Janae – Page 32 – Terry Family Shenanigans

December!!

Merry Christmas!! December is here. I knew that with Thanksgiving being late Christmas would sneak up pretty quick this year and it has. SO BUSY! I have made a point the last few years to make an effort to not over pack the activities and that has been the plan this year. There just is a bunch of stuff going on this time of year between, regular schedules, end of year stuff, plus holidays. So it has still been busy but I am enjoying it. I have cut out a lot of family activities. We still do stuff together but I have just done the things that the kids have brought up and wanted to do. So some of our favorite activities this December have been wearing our PJ’s grabbing some hot chocolate and driving around looking at Christmas lights, watching a Christmas movie together (Elf and the Santa Claus movies 1-3 with Tim Allen are our favorites) We read my awesome Christmas book collection together a lot too. We decorated a ginger bread house too.

I have not done our White Elephant Christmas party that we did for years last year or this year. It is was fun to do but I am enjoying not doing it more. Ha! We simplified our treats for neighbors and friends this year too. Instead of making chocolate pretzels and other treats we put a note on a bottle of sparkling cider that said “Pop! Pop! Fizz! Fizz! Oh what a good neighbor you is!”

Some of the other fun things we have done is the girl scout holiday party. I am still a troop leader for Emilee’s troop so I was with them, but Allison was there too.

Our Elf Bubbit came. The girls always want him to come the day after Thanksgiving but Bubbit is one of Santa’s special elf helpers so he has to stay and help Santa until at least the 10th. Since we will be out of town this week Bubbit was able to come a few days before that. Emilee is our elf spotter. She can find him faster than anyone. She likes to leave him notes too.

The girls and I went on a neighborhood hay ride too. Allison wanted to have a seat at the front of the wagon with her friends but Emilee and I decided to sit at the back which worked out great because the second set of horses liked to be right behind the first so we could basically touch them. The girls sat on Santa’s lap afterwards too.

I sang with a group in the Relief Society Christmas activity. It has been a long time since I sang. It was a little stressful getting parts worked out. We originally started with 10 singers and ended up with only 5. We sounded good and it was fun though.

Ryan and I were put on the Ward Christmas Party planning group. We were in charge of Santa and his room and then activities to entertain the kids. The whole party went really well. Santa came with a Mrs Claus that was grumpy and I honestly would have liked to cut her out of all the pictures but it all worked out. The kids loved all the crafts, dinner was yummy, decorations were awesome. The person in charge of the program had a lot of primary kids play the piano, the ukulele, or viola, or sing a song. It was really fun.

Emilee and I went to one of the Highschool choir concerts. They sang a lot of fun songs. A lot of the songs they sang were ones I sang when I was in choir TWENTY years ago. Uuuuummmm, I just realized when I typed that my 20 year high school reunion is this summer! Wow that is crazy. Anyway, I digress. We all went to Leah’s choir concert as well. She is in a choir called Allegro. It was very nice. There is several different choirs and they all sang some very good Christmas songs together.

We had our first snow day for school this month. They cancelled church because we had a big snow storm and then school on Monday was canceled too. The cousins got to sled together for a few hours and we ended up with about 5 inches of snow. It was a fun winter treat before we head to Florida for Christmas.

Allison had a couple rough days, this is the first smile I got out of her after trying for a very very long time. I love her cute smile.

Cheer Banquet

Well, believe it or not, the first cheer season has come to a close. For those of you that are inexperienced with the cheer season, I have discovered it is longer than any other sport I have encountered thus far. It began way back in May with uniform ordering and sizing and 12 fundraisers, followed by camps and regular practice, more fundraising, cheering for games, more fundraising, the parade, then dance and cheer competition practices, then the actual competition, and finally followed by the Cheer Banquet in December. Oh boy, it is a long season. Allison enjoyed some of it. Breaking her arm before her first practice put a damper on things but she still had some fun. I think she loved the dance competition the most. Her little adorable face was lit up the second she walked out to the floor.

The cheer banquet invitation said it was “Hollywood Red Carpet Theme-dress to the nines” and it was the whole family. Ryan was out of town but the rest of us went and I made them dress up. There was probably 150 people there that night. NO ONE with the exception of about 50% of the cheer leaders dressed up fancy. For sure, none of the other family members were dressed up at all. We missed the note that most people just ignore the theme part of the banquet. So we did feel a little silly being all dressed up. They handed out awards to all the cheerleaders. A lot of the dads did a cheer dance performance for the girls that was a definite highlight. They did some fancy lifts and tosses and it was fun to watch.

After awards and dinner the rest of the night was a dance party. It took her a minute watching from the periphery but Allison joined in and had a fun night dancing with her friends.

Thanksgiving 2019

We headed to Thanksgiving dinner in Lincoln Nebraska this year. Ryan and I had to work a half day then we drove up Wednesday afternoon. Jake and Becky came but had to be back for a wedding so we celebrated Thanksgiving Wednesday night. It tasted just as good as it would have on Thursday. Actually better because I didn’t cook it and food always tastes better to me if I don’t have to make it myself. I don’t think the only reason for this is that I wasn’t the cook. 🙂

We played games and hung out as much as we could with Becky and her family before they left.

The rest of the weekend was very laid back and relaxing. None of us went Black Friday shopping. At least in the beginning of the day. Some of us may have wandered around a bit in the afternoon to see if there was any amazing deals left.

We had our traditional dinner at Pizza Ranch when we were all tired of eating turkey leftovers for a few days. I don’t get tired of eating leftovers but everyone else does. I am still an advocate for making one big meal at the beginning of the week and eating it the rest of the week but I am alone in this amazing idea.

The movies were the center of our entertainment. There has been a dry spell for a while on good movies but they are coming out at least weekly now for the next month or so.

Lauren and I took the girls to the new Frozen movie. It was great. We all loved it. The story and the music was great.

The boys went to Midway. It was given a good report. I wanted to see it but will watch it later because Lauren and I went to a movie called JoJo Rabbit instead. I had no idea what it was even about but Lauren said she had heard good things. We were both very concerned after the first 10 minutes of the movie. It had awful written all over it but then there was a little bit of a plot/view point explanation and it got much better. I actually ended up liking it.

Ross, Lauren, Ryan and I went to Knives Out. It was also a good movie. I like mystery/detective movies and shows and this was a nice spin on that genre.

Lauren and I took the kids to a fun trampoline place for a few hours one of the days too.

There was a threat of snow all weekend long but it didn’t happen between us and home so we were able to get home without driving through a blizzard like we did last year.

Thanksgiving was later in the month than usual this year so Christmas started coming fast as soon as it was over. It is a busy but fun time of year.

Friendsgiving 2019

Last year four families from our baseball family got together for a Friendsgiving. We did it again this year. It is a fun time. The kids like it because there is a group of them to play and all of them have at least one buddy. We are all very different families but we get along really well and enjoy each others company. Everyone brings a few appetizers and we visit and hang out for a few hours then eat a dinner together. Then play games and visit some more.

This year there was minute to win it games that we all did. We divided into five teams and each team rotated between five games. There was potato rolling, apple stacking noodle fishing, cotton ball flipping and cookie eating contests. The winner of each team wrote their name down on a paper. After all the teams finished we went to each game and the five winners from each team played the game. Those people earned a laminated turkey medal. Then the winner of each of those games played against each other in a final championship game. The final championship game ended up being Cam, Matthew, Jake, Allison, and Frank (his mom actually one but requested a proxy for the championship game). They each had a paper plate with 10 candy corns on it that were covered in whip cream so you couldn’t see them. Whoever found all ten and put them on a napkin next to their plate-without using your hands of course- was the winner. The kids loved it. Jake was the winner and he got another laminated turkey medal for his efforts.

It was a nice relaxing enjoyable evening. The friends that have done it every year are moving to Poland this summer for a couple years. One of the rest of us will have to try and live up to the Friendsgiving tradition while they are gone.

I have been waiting to post this post to add some fun pictures to it…long story short-they aren’t coming. So take my word for it, we had a fun time and looked ridiculous doing it.

Allison’s Cheer Competition 2019

Allison’s squad did the dance and cheer competition this year. They did a great job! It was fun to watch. The smile on her face when she was doing it showed that she loved it too.

They ended up placing third for the dance. I really think they were better than at least one if not both of the teams that took 1st and 2nd but they got docked a huge amount of points for the way they tossed their poms to the side when they were done with them…I will refrain from the snarky comment I have about judging competitions getting way out of hand. I have no problem being in competitions that are judged. I think it is can be good for kids actually. If it is logical with clear objectives. When it is convoluted and subjective. All the teams were fun to watch, the judging was just a little obscure and hard to predict.

I don’t know what happened with my pictures. The first few are fine and the last few are fine but the middle ones came out way to dark. I lightened them as much as I could. I feel awful they turned out dark. I also put pictures from her last cheer game on here. They performed the same routine they did for the competition during half time so I got a few good pictures from that. After they last game they switched gifts with the football players too.

Emilee’s 7th Birthday!!

After counting down almost daily for the last 6 months Emilee’s birthday final came! She was so excited. She has been asking for some lego dragons fora long time. I was able to find some on ebay since they were not sold anymore and she got her little family of lego dragons for her birthday.

To celebrate she wanted to have a few friends over for an all day play date. She spent the night at Jovee’s on Friday and then I picked her up and Jovee, Reese, Cambrie and the rest of our family went to a movie together. It was cheesy, bad acting, and pretty ridiculous and they loved it. They giggled and laughed through the whole movie. After the movie we went home and had pizza and rootbeer, opened presents and then blew out candles and ate cake. The weather was great so Emilee picked a park and we went and played for a few hours. After her friends went home we met Jovee’s family at Sake Lounge and had Emilee’s favorite food- a Shaggy Dog. It is a sushi roll.

I think she had a fun birthday. She said she feels a little bigger but not much. We have lego dragons all around our house.

Giv-er

To explain this title. I will need to back up a little bit and go back about a three weeks ago. I wanted to give the outgoing Primary Presidency and small gift as a thank you for their service so I went online and found a website call Zazzle and ordered my gift from them. They do personalized gifts, so you design it and then they put it on a picture or shirt or whatever you want. So I ordered something it came and I delivered it and was done with Zazzle.

Fast forward a few weeks an I find a box in my mailbox from Zazzle. I was immediately confused because I had already received the order I placed and hadn’t ordered anything else. I open the box to find this little item featured below. This leaves me more confused. Then I think, maybe it is a promotional item (a very tacky bad one but still) and they just sent them out to a bunch of people. I then find the receipt in the box with the hat that says I designed and paid for this tacky thing.

I go to the website and login and look at my orders…nothing. So I somehow designed this ugly hat, ordered it, paid for it, and had it shipped to my house and there was no record of it on my account. I thought maybe it was another persons order that had been delivered to me but it had my name and address on it too. Slightly annoyed now thinking about how long I am going to have to spend on the phone to get this figured out, I start looking for a customer service contact number.

At the same time I was texting with Ross, Lauren, and Ryan on a group text about some random stuff. I sent them a picture of my perplexing hat. After I send the picture Ryan texts back, “Hey that is mine!” I thought he was messing with me. After some very confusing but now hilarious texts I found out that he had decided to order a hat from a movie for a friend for Christmas. Coincidentally he came across the same Zazzle website I had used a few weeks previously, made his own account and ordered it.

So we actually did pay for an ugly hat! Luckily it has a purpose though. Also, luckily he let me know it was his before I got ahold of Zazzle customer service and got irritated with them. It was pretty funny.

Found My Stockings

It is important to appreciate the small things. I had a small victory the other day that I have been waiting for years to get done.

When Ryan and I got married we got stockings for us that were just the standard basic fluffy stocking. I didn’t know for sure how many kids we would have so I didn’t want to get some nice ones then have a kid and not be able to find a matching one (I am a uniform decorator). I wasn’t sure what stockings I wanted to commit to either. When we had kids I just got the same kind at the store. They changed the color of the red slightly each year so none of them really matched that well.

When we were done having kids I wanted to get matching ones for all of us that were a little nicer than the 99 cent basic one. For the last 5 years I have had my eye out for the perfect stocking. I didn’t want anything elaborate, but I wanted them to have our initials on them and I did want them to be red. I found a couple that were cute but they didn’t have enough, or the right letters, or they were to fancy or something.

The other day I was walking through a store and I saw some cute knitted red stockings that were perfect-except they didn’t have letters on them so we could tell them apart. I kept walking and when I got around the corner there was the exact same stockings with letters! I was so happy. I tried not to get to carried away because I didn’t know if they had all the right letters. It turned out they did though so I was finally able to get my cute little stockings!!

They are hanging up on my fireplace now and I love them. It makes me happy when I look at them. Yay for matching Christmas stockings!

Terry Family Matching Christmas Stockings

Journey to Judea

A friend of mine told me about a church that does a production each year for the community about the birth of the Savior. It sounded pretty neat and I was able to get tickets for us and Lauren’s family to go.

It is very well done. When you come in they have a nice waiting area with cookies and hot chocolate. Then when it is your groups turn you go outside and walk through probably 15 different stations that start with Moses, then Abraham, then Abraham and Isaac, then Isaiah and then starts the story of Mary and Joseph and then going to Bethlehem and then of course the stable and his life, death and resurrection. The town of Bethlehem was pretty amazing. They had a ‘street’ that you walked through and probably a hundred people doing all kinds of things on the street- shopping, looking for someone, talking with friends, selling something, beggers, people doing laundry. It really felt like you were walking through a street in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. It was a neat experience.

We had a good conversation with the kids afterwards too. Aside from remembering what Christmas is celebrating and remembering to focus on that part of Christmas amongst all the other holiday stuff, we talked about the importance of surrounding ourselves with good people and good things. Even though we don’t belong to the same church as they do and they don’t have the fullness of the gospel they were good people teaching a lot of truths and strengthening people’s knowledge and faith in the Savior.

Allison and Mom Date

The past few weeks have not been the best weeks between Allison and Ryan and I. We seem to go through cycles with her of ups and downs and we are definitely in a down. There are still happy moments when we are on a down cycle but that is what they are moments. Far and few between the contention and friction and arguing and almost constant battles over everything from waking up in the morning to how people are breathing around her. Hopefully we are headed back up at least but that is an unknown for now. It is not fun for all involved obviously.

The other day Allison came to me and said that she wanted to go and have some fun one on one time together. I thought it would be a good idea and a chance for us to have some positive interactions for a good amount of time.

We decided to go to main event together. There is a bunch of different activities there to do and we decided to do bowling together. We played three games and had lots of fun. The score board would use your actual real face on silly cartoons when it was your turn to bowl. Allison thought it was a hoot. We did a fun zip line thing a couple times while we were there too.

It was fun and we did get to reset and enjoy each others company and not fight for a whole two hours. Allison and I have to put more than the average amount of effort into our relationship and communication. The little stinker is worth it though. She doesn’t always believe me but I love her and I want her to be happy and I want what is best for her.