Our ward Christmas party featured a sweet nativity presentation by the primary. Clyde was a very cute narrator, Will and Jack were very cute shepherds, and Carma was a very cute distraction probably running around the church ;).
The Fuhrimans brought a piñata because they're awesome like that. Here are some of the, um, wiser? members of the ward taking a whack at it (Brother Harrison, Sister Rolfson, Brother Robertson, Brother Murphy, and Sister Hyer) :
And some young'uns, aka three Izatt boys and one Swenson boy. I mostly laughed every time Bishop Swenson had to risk life and limb to grab the stick when someone's turn was over hahahaha.
I found cute friends to hang out with! On the left are three Corn girls who get to visit our ward sometimes with their grandparents. They are seriously the sweetest and I love seeing them. I also love taking pictures with them to send to Brother Corn so he gets scared I'm corrupting them ;). On the right is the one and only Raquel who coordinates with holiday parties even more amazingly than I do. #fashiongoals
Santa Claus and one of his sweet elves made an appearance, and all four Izatt kids stopped in for a chat. Please enjoy Jack's shorts, tall socks, and snow boots aka his winter outfit. That's my boy!
Speaking of parties, the South stake building was decorated all month long for a slew of ward parties over there, so we got to do Zumba on Mondays in this beautiful setting!
Sooo pretty, right? I wanted them to leave it up year-round but no one listens to me haha.
Another party, hooray! The Swensons hosted all of the Bishopric families for a super fun night of gingerbread house making and snacks and merriment:
I was clued in to the seriousness of the evening about the time that Cameron started construction using a hot glue gun. Add in Ryan the Engineer straight up making Mayan's house for her (I think she got to decorate? Eventually?)
and then Brother Robertson who I think has like built multiple real houses with his own two hands (I might be exaggerating, but not by much...) and it was clear that I made a good choice by eating candy and not actually attempting to build anything...
I love Chuck and Dan at the table with a bunch of their boys! Jack and Jaxen sneaked away into the Swenson secret hiding spot and were adorably incensed that I found them to take their picture ;). Clyde and Hunter and Andrew sneaked away to talk Pokemon, no surprise there.
Jack and I spent some time doing family history. He likes to sit on my lap and type for me. One night I found a lady with 10 possible duplicates, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. It's cool, they're all correctly merged now.
Even shoveling snow can turn into a party if you recruit awesome people! We woke up on Christmas Eve morning to a decent dumping of snow, so Chuck and Brother Cunningham and some youth from the ward hit up a few houses in the ward.
Temple trips, hooray! Once with the lovely Marens, once with the lovely Kautri and Emily, and once with just Em:
Oh, and another time with just Em that made it onto Instagram with the following caption:
Pro tip #1: if you're going to unwittingly drop your phone 📲(with TWO CREDiT CaRDS very visibly tucked in the phone case💳💸) do it in the parking lot of the temple 🛐because you'll come out 2.5 hours later and find it helpfully tucked onto your windshield, safe and sound 🙌🏼😅🙏🏼☺️. Pro tip #2: if you go to the temple on the first day it snows, make sure there's an amazing Emily around to get you there safe in her four wheel drive and buy you lunch afterwards ❤️🌯🍛🌨😘.
Okay, and Emily and I went one more time but invited our husbands too! We did sealings which was so so nice. Upon exiting the temple we embarked on the usually simple task of getting a picture... apparently much trickier with two guys involved hahahahaha:
The temple is such a lovely place for personal pondering and revelation and testimony building, but it's also a lovely place to do all of those things together with Chuck and I appreciate the fact that we have so many opportunities to do so.
Imma plagiarize myself again by pulling another caption from Instagram. The Church released a Light the World service challenge for the month of December that was way cool. Tons of awesome people followed it closely and did beautiful things.
Today's #LighttheWorld service prompt was to minister to little children like Jesus did and let's just say 9am church and Chuck working 12 hours doesn't necessarily add up to me knocking this one out of the park 😳. SO let's focus on my kids' primary teachers because they're all amazing! Everyone knows Mormons go to church for THREE HOURS 🕘🕙🕚🕛👀 but did you know over half of that is child free for me?? 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼 Every week I merrily hand my kids off to four different teachers/teaching duos who exude patience and love and enthusiasm for my little yahoos and THAT is ministering to children as the Savior did ❤️.
And finally, here's the letter that our Bishopric sent out to our ward:
I figure a reminder about the incredible capacity of the Atonement to heal and soothe and give hope and light is appropriate in September too, right? ;). Family is wonderful and friends are amazing and school and work and hobbies are fulfilling but ultimately I find the most peace and respite and strength by reaching out to Jesus Christ, knowing that He continuously anticipates my needs and is already reaching for me.
Okkkkay, two December posts down! Imma say like two to go? Maybe three?
