Mountain Mama

November was lovely and flew past, and December was very busy.  My Mom came down to spend Christmas with us for the first time.  Of course, we put her to work! Macy was almost in heaven.

Leslie reading her mission call.

Speaking of "Almost Heaven", that's been a catch phrase around here the last while since Leslie opened her mission call to the West Virginia, Charleston mission.  Even Rosie has been singing the "Almost heaven, Mountain Mama! West Virginia" song.

My brother Jake surprised us in an exuberant moment over Christmas break by cranking up our new karaoke machine to celebrate a little.  He doesn't sing for anyone, period.

  Our whole family is excited for her to go--on Mark's side she joins the ranks of several newly returned or currently serving missionary cousins (Tate Laker in Hungary and Gavin Day in Equador, Laura Hadley in Chile at the moment), and on my side of the family she will be the first sister missionary to serve in my immediate family, also the first missionary to go out since my brother Duke several years ago.  We have two giant maps down in the basement that we got earlier in the year to pushpin where all the missionaries in our families have served, so they came in handy as she was opening her call and we were putting everyones guesses up on sticky notes.  It was fun for me to try to research where all the missionaries have gone.  Leslie's great-great grandpa Rufus Day served in Virginia for awhile although we aren't sure where, so that's fun.  Her mission takes in about the central western third ? of Virginia, the eastern chunk of Kentucky, and smaller portions of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland as well as most of West Virginia.  There is no LDS temple within her mission boundaries, at present.  (Like the song says, almost heaven...)

You can see the state lines in red.

It has been fun taking her shopping for enough dress outfits, although her small tall frame is proving a bit of a challenge.  We finally ordered her an actual tall girl coat with long sleeves and I think when it came that was an almost heaven moment for her.  She's been wearing boy jackets for years now.

Here are a few pictures of the crowd from when she opened her call the night before Thanksgiving.  The video of her opening her call is on facebook.  Here is the link if anyone didn't get to watch it.

Thanksgiving was at our house the next day, and was really fun because Grandpa and Grandma Day and Aunt DeAnn's crew slept over the night before to avoid the snowstorm.  It was great to have lots of food and lots of helpers.

Cooper won this great turkey (with stuffing!) at a turkey bowling party held for the guys in our neighborhood.

Here is Rosie trying to be helpful earlier in the month.  It had been raining and she couldn't figure out why she couldn't dry the drips off the window, haha.

 Here she is playing Scripture Stories with her "Lephites" as she calls them.  She is pretty good at entertaining herself...sometimes unfortunately.

Leslie finished up at Utah State.  She called me the night before her big chem final, crying that she was going to lose her scholarship, never get into the nursing program, and fail college in general.  I laughed and said, "I've been waiting for this call!" and talked her down off the ceiling.  First authentic college finals week, check! She's fine.  She also had some other pretty authentic college fun:

I guess Logan Canyon broke some kind of cold record on a particular calendar day for the lower 48 states while she was there.  Lots of people complimented her great snowboots.  Little did they know, they're actually Aunt Brookie's tried and true Montana packs with new bootlaces.

 This is the tail end of a prank Leslie and her roommates played on their I'll-steal-your-food-and-you-can-deal-with-it RA roommate.  They may have concocted some extra tasty chocolate syrup for her to nip into out of Worcestershire sauce and powdered sugar and some other fun ingredients.  No reaction from said roommate, but a few days later, a brand new bottle showed up in the fridge.

This nerd of mine gave me a really big surprise just yesterday.  She has decided to apply to BYU and defer until she returns from her mission.  I may or may not have sobbed.  I wanted her to go to BYU SO bad--I loved it SO much, but she hasn't felt like it was where she was supposed to be, until now. (She only ever applied to Utah State). I really wanted to have that shared experience with atleast one of my children, and she has always seemed like my most likely to thrive there.  (Oh, other than Cooper playing on the basketball team, as he would say.)  Almost heaven...Provo, Utah!  I'm dancing in my chair right now. Cross your fingers, but she can still apply on her high school credentials so we are hoping for the best.  Thanks Utah State, for helping her grow and learn so much.

Cooper started the winter season of basketball and their team is playing up a level from the fall league, so it has been challenging.  This was a fun game though.  Santa Claus came and sat by me and we chatted about the team the entire game.  How does that song go?  "He knows when you've been flopping..he knows when it's a foul..."

 Macy and I got to go visit Duke and Natalie and Hallie and their new baby Crew.  Here are these cute girl cousins (there are mostly boys).

Some of the gang (I can't say crew anymore I guess!) from Crew's baby blessing.  Mark was home with sick kiddos.  We had a doozy of a virus for awhile, coughing and fevers for multiple days, etc.  Macy developed a mild case of pneumonia.  Cooper missed four days of school and would have missed more if it hadn't landed over some of the break.

 I promise Macy wore a green dress for the program.  Forest green.  It just looks brown in the picture.

 Macy and her friend Libby (far right) threw a Christmas pizza party for their whole primary class.  This group of kids is super fun and I'm excited for the next decade watching everyone grow up.

We always enjoy all the neighbor goodies and giving out treats during December.  This was our personal favorite.  Little Georgie Porgie rang our bell and handed us the chocolate.  Then with those big blue eyes and squishy cheeks he kept looking at us like, ok, now what do I get?...and wouldn't get off the porch. So I asked him if he wanted a hug from Rosie Posie.  Yes.  That did the trick.  Then we told Rosie that Georgie brought her some chocolate for Christmas, and this is the face she gives us...

Leslie got something better than chocolate.  (And that's really saying something around here.) She received her endowment in the Payson Temple.  She looked so beautiful in her new white temple dress.  Everyone dresses in white inside.  If you are curious about what a temple endowment is, exactly, here is an explanatory video.

Leslie with Grandma Frances and Grandma Haynes.  We are sure Grandma Day was also celebrating.

It was fun to have Leslie's cousin Lydia and Aunt Marcia with us.  Lydia just finished a mission to the Philippines.

Leslie has been back to the temple a few times.  Once, with friends, she had a memorable conversation.  Rather than linger upstairs at the end of the session, she felt she should hurry back to the waiting room, where one of their friends who is not a member of the church was waiting for the rest of the group.  He had been visiting with some other people there and had some questions for her (just like when she will be on a mission), and she answered them and also told him that nothing makes her happier in this life than her relationship with Jesus Christ and being a part of his restored church.  The guy gave her a very dubious look, like, "For real. That sounds like something you are programmed to say and how could all this boring churchy stuff make anyone happy?"  She understood what he seemed to be asking and answered something like, "I like roller coasters.  I like sushi.  I like being with my family.  All of these things bring me joy.  The gospel includes ALL of these things.  It isn't a separate compartment.  'Men are that they might have joy!' as it says in the Book of Mormon. That's the whole point in life."  She said that she could just see the lightbulb come on.  As his cousin joined them, he mentioned, "I just learned A LOT while I've been sitting here."  Haha--she wasn't expecting to be a missionary inside the temple.

Luke was proud of his "temple cheese".

I guess we've been good this year, so Santa came back to visit one night.

 The kids waiting to come upstairs and see their presents.  Rosie slept about an hour longer than everyone else.

 Our niece Stephanie gifted us a large portion of her BYU collection, including autographs, flags, and this fun light.

Luke watches "Catching Monsters", a fishing show, as often as possible.  So, here's a pole.  Too bad it's the middle of December.  We did sign him up for the Spanish Fork Urban Fishing class, starting in the spring.

One of the best parts of this Christmas was that Jake and Rachel brought their family down to spend some time with us.  The boys even went out for BBQ and a Jazz game with Duke.

  

Another really fun thing we did over break was to take the family tubing at Soldier Hollow.  We were there with our friends the Moore's.  Good thing Grandma was there to stay home with sick baby.

Own the hat hair!
Once Rosie was feeling better, Grandma introduced her to the wonders of playing in the snow.  She had such a blast!  I think they were outside in the backyard for hours, and Rosie requests her snowboots and pants regularly now. Grandma's created a monster...

 Luke in the middle with our neighbor friends Hayden and Cooper.