___: Jennifer

So, we’ve had a nice Thanksgiving week. Last Saturday night my parents and my brothers got into town and it was really nice to have them here. On Sunday we made up a big dinner and the Barkers came over to enjoy it with us. We had fun talking and the kids enjoyed running around the house and playing together. Kolby and Eli had no preschool this week for the holiday, and Kolby’s piano teacher was out of town so his next lesson will be this upcoming Wednesday. He has been practicing the piano almost every day and does really well at it (when he’s not in too much of a goofy mood). I asked him to practice this morning while I was collecting all of the boys’ Sunday clothes before church, and he came downstairs a little later, very excited to tell me that the second time he plaid “Up on the House Top” he didn’t look at his book and played it all from memory. How cute!

So, this week we got to do a lot of fun activities with my family here. On Monday we found out that my sister, Michelle, is having a little girl. They are going to name her Elizabeth Faun Conde, and call her Lizzie, so that is exciting. And then on Monday evening my mom and I went to several Christmas stores just to look at things, we ate at a fun little German deli downtown where my mom and sister had eaten once before Jenn left on her mission, and then we ended up going to a mall and my mom got these cute little outfits for each of the boys for their Christmas gifts. And then on Tuesday morning my brother Matthew had a tour at BYU in Provo. We all drove down and while my parents and brothers went on the tour, Grandma and the boys and I searched out my favorite old BYU professor, Brother Minert, and we were lucky enough to find him in his office when we showed up. I knew he would remember me, because he is the kind of teacher that really gets involved with his students and invites them and their families over to his home for a dinner with the whole class, but he and his wife also came to Kolby’s baby blessing at church when we lived in Provo, and last year they were on a trip in Milwaukee and stopped by our apartment to visit. But I was so impressed when I showed up, and Brother Minert introduced me to his office assistant, and started telling her all about how we lived in Milwaukee and we were here in Salt Lake for the year and then moving next year for Michael’s residency – have you ever had a college teacher who remembered you so well? Anyways, that just felt nice. It was fun to see him for a few minutes, until the boys got too rowdy and we had to say goodbye. Then we met up with my family in the bookstore. My mom wanted to make a slideshow presentation for her ward’s Christmas Enrichment activity with pictures of Christ that went along with the song, “Mary, Did You Know?,” so she was looking for little prints of pictures and a CD that we could use for that. She also found a nice Christmas book for the boys – they get one for them each year. Then we headed over to Hogi Yogi for lunch – I don’t know why, but it seems like all the Hogi Yogi’s in Utah are gone except the one near the BYU campus – too bad, we always enjoyed their food. After leaving Provo, we drove up to Heber to take a look at my grandpa’s house. The people who were renting it have recently finished building their home and moved out, so my parents are looking in to selling it. We spent a while going through some boxes of old papers and stuff in the house, and then stopped for a quick visit to Grandpa’s old friend, Dee, before heading back to Salt Lake.

On Wednesday Michael had an early day, so it was nice for him to be home with us too. After he finished working, he called us and we all went and met him at the hospital so he could give us a short tour of where he works. Then Dad and Grandma Faun went to Costco, Michael, Matthew, Aaron, and the boys headed home, and Mom and I went to the grocery store to get all the Thanksgiving foods. We got home that evening and prepared food for several hours. We ended up with three batches of Grandma Moore’s jello salad with the bananas and 7-Up in it (my favorite Thanksgiving dish), a bowl of mom’s layered green salad with the red onions, pees, and bacon, a triple-batch of Mamaw’s fruit salad with the marshmallows, and about 9 plates of turkey cookies that the kids helped decorate after dinner. (I’ll have to get the pictures from my camera and post them later – the older three boys had fun decorating, and Isaac had fun munching on cookies while we did that).

On Thursday morning Michael and I got to sleep in, and then we got all ready and headed to Grandma Bradshaw’s house for Thanksgiving with Michael’s family. Michael was lucky enough to get the day off of work, which we were glad because he thought he might miss his family being in town if he had ended up having to work that day. We were disappointed that Alan and Jenn and Jennie and Dalin didn’t come. (Happy Birthday to Dalin, by the way – his birthday was the day after Thanksgiving). We got over to Grandma Bradshaw’s house around 10:30 in the morning, and after a long day of eating good food and pies, the boys playing ball in the back yard with Daddy, plenty of video games, a game of Apples to Apples, and a fun game of Ticket to Ride, we headed home around 11:30pm. It was nice to be able to spend the day with Michael’s family, and I think the boys did quite well for being at someone else’s house all day long.

On Friday morning Matthew and Aaron watched the boys while I went with Mom, Dad, and Grandma Faun to Heber to finish up at Grandpa’s house. We got the entire garage organized, made a trip to the dumpster, and took a few things back with us. So, now the house is pretty much ready to sell. We also drove up to the Lake Creek property to take a look around (the person who owns property downhill from Grandpa’s property doesn’t have water rights, and Grandpa did have the water rights, I guess, and so this other man has been breaking up the pipes and stuff that go from the ponds on Grandpa’s property to divert the water down to his land. I guess this man had been doing this even before my Grandpa died, but now there is no one to do anything about it, so the upper pond has been drained quite a bit). Anyways, we walked around both ponds – and I found that I wore the wrong shoes to go trudging through the snow in. Then we headed back to Salt Lake, picked up my brothers and the boys, and went straight to the movie theater to meet Dick and Debbie and the rest of the family. (Grandma Faun was nice enough to stay home with Isaac, which made it so we could actually stay inside the theater for the entire movie). We saw the new Disney movie, Bolt, about a dog. Kolby and Eli enjoyed it, and Camden sat still and watched for about 30 minutes or so, and then it lost his attention and he spent the rest of the time climbing up and down from all of our different laps, but did pretty good at not disrupting people around us – I think he did well for his first movie in a theater. Afterwards the boys enjoyed running around in the hallway with their cousin, Jaden, for a while before we had to leave. After we got home, Michael got home too and we ate a late dinner and put the boys down for bed. Michael fell asleep on the couch, and I went upstairs to help Mom work on that slideshow for her Enrichment activity. While we were working on that, Mom and Dad were helping Matthew try to cut down the word count for his college application essays, and he finally got that all finished and submitted around midnight. (It’s a good thing he got that finished, because he was using my Grandma’s computer to type them up, and her computer ended up crashing later on that night and hasn’t turned on since then, so we were glad that he didn’t lose all of his work before he was able to submit his application). Mom and I ended up staying up very late that night trying to finish that slideshow. I was proud of Mom – she has become more computer savvy over the last year or so, and when I showed her how to scan the pictures for the slideshow she learned how to use the scanner and adjust the custom settings for higher resolutions and everything. She had scanned all the photos earlier in the week, so we worked on getting them all on the slideshow and deciding which ones to use and what order to use them in so they coordinated with the words in the song. We were up until 4am working on that, and in the morning I worked on it for a couple more hours and got it all finished up (I had some pictures that needed to be edited in Photoshop, and I added the music and adjusted the timing of each slide to go with the music). I was very pleased with how it turned out (I really wanted to post it on the blog, but I’m afraid of copyright infringement – my dad was saying that even though my mom paid for the prints of the pictures that we used, we didn’t have permission to make a slideshow out of it, so I guess I’ll leave it off. Better safe than sorry). So my family got all packed up and cleaned up the house and headed out around 3:00pm yesterday. I’m glad that it sounds like they got home safely. We haven’t heard from Michael’s parents yet, but hopefully their drive back to Boise yesterday was also uneventful.

Today was Michael’s short day, so he had to be at the hospital during church, but he just got home while I was writing this, so that’ll be nice to have him here this evening. Church was pretty long today. Isaac especially had a hard time. He was very happy when we walked into church this morning, but as soon as I tried to walk into my classroom he started screaming. I went back in the hall and he was just fine. So I tried again, and he did the same thing. We tried about 6 times with the same results. I tried putting him in the stroller, carrying him in my arms, holding his hand and letting him walk in, and going in and sitting down and letting him crawl in after me – none of these different ways of getting into the classroom worked. Someone even got a chair for me and set it right outside the classroom door, and he cried most every time I sat down in that chair too (there were a couple times I sat down in the chair by the door and he wasn’t sad, but he started playing with the bulletin board that was on the wall just outside the classroom and making such loud noises that he was distracting people in the class). So, we spent that entire hour out in the hallway. When the people started walking out when the class was over, Isaac seemed ok going in finally, so we went into the second class. After about 15 minutes of moving around in the back of the classroom, trying to keep Isaac from taking peoples’ papers and being noisy, I just took him out. We picked up the other boys at the end of their classes and went to Sacrament meeting, and after a few minutes Isaac and I were out in the hall again. Near the end of the meeting I was in the hall with Camden and Isaac on my lap, and Isaac finally fell asleep (and then I had to wake him up when I put him in the stroller to go home at the end of church). Oh well. I guess there must be some kind of special blessings for parents who endure going to church with ornery little ones (even when they can’t get much out of it).

So, we had a nice Thanksgiving week, and I hope that all of you did too. This upcoming week should be pretty nice – when I flipped the calendar to December, it was nice to see a lot of blank days that haven’t filled up with busy days (yet). We are looking forward to a Christmas party for Michael and the other interns on Tuesday (the first time we have had an intern activity with everyone since the orientation in June). And a ward Christmas movie night on Friday night should be fun, since Michael should have a short day at work that day.

And then I have another doctor’s appointment coming up in not too long – I can’t believe that I’ll hit 30 weeks tomorrow. I have to say – with my first three pregnancies, by the time that I got to about this point in the pregnancy I was ready to be done, and once I hit the last few weeks I was absolutely ready for that baby to come. But with the last pregnancy and with this one, I have been more patient (although I did feel like I was ready when it got to the last week or so with Isaac). But I guess I know enough now to know that when this baby comes it will be more work and less sleep, so I’m ok with waiting for it to happen when it should. I guess the thing that keeps running through my head is something that I wondered about after Isaac was born and he was in the NICU. I remember then having a thought that maybe that whole experience with Isaac was some kind of preparation for Michael and I, like maybe our next baby would be premature and have to be in the hospital even longer than Isaac was. And I have to tell you, that when Isaac was in the hospital, that was probably the worst part of my life so far – even though the doctors all reassured us that he would be fine and that after he recovered from his surgery there would be no further issued and that Michael and I would be the only ones who even really remembered all that happening – I still had a really hard time with going back and forth between the hospital and home without him for 2 ½ weeks, and in my head I still worried about him dying, even though everything told me that wasn’t logical. But it was quite a trial for me, and I remember thinking that maybe it was some kind of preparation for something that would happen later on in our lives. And even though I never really felt like our family was “finished” with our four boys, I discussed with Michael after we had Isaac possibly not having another baby, because what if something where to go wrong and we had to go through something worse than all that? We decided that we shouldn’t change our plans for our family just because of the possibility that something might go wrong, but that thought has been in my head during this pregnancy. (Not that I feel like something is going to be wrong with this baby or like I’m having any kind of premonition or anything, but I’ve just had the memory of wondering about that possibility after Isaac was born). So, I was glad to pass the point in this pregnancy when a baby can still be delivered and can make it, even if they are premature, and I’m glad to be coming up on 30 weeks now. I’m sure that since I’ve been thinking about the possibility of this baby coming early, it will all back-fire on me and he will be a week late (as long as he’s not born on Valentine’s Day). It’s kind of fun – the baby started moving a lot when I started to write this about him. Well, I’m sure that everything will turn out just fine, and that, like all of my other pregnancies, I will have a full-term, extra large, healthy, adorable little boy. It will be so fun to have our five little boys to complete our family!

Oh, and I have been thinking lately that I need to write our Christmas letter sometime here before too long. I know that I don’t have everyone’s current e-mail addresses, so if you’d like to get our Christmas letter this year, please send me your address. Thanks!

We are finally in San Diego. We've been here a couple of days and had lots of fun. Besides my parents and brothers who live here in San Diego, we have also been able to visit with my sister Michelle and her husband Jake who returned to their home in Portland on Sunday, my sister Jennifer who just returned to school in Hawaii yesterday, and Grandma Faun who returned to her home in Salt Lake yesterday too. It was fun to have a little while while we were all here at the same time. Michael has been gone on interviews since early Sunday morning, and will continue to have interview trips through the end of next week, and then he will only have a couple more trips after that later on in the month.

I thought I'd take a few minutes now while the boys are down for their naps to post some photos from Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

The whole family playing in the snow on Christmas Eve:

Isaac's first time out in the snow:

Camden loved the snow until he eventually dropped his mittens and his hands got wet and cold. But Michael and I were surprised at how long he lasted before he got cold and had to go inside:

Kolby in the snow:

Eli with a snowball:

All of us with our snowman that Kolby and Eli named 'Frosty.'

Jennie's fiancé, Dalin, and his parents came over Christmas Eve with little gifts for everyone. Dalin's father came dressed as Santa just for our boys. Afterwards the boys watched from the window as they left and Kolby asked, "Santa has a car?"

Isaac and Daddy relaxing:

Daddy reading the Christmas pop-up books to the boys on the night of

Christmas Eve -- a Chidester family tradition:

The boys with their aunts getting ready to act out the

nativity story -- a Bradshaw family tradition:

Acting out the nativity -- Michael and I played Mary and Joseph and Isaac was baby Jesus. Kolby and Eli made very cute wise men and Camden was a shepherd:

Kolby left cookies and milk and a letter for Santa and carrots for his reindeer.

It's fun that Kolby is getting to be old enough to have fun with the idea of Santa Claus:

Michael and his sisters with the boys waiting to come upstairs to

open gifts on Christmas morning:

The boys opening their gifts from Santa on Christmas morning (at the Bradshaw's house, they open gifts from Santa in the living room when they get up in the morning, and then after eating breakfast they open gifts from the family members around the Christmas tree):

Eli, Stephanie, and Michael opening gifts. (This gift was a water filter

that we asked for for our 72-hour emergency kit):

Camden opening his gift from Kolby and Eli. (This year we decided to start having the kids pick out a little gift for each other -- we hadn't really done this in the past, but now they are old enough to get the idea and it was fun for them to choose gifts for each other at the dollar store):