Week in Review 12/25/2016 Christmas

I started the week off by working at the Murray campus planning labs for the upcoming semester.  Not only I am going to be teaching a new class (Maternal/Newborn/Pediatrics), I will be teaching the accompanying lab as well as the fundamental labs.  Teaching labs is more difficult for me than classroom lectures so I spent the morning getting help and advice from Carrie and Tanjia who have taught the labs in the past.  Tanjia was kind enough to build awesome posters for the Maternal/Newborn lab that will be really helpful.

That afternoon the faculty met at Mimi's Cafe for our Christmas lunch and gift exchange.  Sally joined us.  The food was fantastic and the company was wonderful.  The gifts were simple but heartfelt and personal.  I'm so fortunate to work with this great group!

Audrey, Sally, Sue, Carrie, Dennis, Lisa, Tanjia, Dustin

While I was at lunch Tasha called and asked if I could stop by Hunzeker's house and pick her and Zane up to stay at our house for a couple of days.  I was so excited that I had a hard time staying until the end of dinner!  It had been over six months since I have seen them and I was quite anxious.

Our reunion was just as good as I had hoped!  The hugs were strong and long!  We drove straight to Kalel's gymnastic practice and he was thrilled to see them.  He thought it was so cool that they came to watch him.  After gymnastics Shandra and Jason brought the kids over and we played a couple of games.  We played "Sneaks" (it is like spoons) and "Eye to Eye".   I had to work the next day and Kalel had school so we didn't stay up too late, but I'll admit that I was smiling all night.

Tuesday morning Kim had a doctor's appointment to get the results of the MRI of his shoulder.  Tasha went with him while Zane did some work.  Just as we feared Kim was told that he had two tears in his rotator cuff and a one at the attachment site of the bicep.  The doctor said that there was no hurry, but that Kim would definitely benefit from surgery.  Kim has been in quite a bit of pain, so I'm thinking that he will have the surgery soon after the holidays.  Poor Kim.

Here is a pic of the MRI, but I don't know how to read it!

Tuesday night was another fun night with the whole family.  Kim, Jason, and Tasha had competition on who could eat pumpkin cookies loaded with whip cream the fastest.  Jason was the uncontested winner.  It was hilarious!

Ash and Tristan came over and while the boys and Rae ran around the adults played a game of "Redneck Life".  That game is a crack-up!

It is played like the regular game of Life, you have to buy a house, a car, get married, and have kids.  However there are some major differences:

• Everyone roles the dice to see what their new redneck name is (my name was Betty Fay, Kim's was Jimmy John)
• You start off with no money and gradually accrue debt throughout the game (which you hopefully can pay off) 
• You not only get married, you have to get divorced and remarried and then roll a die to see how many red-headed step-children you will adopt - and all red-headed step-children are named Darrell.
• Throughout the game you have incidents which cause you to loose teeth
• Floss for the first time - loose 2 teeth
• Get in a fight - loose a tooth
• Open a beer can with your mouth - loose a tooth
• Hit the windshield in your truck when you run into a deer - loose 2 teeth
• At the end of the game if you are not in debt you can buy back teeth (I'm assuming they are false teeth) and the winner is the player with the most teeth.

The adults all had a great time, but Kalel wanted to play "the picture drawing game".  He meant "Telestrations" but we assumed he was talking about "Pictionary"  and got it set up before he corrected us.  We talked him into playing Pictionary even though we were a little nervous that it would be over his head.  We shouldn't have worried.  There were only a couple of words that he didn't know and we found that he was quite creative in drawing so that his team could guess.  It ended up to be a pretty close match.

 

I spent the next day working again.  I was able to get much of my syllabuses, assignments, and other paper work into the computer, which is great because I don't want to have to work during the Christmas Holiday.  Neither Kim nor Shandra have to work and with Tasha and Zane here I don't want to work either!  Tasha and Zane borrowed our car so spend the next couple of days with Zane's family.

That night I begged Shandra to help me paint carvings and she graciously agreed.  With the two of us working we were able to pretty much get everything done.  The biggest project was gifts for Shandra's visiting teachers.  Months ago Shandra had asked Kim to make carvings for them and they turned out fantastic!

This is for Jen Packer's family

This is for Heather Lindsey's family
If you look close you can see little missionary badges on Matt and Emily

Shandra reported that both Jen and Heather got teary-eyed when they received their gifts.  I think that they really appreciated them because both of them later thanked both Kim and I several times.  I'm so happy that they liked them - and I'm so happy that Shandra did a lot of the painting for them since it was her gift.

Thursday we had an office party at my campus.  We took goofy pictures, but for some reason the one of me didn't turn out. We had a yummy potluck lunch and then we played a matching game with gift cards and if you found a match you got to keep the card.  I won a gift card for Olive Garden.  We then had a fun gift exchange.  I ended up with a package of batteries with a sign that said, "no toys included".   After the party the campus pretty much emptied out so I headed home.  The campus will be closed until January 3.  I brought a little work home, but I probably won't do much because I am looking forward to some serious vacation fun!

Friday evening Tasha and Zane were back and we went over to visit the Parrishes and their friends, the Robertsons.

It was snowy, but very wet snow that eventually turned into rain.  In fact they predicted a huge snow storm, but it only rained all day Saturday.  I was glad that it was only raining because we spent Christmas Eve at Roxane's house and I didn't want to drive in snow.

We had such a good time on Christmas Eve!  Rox hosted the event and as usual she created a very festive atmosphere.  We each had the cutest place cards made with candy canes.  

The guys took over the kitchen to finish cooking the feast (aren't we gals lucky?  I think so!)

Everyone made it to the festivities this year (except JoCee had to leave early).  We had a very tasty turkey dinner with all of the trimmings.  

After dinner it was time for games.  First we played Christmas Family Feud

Then we played Right, Left, Center.  Kim was the big winner on our table.

After games it was time for the Nativity Story, one of my favorite parts of the night.  Several years ago I took over the role of narrator from mom.  We always read the story from Luke 2 about Christ's birth from mom's very old, large bible.  The kids hold up images to go along with the story like a puppet show.  This year I didn't end up with any pictures.  😢

The gift exchange was next, the moment the kids always look forward to.

Here are more random pics of the party:

We were all sad when the party ended.  The rain was just starting to turn to snow as we were leaving so the drive home wasn't too bad, just a little slick in the hills.

Home again, it was time to open one gift.  Kalel asked me a few weeks ago why the only present under the tree for family members was always Christmas PJ's.  I asked him how he knew they were PJ's and he said, "because it is always the tradition".  Smart boy!  It is the tradition, one that everyone seems to love because whenever I even hint at doing something different the idea gets immediately vetoed!  This year I merged a couple of cute images from the internet onto shirts and just bought bottoms for each of us.  I may be biased, but I think that they are pretty cute!

This year Shandra and her family decided to stay at her house and have Santa come there for the very first time.  Kalel was very upset about that at first, but by the time he got to open his presents he was perfectly happy.  

It snowed all night and we woke up to a VERY white Christmas!  In fact it snowed all day long on Christmas.  We got over 8 inches.

I stole this picture off the internet since I didn't take one

Kim and I got up early and went to church.  Some people don't like it when Christmas falls on Sunday because it messes with their Christmas schedules, but I like it.  To me it seems like the perfect place to be - the whole reason for Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and the most appropriate place to do that is in His house.  I love singing the carols with the choir and congregation and listening to the talks. The choir sang "Stars Were Gleaming" and "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day", Janzen Packer and Johnny Hepworth spoke. I'm so glad that we went.  

After church Shandra brought her family over and Tasha and Zane joined us to open our presents.  I tried to keep it simple this year, but I don't think I did a very good job.  I just love to get gifts for my family!  I do think that everyone was happy with their gifts.  The main gift was tickets for the all of the adults to "Nutcracker Men in Tights" at the Desert Star playhouse.  We will be going on Tuesday and it should be great fun!

After opening our gifts we made our annual trek to the Parrish home wearing boots and heavy coats. The Robertsons made us their famous Rocky Mountain French Toast - YUMMY!  We didn't stay long because they hadn't opened their gifts yet, but it was a very important visit since it will likely be our last Christmas morning with them.  (Too sad to deal with in this post 😕)

 We then headed down to the Olsen's house where we were greeted with yet another marvelous breakfast treat - ebelskivers and sausage by Kristann and candy by Mickel.  We truly get spoiled!  

After a good visit it was time for Kalel to go with his dad for a few days and for Rae to go to with her mom.  Tasha and Zane left to spend the next few days with Zane's family.  Kim and I decided to head home and take a long winter's nap.  Awww, Sunday, Christmas naps are the best!  It was a little lonely that evening, but Kim and I snuggled up and watched sappy Christmas movies.  In my opinion, it was a perfectly wonderful Christmas.

THIS WEEK I AM GRATEFUL FOR:
Having my family all together to celebrate Christmas