Quiet Christmas Break

Soren and I have been staying home since our ski day.  He seems like he may have the flu.  Luckily so far no one else in the family are sick--yet.

Its been fun to find shows with him that he hasn't seen before.  Soren came along when his siblings were a little older so there are quite a few classic Disney shows that he never watched on repeat like they did.

Yesterday he built the Up house Lego set and watched Up.  I love that show, especially the dog translators and how Russell and Carl need each other.  Russell is such a cute character.  The ending is just adorable when Carl shows up to his special night getting his "assisting the elderly" pin.  Up makes me cry like 50 times in a row but I still love it.

Its been kinda fun to spend more time with Soren too since these days he's always wanting to hang out with his friends. 

I told him a few months ago that we are heading into a new part of life and that I'll take him and his friends places so I can spend some more time with him.  My intention wasn't to make him feel bad, but I noticed he spent a lot of time with me wrapping presents and watching Christmas shows after that.  Aww sweet Soren!  He's been getting super close to Jared and loves to do all the boy things.  And that makes me happy.  But I kinda miss my mamas boy too.

This past month we had to buy all new clothes for Soren!  He grew out of everything he owns overnight.  Even the free school t-shirt he got in August looks really small.  He is very excited to be in Young Mens next week and to pass the sacrament in church.  He is about as tall as me!

The garage measuring wall!  I need to transfer these somehow so we can paint eventually!  Its always fun to measure when someone looks like they've sprouted up.

Also he is suddenly getting very competitive!  We had some real issues with a high stakes Settlers of Catan game recently.  We play Perpetual Commotion a lot and Simone and Monet are really good and I always lose but its fun anyway.  

Simone has had a lot of fun this break.  She has been climbing a bunch with this mild winter so far and is feeling really strong and excited for bouldering regionals coming up.  She loves making pots on the pottery wheel Jared bought last Christmas.  This year she's made a lot of new friends that have been super fun.  One new friend came over one day and made pots, and then they went to her house and made these cute quilted climbing pants and used her friends embroidery machine to put some cool details on them.  I love seeing how happy she is to have friends that like a lot of the same things she does.  Each year she says she's not going to play lacrosse again, and then someone from the team asks her to play again and she remembers how fun it is to be on a team and she changes her mind!  So at this point I think she will be playing lacrosse.  She is not sure what she wants to do after graduation.  She only needs a few more credits so she could graduate early if she wanted.  But also I have a strong preference for not skipping over fun parts of childhood to rush into being an adult.  I know there are hard times in high school and sometimes it sounds fun to just get it done.  There definitely were some hard times for me!  But even then there are good lessons and it usually gets better pretty quick.  If I'd missed out on the second half of my senior year that would have been all the best memories of high school.

We went to Tucanos with Nana and Papa and the whole Utah crew.  There were a LOT of us!  Like 30 I'm guessing?  maybe more?

Anyway a sports team was sitting close to us and they kept staring at our huge group and I just wondered what they were thinking!  We could see they were athletes.   I told Elise I was going to have Jared ask who they were.  Cause I let him do all the extrovert things like that.  haha.  And when he came back to the table he was one step ahead of me.  He'd already talked them and it was the University of Wyoming basketball team in town to play BYU the next day.  And then he told me that he thought about telling them "good luck" but he wouldn't have been sincere.  haha.  He predicts they will get creamed by BYU who is ranked well this year.  I guess we will see in a couple hours!

Skiing with Soren!

hard to smile with goggles on!

The past two years Miles took Soren skiing so often that he got really good!  Miles would just go down hard runs and Soren had no choice but to follow.  It made him really good and I think he was super proud of himself with how much he improved in two seasons.  

I'm hoping this season Soren can help challenge me too.  

I took Soren and his two neighbor friends to Solitude on Wednesday and it was good for me to get a feel for it again.  The girls were about the same level as me. Next time I need to send Soren and his friends on their way so I can not be worried I'm holding them back!

Yay to one day down!  I'm a bit of a chicken when it comes to these things so just beginning is always the hard part.  But I'm excited to improve.  I'm going to be practicing my growth mindset.  And it was really fun to ski with Soren and his friends!

Favorite Things

 Because I went to Germany, I missed my friends' Favorite Things party.  I love that party.  Its always fun to see what other people love or have found.  

So anyway, pretend I'm an influencer and here are a few of my favs this year.

Laird Hot Chocolate with Anthropologie Festive Bistro Mug!  The Hot Cocoa has adaptogenic mushrooms, and is super delicious on the stovetop with milk.

Dry wipes from Amazon!  I love the idea of facial wipes but have super duper sensitive skin so I can use my normal La Roche Posay cleanser with these.  They are so soft and I can use one two times.

Elise bought me this clean perfume last Christmas and I loved it so much!

If you can get your hands on a Doterra Myst diffuser do it!  They plug in and are motion activated.  I would buy ten more if I could.

I think we've purchased 5 of these now.  I love them cause they are blackout masks!  No light gets through these babies.  Which is super good for sleep.  I am going to send one to Miles on his mission cause with all their different apartments he doesn't always have good blinds.

These doTERRA Bubble diffusers are another hot item.  Very tough to find but we sneaked out of convention 45 min early to be at the marketplace right when they opened and scored as many as they would let us buy.  Sadly out of stock but hopefully they will produce more so we can all have a houseful of them.

Hazy Harbor Shop Whipped honey and tallow moisturizer is literally the only thing that has been able to heal my cracked eyelids.  And I've tried a lot of creams.  Cheap ones like aquafor, and more expensive ones from the dertmatologist and from fancy spas.   Elise also found this and I really love this one without any scents.  The vanilla scent still irritated my skin and she loved that one.  So she and I switched because this nonscented works best for me.  This is $15 but there are always freebies and the shop owner is so nice and often includes free stuff and coupons.  I love this so much and am so happy to have found something that works!  Tallow is a trend I think but it is natural and has been super helpful for me.  

4 months for Miles

 Apparently I deal with my emotions by writing.  So when you see the last seven or so posts about Miles, its cause I miss him and it helps me to write.  And partly I want him to have a good record of his mission and I know he isn't really writing home much.

We talked to him today for p-day again.  He is going into his 17th week and the time is going by so fast.  He is such a thoughtful kid.  I love how he thinks a lot about the people he lives with and is serving with.  He has a generous spirit and loves to make people smile.  

He made tacos yesterday with some of the seasoning we sent when he left and a bunch of guys slept at their place for zone conference and so they all loved the tacos.  Brazilians don't eat tacos and he said they really liked them.

He loves his new area in the neighborhood of Ipiranga.  He would love to stay there next transfer but he knows he is being transferred out.  His trainer is really good at teaching and Miles is hoping to learn more Portuguese so he can teach more often.  But he loves what a hard worker this elder is.  They had 34 appts this week, and had 7 people come to church and 9 to a ward Christmas party.  They are teaching a great family and they have a goal to be baptized by February.

He bought some protein powder and olive oil and I guess those things are very expensive in Brazil.  He is looking for healthy snacks and I'm really glad he is doing that!  I love that he is enjoying the X3 bands.

He said these last two weeks he is understanding a lot more of the language.  So he's happy to be making progress.

Mango Trees and the Holy Ghost

Yesterday we talked to Miles again and it was so good to hear from him.  He's having me send him recipes for weird stuff like Baked Beans.  Lol.  He's happy and amused by all the things in Brazil that are different and gets a kick out of trying new things and also sharing American things.  I noticed he wears his Mossy Oak shirt from Wal Mart like every p-day haha.  Nothings changed.

He told us that there is a horse down the street that just lives on the cement with its baby.  And I was so confused because I've never heard of such a thing!  But he said the owner lives in the house and the horse and baby are tied up outside at night and he give them hay on the sidewalk.  And then in the day the horse pulls a cart.  But he said the horse pulls it like extremely slow like he can walk faster than the horse so he's not sure why anyone would pay to ride in the cart.  Anyway, kinda sad.

But I told him how when I was eight we went to Mexico and we were so excited to go horseback-riding on in this place called Yelapa near Puerto Vallarta.  So we get our horses and mine is name Paint and we thought that was so cute!  We started riding and pretty soon my horse got tired of walking and wandered off the trail and found a mango tree and just ate mangoes for awhile.   I didn't know what to do,  this little stubborn horse wasn't about to listen to an 8 year old gringa.  I was so disappointed.  And rotten mangoes are really stinky. 

And Miles said, "huh, I wonder if the Holy Ghost feels the same way about us sometimes." 

And I thought that was funny.  Yes interesting comparison.  He's trying to get us to go in the certain direction and we just park it where we want and don't listen sometimes.

He asked for a ton of Warheads for Christmas so he could give them out to Brazilians who don't have sour candy.  And we saw one of his videos of him giving them to his housemates and its pretty funny.  I tried one before we sent them and I have to admit I hated it.   Haha.  I like the Zots though.

They have had some great contacts and are excited about the people they are teaching in their area.  He was able to get his Christmas package and was very excited to use the folding fan we sent and the filtered water bottle lid from Clearly Filtered and also the massage gun for his super tired feet and legs.  He said the soles of his feet are so thick now he could probably walk on coals.

Also he was sad because they met a woman and he thought she must be pregnant with triplets she was so big.  And later he asked his comp how many babies she was having and he said it was a tumor.  And apparently she's too poor to have it taken out.  Way sad.