The Professor and Mary Ann

Will is in the top row, fourth one in. We got to see Will perform for the first time with his new choir. We loved the instrumental group and both choirs. Choice of music was delightful, and the kids did a bang-up job even on their "challenge" piece. I think it was a Haydn. This next one is from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Pie Jesu. I've loved hearing Will sing it around the house: There were only two problems with the concert. One was Joss. He was a demon despite my having brought in a coloring book and crayon. Two was our camera. The wee video function is just not up to all of our performers!

Maddie's on the left, about four girls in. We had a week of performances before the kids got out of school. First was Maddie's orchestra concert [though Maddie refers to it always as "dorkestra"]. They played a Jingle Bells and Carol of the Bells and a piece called Santa Goes To The Symphony with excerpts from Christmas carols and well known orchestral pieces. Mercifully, Maddie came first on the program, because Joss made it through only two of her pieces before having to be carried out. We called it a night after her group was done. I'm so glad we got to see her! Her confidence and sight reading have improved a lot, and I love the fact that now she's practicing for a grade!

Now that Christmas is over, here are a couple of presents for other people that it's safe to talk about. Our friends and family have been so SO generous to us that we should take a moment here to remember. We had B & H, J & T, D & J, and M & D who all invited us to come stay at their cabins this year. They were our vacations and they were all highlights . K K and K gave us a vacuum cleaner and a camera when everything in our possession began to fail. L & A kept us entertained for six months with their treasured boxed set of West Wing and got our carpets livable again with their wonderful steam cleaner. There are many more things that I'm forgetting right now, but it does remind me of C & B who gave us a toilet when Joss was born. I kid you not. A porcelain throne; the genuine article. The card said "happy toilet training". So when they adopted their eighth this year, I knit a sweater for their daughter. It looked like this only deep pink with

I am behind this year on Christmas, and really noticing a difference. Normally I aim to meet Flylady's holiday deadlines to have my presents bought, menus planned, nonperishables stocked, cards mailed, and everything wrapped. This gives me the whole month to obsess over neighbor gifts (which I loathe). This year I'm playing catch up on all of those things. The one thing I've done right is to wrap and label the presents but not stick bows on them. This way I can hide and stack them, I know who they're for, and I'll have the perfect job to do while I'm helping the kids wrap their gifts. OK, the other thing I've done right is use Amazon. Not only do I love their wish list and the universal wish list button so that I can add things to the kids' lists as I think of them whenever I'm "looking for the end of the internet" as Liesl's sister calls it. I also love their gift organizer which lets me create an idea list for family and friends

Yesterday we celebrated second advent. I guess we've been celebrating it for a while now. Here was advent in Berlin in 2006 , and a good example from 2009 .You generally have a bunte teller full of cookies and candies, but we were caught flatfooted, so we punted with sugar cookies. When we took out the cookie cutters, we were dismayed at our strange Christmas offerings. We had things like numbers, farm animals and letters, so we made a Mr. Bean christmas plate instead. If you haven't seen Mr. Bean and the Nativity Scene , give yourself a gift and go watch it. Then you'll understand the helicopter and dinosaurs. We had Betsy & Bulk over for a dinner of gulasch & spaetzle. Then finished it off by going to see the 35th annual Adventsingen at the Provo Tabernacle. The Frauenchor was the best ever; the program came in under an hour; Katie actually gets to keep her dirndl; these are all amazing things but it was a banner year for me because I didn't wrangle

Dear santa. I have been not so good these week's. but now I will be verey good if I kan So please can you bring me some legoes and a air soft gun and duck tape. [all true. Sebi's been having a hard time with obedience lately, though I'm surprised he recognized it. And if we're being honest here (which we often are) I am far more concerned about the grammar in his letter. An apostrophe in "weeks"? Be still my heart!]

. . . when you let the two-year-old pick out his own outfit. I'm just sayin'. . .

Having already established that we were not going skiing ("I don't ski. That was a bait & switch to marry Eric" said she) Jen & I were avid explorers of Main Street. I hadn't been to Park City proper in about two decades. We wandered in and out of all the shops, from high end Paris-Hilton-shopped-here boutiques to the ski bum t-shirt shops. When we got tired, we went back to the hotel and used their spa! We used the dry sauna, the eucalyptus steam room, the hot tub, the shower, the outdoor hot tub, the steam room, the shower and the women's meditation room (I read People magazine and catch up on Portia di Rossi's anorexia to meditate). It was heavenly! As evidence of what a great weekend it was, I told Rob that as we were leaving, I couldn't even contemplate Thanksgiving the next week, let alone Christmas. After three days of enforced relaxation, I was enthusiastic about the holidays. On the home front, the husbands cooked, cleaned, chauff

In 1990 I was working at a law firm in San Francisco when they hired Jennifer. We worked on the same insurance coverage case through trial prep and trial for six months or so. We put in 14-hour days together organizing the documents, reorganizing them and then making seven copies of the results. I was so grateful it was Jen that I got to spend so much time with. We even took a weekend roadtrip to see where our case took place. Jen introduced me to Thai food, the Haight Ashbury district, Marin County, and taught me that while two wrongs never make a right, three rights make a left. She even visited me back at BYU where we spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find coffee in the mornings. She blushes now when I mention it, but her swearing is pure poetry; she takes it to truly artistic levels (and says now "Shhhh! The kids have no idea!"). After that crucible of a beginning, we've seen each other through college, law school, a mission, half a dozen jobs and boyfr

To my local home improvement store: Normally I work to "maintain contentment in whatsoever state I am", loving my minivan with the back bumper sensors whilst in the US and the freedom of my transportation pass in Europe, etc. etc. etc. But you sent me over the edge today. To entertain the two-year-old, we came over to the Christmas aisle "to see the lights". That would be the 12-color LED lights and the icicles that light up as though they're dripping and the ones that flash to the music of over 40 Christmas favorites. I knew it was coming and I kept my cool. I question the need for an inflatable Santa-popping-out-of-his-Airstream or the light up Santa-in-a-golf-cart, but . . . . to each his own. I part ways with you when it comes to a family of tinsel chickens as lawn ornaments, or a sparkle peacock, or the pink sequined Susan G Komen reindeer (you have seen what happens when they meet with rambunctious teenagers and end up in compromising positions, haven&#