or whatever else the almost six year olds can come up with.  Call me crazy.

So here's to seventeen years, I hope for that and more to come with my sweetheart.

First Trimester Report Cards

We finally got the "official word" on how the kiddos are doing in school.  For the twins, it was pretty anti-climatic, a sheet with pluses and a few minuses for both guys.  Greg needs to work on appropriate emotions and both boys are "a joy to have in class."  Both boys have minuses on "Cleans up activity area" and I mentioned that to them when their teacher leaned over and confessed that all the kids received negatives on cleaning. 

Priceless.

Ean received three "Os", three "Gs" and one "S".  For those that don't remember the system, "O" is the highest grade, meaning the student's work is "Outstanding".  "G" is the respectable "good" rating and "S" stands for "Satisfactory".  Satisfactory being the lowest rating before there is noted concern.  Ean's single "Satisfactory" was received in penmanship, Kent and I aren't exactly concerned and this proves what we knew all along, anything that was noticeably lower then his other grades would be so because he's simply not concerned about it, not because he doesn't have the ability to do better.

My seven year old smarty-pants.  :)

Kate did very well receiving several "A's" and several "B's"  Kent and I have noticed from her work that she's bringing home, she's obviously working her little heart out.  With grading Kate, there is the problem, that if an individual teacher doesn't know how to work her IEP, she'll be penalized academically and this report card showed that.  In the two classes of Science and Social Studies, my girlie had D's.  Both classes are graded by her main teacher and unfortunately this teacher and I have butted heads in the past when Kate was in first grade.

At that time, she expected an extraordinary amount of work from Kate when Kate was still in pre-reading skills, expecting a written report on some mammal of her choice that was far beyond her abilities.  Kate's learning disability wasn't even diagnosed at that time, but unfortunately this teacher leaned towards believing Kate's inability was due to lack of effort.  This of course is non-sense, Kate's an extremely hard worker and we just didn't know at that time, what helps she needed.

So I let Kate know that we knew she was working hard and weren't concerned about the letter grades and I also knew that in a little over a week I'd be able to address those issues at her IEP review.  Thankfully that review went well and Kate now has modifications in how she'll be tested that should better reflect what she's actually learned.

Finally there's Jane, who even though she struggled with getting incredibly behind in her pre-algebra homework, managed to not only pass all her classes but also pulled some decent grades.

I'm very proud of all five of them.  They're finding success, they're learning, they're growing into such neat people.  This is what gives me the most joy in parenting, sharing their triumphs no matter how big or small.