Daily Tender Mercies

Even though it is not a holiday in the USA, we celebrated boxing day today. That is, we took down and boxed up all our Christmas decorations. It seems we also spent a good deal of the day shoveling snow. I’m afraid I might have a sore back in the morning!

Later in the afternoon we went outside and went sledding. We are pretty luck to have a pretty good sledding hill in our front yard. Chris, Emily and Brielle came over. Chris and Brielle went sledding with us. We eventually came back in for some hot chocolate. We then played a board game with Chris and Emily. It was a game I learned to play yesterday called “Ticket to Ride”. It was a lot more fun today because I actually won.

After they left we put Nolan to bed and we watched The Princess Bride with Gracie and Gehrig. Gehrig got it for me for Christmas. That is my all-time favorite movie. I was surprised that Gracie and Gehrig sat and watched the whole thing.

It was a fun Christmas morning. The kids loved the new bikes that Santa brought - especially Gehrig. He wanted to put all his snow clothes on so he could go outside and ride it. We probably have about 18 inches out there right now.

We spent the day at Ken & Laura’s house. We played a few games and ate a lot of good food. It was a fun day.

I wasn’t feeling very well today. I didn’t sleep well because of stomach pains. I woke up around 4:00, still quite tired, but unable to sleep. I think I had a stomache flu. I was pretty nausiaus all day. Rachel went over to her mom’s house around noon and was there until about 6:00 helping her bake all sorts of cookies. Once she got home she said her dad was putting together some bicycles, so I went to help out. He said he heard that I was home sick and taking care of kids so he thought he’d try to help me out. It certainly was nice to have him do it. He was practically done when I got there.

I am so glad that Rachel has the tradition of leaving cookies and milk for Santa and has passed it on to our kids. Because I’m quite certain that Santa enjoyed the cookies and milk

We had a family party of sorts again tonight. This time it was with my mom and Harvey and his kids. We had a room reserved at Red Robin. I’m sure we got a discount because that is where Alex works. It was a fun night. It was especially nice having that room so the kids could run around without disturbing everyone else.

Last night Rachel created some chore charts for the kids. This morning when I came up for lunch Gehrig said, “Dad, come look on my door!” I didn’t bother going there and just said “what is it?” He said, “I did my jobs. Mommy was so proud of me!”

It was a pretty fun day. It snowed all day long! I took a break in the afternoon to help Rachel finish shoveling. When Gehrig and Gracie were playing in the snow while she was shoveling. After we go done I went sledding down the hill in our yard a few times with Gehrig. When we got done. Gehrig said, “I had such a fun day, Daddy!”

For family home evening, Rachel made a cake and we celebrated Jesus’ birthday and talked about the nativity. We then finished the night off by watching Polar Express. I love the holiday season. I can’t believe it is almost over.

This morning we dropped some nativity clothing off at the Heglands’ house and chatted with them for a while. It was fun talking with them. We then we to Lance and Kelli’s ward for their son’s blessing. After the blessing we went to their house for the Davis family Christmas party. It was good food and good fun. Lance and Kelly prepared a Christmas Win-Lose-or-Draw/Pictionary game that was a lot of fun.

Despite getting to bed late I was still up at 4:30 to work on some websites. I think it was mainly because Gehrig crawled into bed next to me and I got really hot. I figured I might as well get up rather than try to put him back in bed and have him fight me and wake up Nolan… Just picking my battles.

We had Rachel’s family Christmas party where we fulfilled their long-lasting tradition of making donuts. Around 2:00 or so I brought Nolan home to have a nap and continued to work on my websites until about 5:00. So I got a quite a bit done. Then we went back over for a nice dinner and played a bingo game that included opening presents. Some were good, some were not. I generally get those that are not. Such was the case this year. I got a box of Camoflauge band-aids… stupid. I ended up trading for a wiki desktop fountain - equally stupid. It was a fun night though.

My mom gave Rachel 2 Neil Diamond tickets for her birthday. The concert was tonight. We had a pretty bad snow storm this morning. We decided to take tracks. It may have relieved stress by getting us off the roads, but it took a lot longer to get there and back. We were actually late for the concert, but lucky for us he started just as we finally entered the arena after getting some food.

The concert was awesome. We had a blast. We had a babysitter until around 8:30, then Rachel’s parents relieved her and put the kids to bed.

Today it seemed to snow all day long. It was snowing when I woke up and probably didn’t stop until 1:00 or so. After work, Rachel and I went out to shovel the driveway and clean out the garage. The sun was setting and it was such a beautiful view to be so close to the mountans and see the pink reflections off the snow clouds. They sky is so clear after a storm.

Nolan has become quite a daddy’s boy. Whenever he sees me after I’ve been working in my office, or he just gets up from a nap he gets so excited and says “da da, da da”. Then he runs to me and wraps his arms around my legs so I can’t move and I have no choice but to pick him up and carry him around for a get 10 minutes or so. The down side is that if I try to put him down he continues to try to hold on to my legs or throws a fit it I happen to get away.