RED LETTER WEEK

Well, after a long drought, it has been truly a red letter week! So many happenings. First of all despite my kids' best efforts at earning lumps of coal, Santa made it to our house. There was a grand time had by all with new Legos, lightsabers and a little pink doll.

I wish I could say it had been a relaxing holiday this year, but there was so much going that many of the things that I wanted to do were left undone. Those of you who are out-of-town family will notice that I've been running behind when your Christmas cards arrive sometime next week. I hope that there is truth in the old saying: "better late than never." Josh seems to have been much more productive than I. He had the week off and was able to finish his built-in project in the playroom.

The boys have really loved the window seat, as you can see. It is so nice to hear silence, wonder "What on earth are those boys up to?" and walk into the playroom to find them reading! The new cabinets have plenty of space for everything that has been cluttering the floor in the playroom plus space for my extensive collection of unfinished craft projects. Perhaps some of them will get finished if I don't have to dig through the plastic bins buried in the closet to find them.

This week is also notable because, thanks to the intervention of Dr. Bapa, my upper-respiratory- sinusitis-bronchitis-never-ending-terrible-horrible-no good-very bad cold is finally on the run. I actually made it out running this week for the first time in a month. I feel like a bear emerging from hibernation after a winter's worth of bad dreams; like I've been living in a constant state of out-of-body experiences. I am battling off some residual headaches, but in general this is a vast improvement.

I think the headaches are probably due to the Primary. Today was the first Sunday in January and anyone who's been in the Primary will agree that the last few weeks have been exceptionally stressful. However, today we managed to get all the children in the right place and every class had teachers. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to our primary teachers and to everyone who worked so hard to get our sputtering Primary started again. Now I hope we're on a roll!

Friday night was also excellent. I'll admit that I wasn't too sure that the Utes had it in them, but boy did they ever! They ran roughshod over the Crimson tide of Alabama. The best part was watching the TV announcers falling all over themselves trying to act like it was just what they expected. It was nice to have the game on regular TV so that we could watch. The Rosens watched the game with us, and Matt found it in his heart to cheer for the Utes. (He was probably ready for a good football game after having had to watch the Cougars embarass themselves losing to Arizona.)

In other news, Jillian has learned to sit up. We still have an occasional slumping over, but she's getting pretty good. Now if we could just tackle the waking up at night problem. And I also finally finished reading Anna Karenina. I've never actually finished a Russian novel before. I have learned the value of a really good translation! I enjoyed Tolstoy very much and I think I'll try to get started on War and Peace as soon as I can.

If the last few weeks haven't killed me off, I think I'll still be around to blog in the future. We missed our families this Christmas. Especially upon hearing of the massive mini-marshmallow fight at the Staker home and seeing photos of the penny auction at Grandma Rogers. Perhaps next year the Primary transition will be smooth enough that we can spend some time at home. Here's hoping for a happy 2009!