December: The Birthdays

All the December things have happened. 

Well, almost.

As I type this, I'm sitting at our cabin kitchen table. It's Dec. 31st and we have yet to have our end-of-year games and root-beer floats (plus we will go see the giant Christmas-tree bonfire and fireworks in Garden City tonight), so there's still some tiny bit of December (and 2024) ahead of us. 

But that's for another post.

Back to the December things that have already happened. 

For this post we will focus on: the birthdays.

Mine was just three days ago. I don't have pictures of the birthday exactly. I do have these ...

It occurred to Abe, about an hour or two before the sun would be setting, that my birthday might be his last chance to go rock climbing in December. (We were leaving for Bear Lake the next day and then, by the time we returned, the month would be over.) This mattered because he was on a streak of 38 months straight of rock climbing at least once a month (a significant feat when you live in Northern Utah throughout the winter). It seemed awfully sad to break such a record. So Jesse, faithful brother that he is, agreed to come with him in the wet and cold for a quick climb.

Afterwards they realized they'd locked their keys in the car. 

They walked to a house to borrow a hanger that didn't work. And then they called Mike--who bought one thing on his way to them that did not end up working and then took them to buy another set of things that did work (saving the day as usual).

Of course, this all took hours of time. 

Luckily Daisy went to work saving the day herself (as far as my birthday was concerned) back at home by whipping up the curry Abe was intending to make for a lovely birthday dinner for me (Mette assisted by peeling five potatoes she tells me ... as she looks over my shoulder while I type this). Daisy also made lemon and chocolate pie with Mette for me and watched all the kids earlier when Mike took me to look for some new bedding and to get lunch.

And all ended well. Abe got his 39th month of climbing. I got curry and pie. And Mike bought me a new camera lens (!!!) that he gave me that night (once everyone was safely back home). I haven't had a new lens for years and years. And only one of my two lenses was working reliably. I'd looked at this particular lens off and on over the years but couldn't quite bring myself to put out that much money, so I was incredibly excited when Mike surprised me with it!

The kids all treated me perfectly all day. And Abe and Jesse gave me an early present of cleaning a disaster area of crafts and present bags and games in our garage. (Since the rental is a bit small for so many of us, the garage serves as a storage space for all kinds of things.) I'd been meaning to get to that for months, so it was a great gift. 

Oh and my friend Jessica sent me this little stained-glass hummingbird. Isn't it dear?

On to the other birthdays.

Jesse turned 16. So old! (We finished up his driving hours just a week or two after his birthday and just need to find time to get him to the DMV before he can officially drive places all on his own.) 

Jesse is a perfectly pleasant kid to have about. True he covers every computer area we ever have with 3D printer stuff and ... I don't even know what else. But he always is asking how he can help me and has a great little low-key sense-of-humor. Happy 16th to him!

Oh, and here he is when we needed to nab a quick picture of him for the calendar his Grandma Harris makes each year. Handsome fellow.

I always feel like there is an enormous shift in how old my kids look that happens between 14 and 16. Here. Compare 16-year-old Jesse to Jesse on his 14th birthday. Still a kid at 14. Not so much at 16.

And Abe turned 24. (Suddenly 16 doesn't sound so old!) 24. That's pretty wild. Mike was 24 and I was just about to turn 24 on the day Abe was born. I really don't think we could have even slightly imagined up that tiny first baby becoming ... our same age. 

But he did! And here we are celebrating him. (Several days late due to his being stuck in Provo in the midst of impending finals and what not on his actual birthday.)

(Daisy also gave Jesse a late birthday present that night. :). She is an excellent gift giver. She gave Abe those Star Wars socks above and Jesse some sort of LOTR tiny, resin, sword-making thing.)

Outside with you Shasta! (Wimpiest "outdoor cat" you've ever met. Just paws and paws on the windows over and over. And all of his humans younger than me are pushovers and open right up.)

Anyway, happy December birthdays to all three of us. And to my dad whose birthday is the day before  mine (and which he generally just waited and celebrated with me). He would have been 94!

Friday Dec. 20th

Today was busy. I had agreed to come help with Summer's class party this morning. (I'd ordered 4 dozen donuts from Lee's that needed picked up beforehand. And of course Lee's isn't close. Nothing is really close to us up here. [Except for Costco. Interestingly enough, Costco is sort of close. Which seems strange. Shouldn't Costco always be ... slightly inconvenient to get to? It's our closest store now. Though that will probably not be true once we live on the PeaViner land.]) But, back to Lee's. Luckily Daisy is home for Christmas break. She went to pick up donuts for me so I could get the morning-rush mess under control and get a load of laundry folded. Then it was off to reading Stickman to 5th graders while they had donuts and chocolate milk. 

Around this same time I got a text from an anxious mother in charge of Mette's class party. Parent helpers were sick. Was there any way I could help? 

So a quick trip home in time for more laundry and for Starling to be dropped off from morning kindergarten. Then Daisy saved the day again by being willing to tend while I headed back to the school to run a "Christmas Bingo" game.

I haven't typically been a help of any sort in my kids' classes. It's just been too tricky to arrange with babies and toddlers at home. But today I made up for it. 

(And it's interesting the small things that occasionally jump out--startling me into a realization that we truly are becoming settled permanently in Cache Valley. I'd had so many years of taking kids to the same familiar schools [and their associated events] back in Pleasant View that there were just a host of familiar moms who I'd come to know from seeing them at all of the same things and from having our kids become friends, etc., that it felt quite strange last year -- walking around the school at Back-to-School Night, walking the halls at Parent-Teacher Conferences, etc. -- not knowing a single face. But today, as I walked into Summer's class, I was immediately engaged in several easy conversations with women I now know. I've gotten really good in recent years at talking to people I've only just met. So it's not that I couldn't have been talking to someone either way. But going to the school and seeing familiar faces of people whose lives are somewhat known to me [and mine to them] -- "Is all that roadwork being done for your place?", "Tell me exactly what you are doing in your new job at Utah State!", etc. -- well, it was just another of those moments of recognizing things as more settled here.)

Anyway, by the time Mette's party ended, the school bell was ringing so I waited for the elementary kids and brought them home. Mike came home early to print off a lot of things for a meeting the two of us were going to at the bank to get the construction loan rolling. I began cleaning out backpacks full of Christmas-party crafts, projects, and treats then began working on a very early dinner. (3:30!) and Abe (who is also home for the holidays now) nicely went to pick Jesse up from playing Dungeons and Dragons after school. Then Mike and I left Daisy in charge again (Abe had to head off for a friend's bachelor party and Pen was at work) while we went to the bank. 

We came back and let the kids watch Home Alone before heading to a ward member's house who had invited us for visit and a treat.

And then it was getting all the kids to bed long after bedtime.

And now? It's officially Christmas Break!

We are only five days from Christmas. The big Allred Christmas party is tomorrow. And honestly it does not remotely feel close to Christmas to me! (Though I can't say why.) I've been more behind on present buying and wrapping than usual and feel we still need at least three weeks of holiday music. 

But, for all of that, there have been some fun Christmassy things. Someone has been doing a version of the 12 Days of Christmas to us. (We truly have no guesses who it is.) Every night a crocheted member of The Nativity is left on our porch--with a verse of scripture and a treat. It's been so fun for the kids. (I'll post a picture once all the figures have arrived.)

And Mike got us tickets to the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. Kids under 8 aren't allowed in, but we still all drove to Temple Square. Mike dropped me and Penny through Mette off at the Conference Center where we met up with Abe and Daisy who had driven up from Provo. Then Mike and the two little kids went into the old tabernacle to watch the devotional broadcast while we found our seats in the conference center. (Multiple times our kids stopped to say hi to friends. Which seemed rather surprising at an event with thousands and thousands of people!) It was a happy evening.

 And though we are down to only a few tiny days, there are a few fun holiday things to experience yet! (For one thing, we still need to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol.) :)

100,000 Miles

It is increasingly beginning to appear that I am like the dependable little car that ran quite reliably (yes quite reliably, thank you) for many years, then reached 100,000 miles and ... had every single thing go out at once. 

Battery. Transmission. Spark Plugs. Blinkers. Brakes. All shot. Maybe the whole engine.

I'm afraid that is me!

And I'm only in my 40s for crying out loud. (Though it is the latter end of my 40s I suppose.)

But I thought ... well, no, I never thought about it at all actually. ... But if I had had a thought about it, it would have been a thought like this: "I will run like a top until I'm 80."

Only now?

On top of my troubled Achilles, and my tonsils having needed parted with, my TMJ has been acting up rather badly, I had to go to the eye doctor the other day after accidentally scratching my cornea (I didn't know I had scratched it, I thought something was stuck in it!), I wake up with my limbs tingling or numb several times a night, I've begun experiencing occasional tinnitus (rare, but alarming--no pun intended), and I recently injured my knee and may need surgery to repair a torn meniscus.

What's to be made of all this? What is to be done? It's an entire list! Just like that little Peggy Ann McKay.

I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye. ... 

Except I don't think my troubles will all disappear the minute someone tells me it's Saturday.

Still, it would all be tolerable (not overly tolerable, but tolerable enough) only ... running. 

Running!

If only none of it were interfering with running.

"Mostly," I told the knee doctor, "I'd just really like to be able to keep running."

(Knee doctor? [I suppose he has some more formal specialty name than that.]) 

"Yes," he shook his head and waved his hand. "You all do. Whenever I'm driving home and see someone out running, I'm tempted to just pull over and give them my card." (As if to say--"If you want to participate in that activity, it's my office where you'll end up.")

But he did tell me that my knees do still look to have few good years left in them, and that I am lucky to have run so much for as long as I have. 

And I know. 

It's true.

It's true! 

What an amazing blessing to have run through all the seasons -- seasons of weather and seasons of life (including 10 pregnancies!) -- for so many decades!

I am grateful!

But that didn't stop me from calling Mike the minute my appointment was over to moan that nothing else gets me outside so regularly in all sorts of weather, and nothing else opens my mind so, well, openly in prayer like running does. (Something about that in and out, and in and out breathing, and the steady strike, strike, strike of each footfall. It's almost meditative.) 

Mike, stinker that he is, suggested the perfect substitute: feeding the animals at the farm (outside, and in all the weather) while praying ... for our chickens. (Haha. Oh our poor chickens! We've even installed a coop door that automatically closes at night. "What more could I have done for my vineyard chickens?" But somehow they keep getting eaten. We think it's a combination of this fellow [who we have caught multiple times now on our game cam] and ... neighborhood dogs.)

Perhaps, rather than this feeding-the-animals substitute for running, I should just be put out to pasture altogether! It appears to be the direction I'm headed.

Though, truth be told, there is something about feeding the animals. (Shhh. Don't tell Mike I said that.) Especially, oddly, in the cold of winter ... and if dusk happens to be falling. It's not at all fun, mind you. That's not the word. Your fingers freeze trying to break ice or hold metal bucket handles, your arms and back ache carrying water, hay gets stuck in your clothes and makes your eyes itch, the grain can shrinks onto its lid in the cold and becomes impossible to open. And yet ... I can't properly word this at all, you likely won't know what I'm trying to explain, but you feel like you are watching yourself from a different place when you are out there in the dusk and dark, somehow remembering the chill of those nights and the sound of the cows chewing their grain (such a homey, comforting sound), even though you are doing it at that moment and it isn't memory yet, but reality. It's as if time shifts. And some future you is remembering these moments of chill, dark nights, your breath on the air, and crunching over stiff grass or frozen snow to the animals.

(Here Starling and Hans are the other evening. I'd loaded the kids up in the van to drive to the farm with me for animal feeding. It was cold and I'd told them to keep in the van, but the two of them ran out to the dock [Starling in Mette's shoes] while I gathered eggs from the [remaining] hens.)

Thanksgiving 2024

I meant to take a lot of photos at Thanksgiving dinner--mostly to just have more pictures of my childhood home, but I got so busy visiting and eating such good food that I forgot all about getting my camera out until everything was mostly cleaned up and over!

Ah well. 

Anyway, we went to my mom's this year. So many of my older siblings have married kids and grandkids of their own now that most of them end up hosting their own families for Thanksgiving. So, Thanksgiving at my mom's feels much smaller even than one of her monthly Sunday dinners!

Of course "much smaller" is still big by most standards I suppose. There were 24 of us there this year. But it did feel like a relatively small crowd. Particularly since my family made up nearly half of the attendees. We had all of us, except for Goldie of course. My mom. Rob and Amber with their two younger kids. Rob's son Joey and his wife Cyenna with their baby boy. And Shannon and Jason with their youngest three.

(And truly so much good food and so many wonderful pies! I was sad to not have taken enough leftovers to last me every meal for a week! Luckily Mike insisted Daisy triple his mom's crescent roll recipe, so we did have quite a few rolls leftover!)

I did get a few measly photos at the end:

Cousins playing games in the pit. (There is a little sunken area at the far end of my parents' kitchen--just past the table that seats 13. It has built in couches, a woodstove, and the record player that we used for Christmas music, etc. all my growing up. We always called this area "the conversation pit" or just "the pit" for short. You can even see a glimpse of some of the World Books and the familiar Family-Night board--each of us painted on it with squares overlaying us, waiting for assignments to be put on them.)

And a bit more.

Abe and cousin Joey.

My sister Shannon and my brother Rob.

We stopped by Mike's parents' after and visited for a bit. His siblings had already all left, but it was nice to see his parents. Then we drove back to Logan in the dark with Christmas music playing and some of us even singing a few of them out loud together for a spell. 

At home we put the little kids to bed and watched a movie with all the older kids. (So nice having Abe and Daisy home!)