I open at the close

A nice Harry Potter reference to start out this post is appropriate.

Not sure why but it's all I could come up with.

All month long the first thing Brynlee would do when she woke up in the morning is go find our little elf man, put an ornament on her advent tree, and eat a chocolate from her Princess advent calendar. Seriously, there was a strict routine for her every. single. morning!!! 

Ward Christmas Party

Brynlee asked for an American Girl Doll with a horse and a carriage. 

The Primary kids all sang a song too. 

With extra food at the end of the night I felt good about getting to deliver food to those in need afterwards. 

 

Temple Square Lights with the youth. Bunch of crazy kids!

  

The kid kid totally lost her first tooth while she was out on a Daddy Daughter Date!

It had been loose for what seemed like a couple months. She bit into a plastic bag that had her Star Wars light saber toy in it and out it popped! 

The tooth fairy was pretty inexperienced at our house but she left a treat and a dollar as well as the tooth so Brynlee could keep her very first one. 

 

Desert Star - Ebenezer Scrooged

Had to capture this moment.

Twinners!

I know she is proud of him. Proud of the man he is and the life he lives. 

I know he loves her and would literally do everything in his power if she ever needed anything. 

 

 Our G-House tradition. Another tradition we kept alive this year is our trip to the Dickens Festival. So fun. Unfortunately, our real Santa ended up in the hospital this year. Dickens wouldn't be the same without him so I hope he gets better soon!

 Ty is pretty much the bomb and built me some shelves in our crawl space this month. 

In preparation of finishing our second bathroom we have to move all of our food out of our makeshift storage room aka our future second bathroom. When we first moved into our home I would have never even considered having food in our crawl space but we spray and don't have bugs or mice anymore plus I'm a little more comfortable with Brynlee (who am I kidding, I am more comfortable being in there now than I used to be too!) going in there to get me something when we need it. 

A second bathroom will be so helpful. Especially since we will hopefully be adding more little souls to our family sometime. 

 

Christmas Sunday

She's holding her hummingbird ornament. 

Our new ornament this year was a gold sparkly train from Durango/Silverton, Colorado.

On the Sunday before Christmas I got to do something I really enjoyed and had been wanting to do for a long time. I sang in a choir. More specifically it was our Stake choir. It was for our Stake Christmas Devotional and it was so fulfilling for me. I remembered how hard it is sometimes to sing, to remember all the little things that go into singing individually as well as part of a choir. I felt accomplished. I felt like I was praising my God through song. Not only that but my family came to support me and I feel like they were able to partake in a spiritual moment for the Christmas season as well. Christmas meant something different because of my participation in the choir this year. It brought me closer to Him. We sang 8 songs and my favorites were Winds Through the Olive Trees and Will you Travel to Bethlehem? These two songs touched my heart and I loved singing them. 

 

Christmas Eve didn't start out the best this year. Unfortunately, we discovered our backyard neighbors dog was being attacked by two other dogs that morning and called Animal Control. It was awful and I feel so terrible for that family. Two big dogs killed our neighbors dog and there was nothing we could do to save it. They have a little boy that's a little older than Brynlee and my heart is broken for him. 

Mimi and Papa's house.

 Jammies are the coolest with your cousins. 

 

We made lots of cookies this year but totally spaced on saving some for Santa. So he got Oreos instead. I don't think he minded so much. 

 

Christmas morning. It was a beautiful white snowy Christmas Day!

This moment was my favorite of the entire day. Brynlee woke up about 7:30/7:45 and came into our room for snuggles. We all snuggled for 20-30 minutes without saying much. When Brynlee finally piped up about wanting to go downstairs we watched the nativity and said a prayer as a family. 

This is a face and moment I never want to forget. She was so shocked. 

 

Hopefully Brynlee and Matilda (the doll) will be friends for a very very long time. 

 

She thought the matching PJ's were so neat. 

The horse was named Cinco without any hesitation. 

After our morning with just the Thomas 3 we got ready and headed off to Grandma Browns for brunch.

Got to see this beauty and it was a treat since it's been so long. 

After G & G Browns we went to Maga and Papa's for a little while to spend some time there (I didn't get any pictures there ... bummer!) and then it was back to Mimi and Papa's for the rest of the night. 

 

The backpack is awesome!! All the doll accessories, especially the small stuff, all has it's place, in the backpack!!

  

Can you tell they're tired? 

 

Last picture of the night. It was a great couple of days. Spent a ton of time with our families, playing games. Our white elephant exchange was fun and family feud was awesome. The girls won despite what the boys think.  We didn't do our chimes this year, which some people I'm sure are happy about but I love them. 

The day after Christmas was no fun for Mom at our house. At midnight I started in with the flu and the ensuing hours were miserable and the next day was spent lying around being achy, ingesting saltines and sprite and lots of epsom salt baths. I asked Ty to give me a blessing and it helped me sleep which I was in desperate need of. It was a really dull day for Ty and Brynlee and I felt bad, we had so many fun things to do and play with and I couldn't do any of it. 

Other things for the month. The General Christmas devotional for our little family this year was kind of a failure. I had a choir practice so we didn't watch it that night and when we tried to watch it online the next night for FHE Brynlee was being a little turd. 

I did get to go with Tisha to a Stake YW meeting and got to hear Sister Bednar, Sister Renlund, the wife of an area Seventy Sister Dewsnup, Sister Schaeffermeyer who is the Jordan River Temple Matron, and Sister Hailstorm who I think is the SLC Mission Presidents wife. It was super spiritual and uplifting. Some of my favorites from that meeting were:

Sister Bednar - 

Through the Saviors grace we are given strength to do things we don't think we can do. 

Your female nature is a gift from God. 

Love is from you, Marriage is from God. 

There are many who are willing to sit for truth and righteousness but are you willing to stand for truth and righteousness?

Sister Renlund - 

Plan stoppers. Satan is a plan stopper. 

True doctrine understood, changes attitude. 

You have miles to go before you sleep!

Sister Dewsnup - 

Lucifer fell like lightning. 

Be careful with social media. Do not look at some one else beauty and success and start to doubt your own. 

Sister Schaeffermeyer - 

Our identity as a woman is eternal.

The struggle to 'find out what Heavenly Father already knows about us.'

The vision of Eve (From Pres Nelson's talk: A Plea to My Sisters)

I could go on and on but it was beautiful and engaging. 

Also, this month we got to go visit Grandpa Donut for his birthday. We couldn't stay long because I had choir practice but we went early so we could spend some time with them. 

GNO at the Salt and Honey Market for Erica. 

My sweet friend Erica also decided to make these little herkimer diamond necklaces she calls Baby T and she is selling them and letting all the proceeds come to our little family for our surrogacy journey! They are beautiful, dainty little necklaces and it is so humbling she would do that for us. I have some of the best friends a girl could ask for. 

Ty and I took advantage of our traditional date night out while the kid had her traditional winter break sleepover with Aspen and Riley at Maga's house. The sleepover was complete with matching Jammies, staying up late, dinner and treats and who knows what other shenanigans. Our date was Sushi, (yum!) and Star Wars. Tyler was completely smitten by the movie, I would be ok seeing it once more... or never again. He wasn't too happy with me over that but I think he'll survive and I'll end up watching it again with him some other time. 

I am privileged to know a very good family, the Bonham family. Their sweet wife and mother passed away this month from a very long battle with cancer. She died the week before Christmas, at home and surrounded by her family. I know several of her children and worked for Scott her husband. This was so hard. I just love this family and grieved for their loss. It strengthened my testimony of the Plan of Salvation. I seriously and truly think I would be an emotional wreck if I didn't have the faintest idea that families could be together in the next life. There is scarcely anything worth more to me than that knowledge. I went to the viewing and the services with my Grandpa Donut and Grandma Cookie, they knew Suzanne and Scott when they worked together in the Temple Baptistry. I am so grateful I had someone to go with and that they had the privilege to know this woman. I feel like I knew her through her children because I only met her once or twice. The services were beautiful and I'm glad I was able to be a part of such a bittersweet event. 

Ty barely worked in the office, or worked at all in December and he isn't looking forward to going back to full work weeks in January. I don't think anyone would blame him.