weekly 2015.12.27

I am sitting in the master bedroom of our beach house in Oceanside and I can hear the waves crashing outside. YAY! After such a wild week, we are happy to finally just do nothing. No door knocking. No phone ringing. No sports. No scouts. No YW/YM. Yay for the peace of nothing!

Since Rachel decided on her mission Sunday night we thought we would try and hurry and get a few things done while she was home because it's easier than when she's in Provo. I called Monday and got her a mission physical scheduled for Tuesday. I assumed that they'd have the mission paper work at the doctors because: UTAH. I was wrong. So we had to reschedule her physical for Wednesday after she'd met with our bishop Tuesday night and he cleared her to go online and get the paperwork she needed. She has all the paperwork done already but we need to finish one last question about our health insurance (that I need to call someone about) and she needs to go to the dentist. And she needs to pee in a cup one more time. TMI? Then she's done.

Rachel had to work in Provo every day last week which was a little scary because the weather was so terrible and the roads were awful. But our trusty, rusty, hippie, tree hugger Subaru got her there safe and sound each day.

Wednesday (Christmas Eve Eve) we hosted the family "Pizza & Pie" party. It was really low key but fun. My big kids get a kick out of the little cousins.

Stick worked Christmas Eve morning but then came home at noon sick with the stomach flu. So unusual for him, he never gets sick. Fortunately, it only lasted about 24 hours, so he felt mostly better by Friday. We did the nativity for Christmas Eve. Bekah wanted to be Mary as usual, but the rest of the kids only wanted to be animals, not people. So we had to assign a few roles cause our nativity is not sponsored by Disney. We need people.

Friday was Christmas and it was white with snow falling most of  morning. Fun for us, especially since we missed last year's white Christmas 'cause we were in Hawaii. Aaron woke up not feeling that great. We had a fun morning with all the usual Christmas festivities.

Around noon Stick and the boys headed out to shovel the driveway that had 9" of snow in it. It took hours. I prepared a Christmas dinner of ham, hash browns, rolls, green salad, fruit salad and corn. We had invited Stick's home teaching companion over to eat with us since he's divorced and was home alone for Christmas. Sad! After dinner and visiting, Stick and the boys had to go shovel the massive driveway of his work friend who also lives in Draper, but was out of town. Several more hours of shoveling.  All the snow shoveling kind of put a dent in our Christmas festivities. I almost had a moment there where I reconsidered our stance on a snow blower.....almost.

Along with all the Christmasing, and snow shoveling, the boys did tons of carpet removal. A hard and messy job. By the time we left for this trip they had cleared out the two downstairs bedrooms, the up and down hallways, the stairs, Spencer's room, and the family room. The carpet installers will hopefully be there tomorrow to put in the new carpet.

Yesterday, we packed up and left for St. George around 1:30, stopping to pick up Rachel who was at work in Provo. We had a nice visit with Stick's sister J and her family who live there, along with his (visiting) parents. We left this morning just before 7 and got to Carlsbad with about 1 minute to spare before 1pm church. Yes, this does mean we had to travel in church clothes. The kids loved it about as much as you can imagine.

After church, we came directly to the beach house. We were so surprised to see the beach compared to how it was last time we were here. You just never know what you are going to get. Last time we were here the beach was a gentle slope from our "yard" down to the water. Today there are tons of huge rocks at the end of our yard that weren't there last time and the sand is probably at least 10' below the rocks. Not really my dream situation, but whatchgonnado? It will still be a great week and we are thrilled to be here. Oceanside=my happy place.