Post-Christmas December

There were a few other events that I want documented about December.

Mike got a truck. It was a good tax move for the business to have some big write-offs before the end of the year, so both he and Trent (his business partner) got giant Toyota Tundras. They wanted them to be a little flashy because they're being used for advertising, so I kind of just want everyone to know that we would not have gotten a truck like this under normal circumstances. It is super useful to have a truck, though. Especially with all the basement construction stuff we were doing and now with all the basement furnishing stuff and soon with all the yard business.

{I call it She-Ra. Don't mind the thumb, Mim took the picture. Actually, it was me.}

We were without laundry capabilities for about a month and a half throughout this basement finishing thing (that's not counting how when we finally did get the washer put back in, it broke, and right now, how the dryer is broken). I mostly went to various family member's houses to do laundry, but I did end up at the laundromat once. Shudder.

{So creepy and alone.}

We also got some beautiful snow right after Christmas and we had a lot of fun with it (which I'm particularly happy we did, considering we then had terrible air and below freezing temperatures for most of January).  

{I filled squirt bottles with water and food coloring. It was fun for me, too.}

{Mim's snow pile. You can't tell in this picture, but she made herself a decent little hill.}

Mim's preschool program was awesome

It was so great. Adorable.

{I couldn't even believe how proud I was of her for getting up and saying her little memorized line.}

{She had "I" for the icicles on the houses}

 Their little cards were supposed to spell out "Merry Christmas," but they kept getting all mixed up and one of the teachers kept stepping in to rearrange them.

{Front row!}

{During "Jingle Bells." The bells were collected shortly after the song was over.}

Classic blogger. It won't upload my videos. I think my success rate with videos on the blog is somewhere in the ~10% range.  You'll just have to take my word for it that it was so so cute. Eleanor came, even though it started right about her bedtime. She did pretty well, regardless. She loved "Feliz Navidad" and was bouncing all over my lap for the entire song. She has terrible taste in Christmas music, what can I say? 

After the program was over Miss Tracy mentioned a special visitor and then there were jingle bells out in the hall. The kids all turned towards it and I had a perfect view of all their faces when they saw Santa come in. They were awestruck. It was so funny. They all got to wait in line and talk to him and Mim was pretty shy when it was her turn, but then she got warmed up and started telling Santa all sorts of things that she wanted, including some I didn't know about. 

I love her little preschool and the teachers there. I admire them a lot, especially after this undertaking. They did a fantastic job and I'm looking forward to the end of the year program now.

Christmas

Christmas this year was awesome. Really. I kept thinking about how it just going to keep getting better and better every year and it made me so happy. Despite being overall awesome, it was marred by Eleanor and I being really sick on Christmas Eve and missing Mike's family party. My parents did their Christmas celebration earlier, so I wasn't completely deprived. Eleanor and I were both feeling much better by Christmas Day (and even later Christmas Eve- I did manage to help get all the presents out).

Mim was delighted by everything that had to do with Christmas, as you would expect. She loved the countdowns and talking about what she would get and she also did a pretty good job about remembering that the reason for Christmas is Jesus. I also tried to work with her on the spirit of giving and that it's fun to give other people presents, not just get them yourself. We're still working on it.

My parents' Christmas party was the weekend before and the children did a little nativity. Mim was the angel, Eleanor a wise(wo)man. I was pretty impressed. Eleanor liked wearing her little crown all around and she had recently begun to enjoy playing dress up with Mim, so the costume was no big deal. Mim stood up on the ottoman and held the star out and I had to tell her a few times after it was over that she could come down. We had hot chocolate and donuts, just like we've done for as long as I can remember. We also had a little hooding ceremony for Kaid, who had just officially gotten the final ok on his dissertation. With them moving out to Boston, he wasn't going to any real graduation, but my grandpa wore his robes and put the hood on Kaid and it was pretty cool.

Next up, party-wise, was the Johnson family Christmas Eve one. Like I said before, Eleanor and I weren't up to it, but Mike and Mim went and got to sing all the songs and do stories and I'm still a little sad that I missed it.

After he got home and Mim was in bed we waited a little while and then put out the girls' new things. So fun.

Mim this year wanted trains and Legos (although on her list she made at preschool she said licorice, new paper, and candy canes) and I decided that Eleanor wanted books and puzzles and an Elmo plushie. I made the little table and chairs for them to share. They both got what they wanted and I just have to brag here- I was totally done with all the Christmas shopping a good two weeks before Christmas, which is a personal best.

Christmas morning was as awesome as I had hoped. Even more awesome, really. I had imagined Mim getting up and heading straight to the living room to see if Santa had come and us possibly missing her reaction. Instead, she woke up, woke Eleanor up, and they were playing in the crib when we came to remind them what day it was.

{Eleanor got sick of me taking pictures and just wanted out.}

We filmed their reactions to the presents, so no pictures of that. Eleanor, of course, didn't know what was happening, and Mim just started yelling "Santa came! Look, these presents have an M on for Miriam!" (Santa cut out their first initial and attached it to the appropriate presents.) We let her dive right in and I helped Eleanor until she started to figure it out.

We took a break for breakfast (cinnamon roll french toast casserole) and then got to opening the non-Santa presents. I made the girls a special present this year, giant rag dolls that I made to resemble them. Mike got each of the girls a special present from him- Eleanor got shoes, Mim got My Little Ponies (which have turned out to be one of her favorite gifts, possibly tied with the "ah-wegos").

My favorite gifts were also from Mike.

{He got me a Silhouette Cameo, too!}

My parents came by while the girls were opening the gifts not from Santa and Mike and I were opening ours. The girls were pretty much overwhelmed with everything by that point and were just being little nuts (the happy kind, at least). Mike's mom and dad were sick, but not with the same thing we unwittingly infected that side of the family with. (I'll get to it)

The rest of the morning and early afternoon were pretty normal, except with the addition of a ton of new toys (even though I feel like we keep it pretty simple- 3 largish presents for each child- there are still all the grandparent, great-grandparent, and cousin gifts to make it crazy).

In the late afternoon we headed over to my parents' for one of my very favorite traditions- the favorite things meal. Everybody just brings something they love to eat. Mike and I brought chicken tiki masala and various excellent chocolates. There are delicious dips, cheeseballs, homemade ice cream sandwiches, won tons, etc. Sooooooo good. My mouth is watering. Anyway, Mike started not feeling so good while we were there. He ended up having the same thing Eleanor and I had had the day before, and, as we found out later, was probably already contagious on Christmas Eve with all his brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, many of which came down with it around the same time he did. Sorry, Johnsons!

An aside: Mim never got it. She'll be 4 in April (what?!) and she has never thrown up. Not counting all the times she spit up when she was a baby, of course. Crazy.

That was our Christmas. It was so lovely and so fun and I really am just more and more excited for all the Christmases to come.

December: the house edition

In November we started shooting for finishing the basement by Christmas. We knew it was a long shot, but decided it couldn't hurt to shoot for the stars. We didn't make it, but there was a ton of progress:

 The framing was finished (with a few small exceptions) with special thanks to Mike Ritchie, Dad J, and Nate. After it was finished we had an electrician (Mike's old home teaching companion, Beecher) come in and wire everything up for us. The plumbers also came back to rough in the fixtures for us. While they were there I had a whole new list of things I wanted done before we closed up the basement, so they also added a culinary water line to outside, a gas line to the stove area, a gas line to the dryer's new location, moved our water shut off for the house, and a few other things.

After all that stuff was done, we got to insulation.

 We didn't do the insulation ourselves- it cost less to buy it from an insulation company and have them install it for us than it would have been for us to buy just the insulation. Anyway, the difference in the basement once it had insulation was crazy. It was warmer than upstairs and was so un-echoey that I kept feeling like I needed to pop my ears whenever I went down there.

I realize the name of this post is "December: the house addition," but I think I may as well go on through what we've done so far this year.

In January there was sheet rock by Mike Ritchie. He deemed my Mike incapable of lining up the screws well enough, so we were just his helpers. So thankful he was so awesome and knew everything about what he was doing. It would have taken just Mike and I FOREVER.

{Mim's room and closet.}

We were set back a little bit in sheet rocking the last wall when we discovered a leak from a crack in our foundation. Luckily my parents pointed us in the direction of a pretty simple and inexpensive solution. A foundation repair company came and forced a poly-something plastic through the crack from the inside under pressure. And voilà- fixed. Good thing the weather was so weird and cruddy; it melted enough that there was a pool of water right against the crack and that's why it leaked. If we had had normal weather, it wouldn't have leaked until spring, after we finished everything. I can't even imagine what a headache that would have been.

{The plastic stuff is that grey stuff on the concrete.}

 The day after the leak was fixed and the last wall installed the mudders and tapers came.

{Textured.}

The day after they were finished texturing, we had our bannister installed.

{I know the craftsman style posts are much more popular right now, but it just didn't seem right for the house. Plus, now this little ball finial matches all the ones on the fence outside.}

 The stairs are still crazy steep, but they seem much safer thanks to the railings. I can let Mim go down by herself now without worrying that she'll somehow fall sideways off the edge and onto the cement below.

So, now our new much-too-ambitious goal is to be done by our anniversary on the 15th. We've started priming and hopefully that will be done in a few days. Next will be painting (ceiling, walls, trim), then tiling (bathroom walls, then floor), then installing trim, then having the carpet guys come. Like, I said, way too ambitious, but I don't even care. It might not be by then, but it will be soon!

December

December was great. We started it off right with a trip to Salt Lake to see the Nutcracker with all the Johnson women. It was probably me and Mim's first real mommy-daughter date that was designated as such.

{All the daughters}

{My big girl}

{Intermission}

It was so fun; I can't wait to go next year. Mim talked about how she was going to go to the ballet to everyone for a full week before. Seriously. Cashiers, people in line at the grocery store, her grandparents and all her aunts and uncles, all her little friends...they all heard about how she was going to the ballet and she was going to wear her new Christmas dress that is PINK! She almost always yelled that part. I gave her those little sparkle ("farkle") shoes the day of the ballet and it put her over the top. Anyway, we went and it was just about the right length for her. She got bored during the first half, but I'm pretty sure everyone does, not just 3 year olds. During the part with the Russian dancers she was bobbing up and down and back and forth in her seat and grinning. Watching her do that was probably my favorite part.

Another new tradition for us this year was the elf on the shelf. Mim couldn't wait to find him first thing in the morning and once when he was in the same place twice she told us that he liked that spot a lot and that's why he was there again. She also asked him to move the next night. I love Scout. It was like magic. All we had to do when she was being the slightest bit naughty was remind her that Scout was listening/watching and she was right back in line. Fantastic.
To make sure we didn't focus too much on her negative behavior, we also had her report good things she did throughout the day, like "Oh, Mim! You finished all your dinner and have been so polite! Go tell Scout so he can tell Santa how awesome you are!"

 Our elf wasn't very naughty. We decided to hold off on that for a few years and wait until Mim would think they were really hilarious. I was also a little worried about confusing her- I mean, why really would one of Santa's elves be naughty? Anyway, he brought Mim and Eleanor little ornaments a few times.

I wasted no time this year and got the tree up the day after Thanksgiving and while it was there we always read Christmas bedtime stories in front of it. And Mim also started ending her prayers by saying "Christmas" instead of "Amen." Just remembering that makes me chuckle.

 Eleanor helped decorate for Christmas, too.

 Taking presents to my grandparents was fun; I'm so glad my girls will know their great-grandparents. (I totally forgot to get a picture of them with my Gramma Harper-boo to me.)

 Oh, this next one makes me laugh. It's the girls in their Christmas dresses the Sunday before Christmas. Eleanor was due for a nap, but I wanted a picture before I changed her. She was angry, Mim was sticky and messy and no one was smiling. This is really the best picture I got by far. Yep.