This was a quiet week leading up to Christmas. Tom continued
to do Tithing Settlement on Tuesday, but had no meetings Wednesday and
Thursday.
Monday I had an early morning chiropractic appointment. I
was wearing shoes that seemed lower on the outside so my feet tended to roll
out. As I left the chiro appointment I
thought I’d stop by the cobblers.
Yes. They could put taps on to give
more height there. Yes, it would be
inexpensive. But… I’d have to leave the
shoes. Hmm. I was just going home after
that. So I took off the shoes, took off
my socks, and drove home barefoot.
Monday night Tom and I went to the new Star Wars movie. We liked it.
I’m moving a Roth IRA account to a new company –TD Ameritrade. Since it’s in an LLC, it’s complicated with
lots of paperwork. I also want to shift
some money from a traditional IRA to this Roth IRA. But I can’t just move the stock over. I have
to cash in the stock, move it to the IRA holding company, transfer it to my LLC
and send it to the new account. GAAA. So complicated. Now I know why I held off doing this. Tuesday
was spent filling out paperwork and calling people.
Wednesday we awoke at 6:30 to tornado sirens. The radio assured us they were about an hour
south of us… but the siren encouraged us to spend some time downstairs
anyway. Miranda and family arrived in
time for dinner on Wednesday. I had café
rio chicken simmering and Miranda came and made dressing and other goodies to
go with it.
Thursday I got up early and made cinnamon rolls and some
dinner rolls. Tasty! We did last minute
grocery shopping. I love cell phones. We
must have made a dozen or so calls to Tom, and then Dan, saying, “Oh! Can you
get this, too?” Thursday we made pizza
curls and wrapped the last of the presents.
We had a short Christmas Story reading, and after the kids were asleep,
out came the gifts.
Our neighbor left to go on a trip on Monday. Another neighbor was to dog-sit, and we
agreed to keep an eye on things and the dog-sitter is not the sharpest knife in
the drawer. Apparently he is not the
most reliable one either. Christmas Eve
he called and said, “Someone is coming to visit me tomorrow, I can’t take care
of the dogs.” It was nice that he called…but
not so nice that he won’t answer any of our calls back to him. So we’ve had lots of chances to pet, water,
feed, and love on 4 big dogs. I’m not
sure if the neighbor is returning home in a day or two or closer to 5 days.
We had a lovely, relaxed Christmas morning. The little McClellan boys were delighted with
their stocking candy and toys and were perfectly content to wait until after
the turkey was in the oven before we opened presents. They delighted in giving their presents to
each other and were really very nice about sharing, waiting their turns and
playing with toys. Miranda and I made a
few pies and then worked on all the rest of Christmas dinner.
We had the missionaries over about noon so they could Skype
their families. I planned dinner about 1…
but it was closer to 1:30 by the time we sat down. I forgot the potatoes again, but decided to
take the 5 minutes or so to make potato pearls (instant mashed).
Andy and Kera and family opened presents at their house in
the morning and then traveled up to our house.
They arrived a little before 2—before we’d put Christmas Dinner away…
but after some people had vacated their seats.
It worked out perfectly.
Miranda’s and Kera’s kids play well together. So they went roaming around outside on the 25th
and 26th until it started raining. While Deborah and Jonathan have
borne the brunt of this storm, we have mostly gotten mild to medium rain—about 3
inches in two days.
Jonathan called on Saturday evening—about 6ish to say they
had an inch or so of water in their basement! It was coming up from a drain
pipe in the utility room. Also, blocking
the culvert with a cattle panel had caused the culvert to come up out of the
ground and prevent them from using their driveway. They were housebound!
We discussed options and suggested a sump pump. So a neighbor took Jonathan to town to get
one. (They had a place for a pump and an electrical connection for it… but no
pump installed.) Once the pump was in (80 gpm) it took about 2 hours to pump
all the water out and now it seems to be effective in preventing flooding. The bishop and a few other members came over
late Saturday night and pulled up the carpet and padding and moved all the food
storage upstairs.
Andy and Kera planned to go home on Saturday, but we were
having such fun playing 5 Crowns and Wacky Six and other games… they decided to
stay until Sunday. So they got some
Sunday clothes from Goodwill and the kids looked cute. The kids enjoyed bead stringing, and
constructing and painting. Somehow we
got a good deal of glue on the kitchen table—wood glue, krazy glue, and I don’t
know what all. So I sent them outside to
finish while I scraped glue from the table.
It actually came off pretty well.
It was such a delight to go to church and have family fill
up the entire pew. I love my family!
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