holiday highlights

We had a really great Thanksgiving.  I spent the holiday here in Utah.  My sisters all went home to Washington and I admit that it was a little bit torturous to hear all of the fun they were having day after day without me.  But we did have a great time here.  The highlights:

• It really is wonderful how much more I can get done around the house when Kevin is home. We worked hard to gut and clean room after room, leaving no pile unsorted, no clutter unbanished, no sheets unwashed.  Ahh, it feels really great to have my house clean and under control.  I'm not going to lie, it's been a long time since I felt like everything was easy to maintain.  There has always been at least one room undone, keeping me from ever feeling really satisfied with the state of our home.  As the weather continues to worsen, I can console myself with the fact that the home where we'll spend 99% of our waking hours will be an organized one.  I'm praying the efforts we made will keep things manageable until it's warm enough to set these little boys loose in the yard again.

• Thanksgiving dinner with the Larson's was SO good.  All I had to bring was a jell-o salad = very stress-free meal for me.  It was good to see everyone again.  Although we live close, it had been almost a month since we'd seen everyone.   Nicole made 6 different pies from scratch...mmmmm.  I think Taylor had four pieces=).  It was all very laid back and fun.  We stayed and played rook and golf with Kev's parents while the boys watched Peter Pan.  Adam was very tuckered out by the time we left, but he's since recovered.  Thanks Larson's (and Cook's) for a great meal=)

• And I couldn't highlight the weekend without mentioning the WORST church meltdown of Larson family history.  All was going well in Sacrament meeting for the first 45 minutes or so.  Tays was a little frustrated because he was trying to do a stencil and it kept not turning out as he hoped, but we were smoothing things over without major incident.  But then...Noah somehow bonked his face on the hymn book holder and started crying really loudly.  I had a bulky bag and four people between us and the end of the bench, so I tried to quiet him down but he wouldn't so I clumsily carried him out.  I wasn't there, I was out with Noah for a few minutes, but Kevin tells me that my exit triggered something in Taylor.  He wanted to come with me, but I was already gone.  He cried loudly.  Kevin had Adam in his arms and with Jack and Austin there too, leaving the chapel seemed like a bad option.  Tays squished himself between the bench and the wall and continued to loudly cry and say he wanted me and wouldn't be comforted.  I returned within a few minutes, but this did not calm Taylor down.  After a few attempts at appeasing him, it became clear that nothing was working.  I tried pulling him toward me, and he resisted, resulting in Noah tripping over the bulky bag and getting bonked again.  He started crying too.  I picked him up, stood up, took Taylor's hand and said we were going out.  He didn't want to.  I managed to get all three of us over the bulky bag, past Jack and Austin, and into the aisle.  This is when Taylor clung to the bench, loudly protesting our departure.  Noah was still sobbing and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  Both seemed inappropriate in the middle of a talk at church but we were already attracting more attention than the speaker.  After a few failed attempts at prying him away, I set Noah down, told him to follow me, and picked up the stubborn Tays, who loudly cried and cried.  We went down the hall to a classroom where his cries turned into screams.  It was lucky for him that I'd just read in a previous journal entry where I'd decided that "anger rarely teaches, love usually does."  It took some time, but we did calm down by the time it was time for primary...where I teach his class.  He was very well behaved from then on.  I had a lesson planned, but when the other boys in the class were more rowdy than usual, I condensed it and we watched a movie on Saul of Tarsus and ate jelly beans for the bulk of the time.  I'm afraid our looser sleep schedule over the break took it's toll and Taylor needs his sleep.  I won't be making that mistake again soon=)

• And finally, on a happier note, we took a few pictures of the boys for Kevin's parent's wall.  It had been over FOUR years since we'd updated them, meaning they only had pictures of 2 year old Jack and 1 year old Tays...embarrassing.  Here they are:

 Adam -10 months

Austin - 2

Noah - 4

Tays - 5

Jack - 6

All in all, I'm feeling very grateful for my life.