Dear Santa, I have been ...

Very Nice

Mostly Nice, but with a little Naughty sprinkled in, esp. when I tease my big sister. Only because it is so fun.

Nice, but that doesn't mean I like you, Santa.

A child's Christmas

I love EVERYTHING about Christmas with children. I love their excitement for our advent activities. I love reading Christmas books to them. I love making gingerbread houses and driving around to look at lights. I love the way R and K dance around the tree. I love the way E rushes to the mailbox to check for Christmas cards everyday (by the way, we will mail ours out next week). And I esp. love the way that they organize the children's Nativity set so that everyone, including the sheep and cows, form a circle around the baby Jesus.
December can be such a hectic month and there can be so many distractions that chase the Christmas spirit away. But I really want to stop and enjoy all of this.
I was recently talking to a friend who mentioned it will be her first Christmas without her newly married daughter. I was so embarrassed but when she told me this I just cried. I know the day will come when we have to share these babies of ours with their own families. When that day comes I promise to be supportive like my mother graciously always is. But I know when that time does come I will ache for the days when I had to keep K from taking all the ornaments down from the tree. So in spite of all Christmas's craziness, I am choosing to love every moment with these little girls of mine. This exact time when impromptu carolling echoes through our house and Santa is as real as Mommy and Daddy. I just wish I could bottle this time forever. When the Christmas chaos was just perfect.

An unforgettable visit ...

One of my favorite people ever came to visit for Thanksgiving. LeAnn and I have been friends since our freshmen Y group at BYU. She was the rodeo beauty queen from Northern Arizona and I was the preppy girl from New England. We instantly became the best of friends.
Here we are ALL these years later, with 7 terrific children between us, 2 amazing and similar husbands (girls - always marry the very smart and nice boys), and yet when we are together the "older and wiser" becomes the "young at heart and silly". My girls absolutely worshipped her daughters. They are at the age where they tend to do that with older girls. And her daughters happily indulged them (thanks K and A so much). E found a kindred spirit in L. It was all I could do to let K leave. The day after she left I kind of felt the same way I did when she and Lars graduated from BYU all those years ago and left me behind in Provo - a little sad but so grateful for the prayer so many years ago that brought two girls from totally different worlds together.

Aren't they both so fabulous ...

R's new favorite person.

"Garden of the Gods". Colorado is so diverse and breathtaking.