Decorating, Night Hikes, And Ten Kids (Living in a Shoe)

It's 9:30 on a Saturday night. There is Christmas music softly playing. A tree all lit in front of me. And I just received these texts from Abe:

Mike is working tonight, but yesterday he brought home a Christmas tree (it's a big-tree year). 

I spent a good portion of the afternoon dragging our awkwardly-big ladder around and around trying to get lights (along with the inherited, red beads my mom always used on our Christmas trees) all wrapped on. 

Then, after dinner, the kids were let loose with the ornaments. (The bows, red balls, and little knit santas from Mike's childhood along with the conglomeration of gifted ornaments, purchased ornaments, and all the many little ones made by the kids over the years -- Perry the Platypus, the one where it appears Jesse had six fingers, and even the tiny marshmallow snowmen Summer made this very afternoon to pass the slow wait before she could decorate.)

(The snowmen on this ornament were made by Jesse's first or second grade fingers. And there are six of them ...)

When the tree was finished, the star placed, and the little ones all settled into bed (sort of settled: Mette came up to complain that Summer has a Christmas night light while she doesn't, and Summer came up once to make sure I wasn't lonely and again to sneak markers and paper down to her bed), Abe gathered his remaining five siblings and off they went for a night hike. (I should perhaps be a bit worried? It’s 36 degrees. And dark. But the above pictures, I assume, are evidence they are at least still alive and well enough ... wherever they are. (Or at least several of them are alive and well enough ... wherever they are.)

In the meantime, it feels kind of magical to be sitting here all by myself, in this rare quiet, on the first night with our lit tree. (And I keep being tempted to go outside just long enough that I can come back in and smell the tree anew again!)

It's been fun having Abe and Daisy home with us for the Thanksgiving holiday. With them home, I figured I better round all the kids up quickly for a snapshot before heading to Thanksgiving dinner with Mike's family:

Look at the lot of them! (And look at Anders expressions. Anders!)

Sometimes when someone asks how many kids I have, and I respond with "ten", it sounds like an incredibly big number. Much bigger than it actually is. I'll almost find myself adding, "Well, yah, I mean it is ten kids. But it’s not like TEN kids." 

Other times, like when I look at pictures like the ones above, I almost can't believe it. It really is TEN kids all right!

Our stocking holders don't hold nearly all of our stockings. We have six holders. An N, O, E and L, and two snowmen (one to put on either side of “NOEL”). 

When we were putting them up yesterday, I told the kids, again, about buying them:

"I always remember getting these stocking holders. Dad and I were just newly married. We didn't even have any of you kids yet. We were at Target and they had all of these stocking holders. Ones that spelled JOY and PEACE and NOEL and then of all these snowmen and reindeer and things. And I remember dad and I just trying and trying to decide how many we should buy. It seemed weird to have all these empty stocking holders that might never get filled. But it also seemed a shame not to get enough matching ones if we did end up having a lot of kids. Anyway. As you can see, we did not get enough."

Afterwards Abe said, “It’s funny to think if you’d seen stocking holders that spelled the word CHRISTMAS, plus a snowman at each end. And if you’d known that still wouldn’t be enough!” 

Haha! I didn’t believe him! I had to count! (He’s right … that would only be 11 stocking holders. Though I suppose Mike or I could go without.)

It occurred to me that even if God had told me that: "You'll need to birth enough kids to fill all these stocking holders.", I wouldn't have understood much of anything about what it meant. All the complexities and details of the whole business ahead. (Just as I probably still understand very little about what it will mean getting them all to fully-independent adulthood.) And I think it's kind of miraculous that we don't need to know everything God has planned for us to do, or how we will actually accomplish any of it. We can just keep plodding along and somehow ... twenty-one years pass and ten new people are on the earth, right under your very own roof! It makes me wonder what other journeys, and things to overcome, and learn, and accomplish are ahead. Some of them seem so long and so impossible to work out. But these ten kids existing -- here in my very own family -- are a testament to me that we can trust we will be led to keep doing things far too big for us to ever understand or plot a course to accomplish on our own. It comforts me, and fills me with trust, and makes me love this team of Heavenly Father, and Christ, and the Holy Ghost, and countless angels for helping direct our footsteps to do all of these unimaginable things.

(The kids have arrived home safely by the by. Goldie burst in with an exclamation of, "I love our tree! And our whole house smells good!" Her comment was followed shortly afterwards by Anders who, having overheard me asking Abe and Daisy when they were leaving tomorrow, moaned, "You should've done nothing fun with me! 'Cause now it'll make me miss you!" It’s true. It would be much easier to let them go … if they would only be a little less fun to have around. Luckily we have them back for birthdays and Christmas throughout the month. That makes their leaving a little more bearable.)

And, to end, a friend recently shared this charming illustration by Gyo Fujikawa of "The Old Woman in a Shoe". It made me laugh. It's so great. Mike said we should frame a copy. The shape of the house is a bit different than our own, but other than that it looks about like life around here. And I am seriously considering adopting her efficient bedtime routine. ...

The End.

Tiredness, Tears, and Some Photos

Last night Mike took the dish scrubber out of my hands, and, with promises to finish every chore (and to put every small kid to bed), insisted I get out of the house and go find something fun to buy. 

I don't know that a book on the prophecies of Isaiah, some Miralax (not for me! not for me!), and two packages of paper bowls were quite what he had in mind when he told me to find something fun, ... but the escape was timely. (And here I tried to put into words why the escape was timely, and deleted, and tried again, and deleted, about ten times before staring blankly at the screen and giving up. It's nothing. Just tiredness and tears. That's all it is. Tiredness and tears. And trying to wrap tiredness in any kind of words ... well, apparently that's too tiring. It seems, if it's going to express itself at all, to prefer tears. [A shame really, as I much prefer words.])

In any case, Mike's taking over was timely. And, if I can't find the words for that, then here, at least, are some photos that demand nothing but the simplest of sentences:

The five sisters (and one mom) at my niece Jasmine's baby shower:

Goldie performing in the Matilda musical at her high school:

Abe with the first MTC district that he saw through from start to finish (prior to that, he had taken on the last portion of another district). He was sad to see them go, and I think felt a smidgen like a parent sending his young off into the world with hopes that he had done enough to prepare them:

Abe with his climbing crew down at BYU:

Daisy and Star. She (Starling, not Daisy) has become increasingly stubborn and demanding -- scream insisting that we call her "princess" or "little gray cat" over and over all day long, refusing to wear pants, and saying things like this (as she walks up to Daisy sitting on the one comfy chair in the living room), "That's called my chair, Daisy."

A "motion" photo Penny took for a class at school. I did give her the idea of trying a very slow shutter speed, but she took the picture. (Anders outfit, however, was all his own.)

Hans and Starling during the one or two moments they weren't crying and demanding to be held during a cold, wet day up at the farm. (We'd driven up with Mike who needed to check on some things.):

And that is all!

Halloween 2021

There is nothing better than kids in costumes! (Although these fairy houses Daisy, Jesse and I made were pretty close! [Daisy's is, naturally, the best -- what with it's curtains and front steps and all. And Jesse's, I should add, is not a fairy house at all, rather a haunted house -- whose haunted stairs snaking around the back of the pumpkin cannot, unfortunately, be seen in this photo.)

It is a shame that we only got three groups of trick-or-treaters. (Four groups if you count my own kids trick-or-treating at our door after making their way around the cul-de-sac.) We've never had many trick-or-treaters, but this was by far the saddest showing we've had. We just aren't in prime trick-or-treating area apparently. Luckily dropping kids off to the elementary school in costume a few days earlier afforded me with the chance to see loads of little kids running about in costume. So darling.

Abe didn't come home for the weekend, but Daisy did. And Goldie and Penny were ... somewhere? At friends' houses? I can't recall, but Penny must've showed up at some point because look, here the little Newsie is!

Also, a few of the kids on crazy hair/crazy sock day and ready with costumes for school:

And perhaps my favorite pictures from this Halloween season ... "The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another ...". Hansie sound asleep -- days before Halloween -- in our wolf costume: