Christmas Day

Newland started Christmas morning festivities by eating some chocolate. Inside the candy was a surprise.

One-armed Glen is trying to help Newland with his new whistle.

I'm always happy to get updated photos of the families. Looks like Newland recognizes these photos.

On to opening more gifts.

Stop for a few minutes to FaceTime with Klarissa's missionary sister Mariah.

On with the gifts.

Ben got candy.

Newland did a great job putting all the trash where it belonged.

Watch out Newland! Looks like potty training is in your near future.

Newland showed us how he could run super fast with his new Lightning McQueen slippers on his feet.

More family photos. Sweet!

Our little granddaughter apparently spent a lot of time making homemade gifts for everyone this year. These were the first two gifts under our tree.

Brooke made Glen a puzzle.

She made me some beaded artwork. According to Dallas, Brooke's gifts were the highlight of his Christmas. I must agree she had put a lot of thought and effort into her gift-giving this year.

Sarah's family's adorable family portraits. Hmmm, just waiting for another family to send us theirs...

 Ben is admiring the silhouette Christmas ornaments we got of Eli and Carson.

Glen took it upon himself to cook everyone Christmas breakfast French toast. He just loved the fact he could use his right arm a bit more each day.

Rachel had given me a Christmas card the night before and her wish for Christmas was for it to snow. When I opened the blinds Christmas morning, what did I behold but a vision of Rachel's wish that had come true.

We had some snow angels taking care of keeping our driveway clear. One of our neighbors cleared it off first. Ben had a couple of different turns shoveling and Abe even got a turn as well removing the snow. Ben was probably the only one on the street out shoveling without a coat on while the snow was falling.

Everyone wanted to put the snow to good use, so they donned their snow apparel, grabbed their sleds and were anxious to get out on a snowy hill to see how far they could slide.

Looks like all that sledding made someone hungry. I love this next sequence of pictures. It depicts perfectly Carson "getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar" so to speak.

Eli, Spencer and Dallas were being electronically entertained.

Brooke and Caroline were hiding out from everyone playing Legos in our closet.

Madison was modeling her Santa outfit and showing us her toothy grin.

Rebecca and Sarah were enjoying looking through all the Christmas cards we had received.

While Abe was helping with dinner by carving the turkey.

 It had been a fun, snowy Christmas day to remember.

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Ben decided to take advantage of the Brighton Ski Resort special--dress like Santa and ski for free.

That's not the only Santa we saw at our house. A miniature version of Santa Claus appeared on our front porch right in the middle of my side of the family's annual Christmas Eve dinner party.

Klarissa decided to surprise Abe (and us) with a trip to Utah for Christmas.

They got here just in time for the Christmas program. Glen got busy getting everyone to write down their name if they had something to contribute to the program.

  When I went to get the children from the basement, this is what they were doing.

 And this little guy was off doing his own thing.

Up first was the Excell family. They posed for a family photo when they first arrived and now I wish everyone had posed for individual family photos. Cute!!

 Sarah made a Christmas music video featuring Eli and Carson and it was adorable.

A duet of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" consisted of Abe singing the first part of each line with Newland chiming in on the last word.

Rachel played a piano solo.

Brooke showed her stop animation video which she has won awards for at the school Reflections contest.

Preston also entered the Reflections contest at his school with an awesome poem he had written. He was too shy to read it, so Andy read it for him.

Nani did her version of a musical original poem with a unique instrument constructed out of cardboard and elastic bands.

Zack read a story about a bell without a clapper.

Speaking of bells...the children loved it when they were invited to ring their bells while singing "Jingle Bells."

Looks like little Madison is not going to be the baby of the group for long.

Sarah is having a baby in March. Klarissa is having a baby in April. And Kaelyn announced she is having a baby in May.

Well enough of the Christmas Eve celebration! It was time for everyone to go home and get to bed so Santa could come.

Pre-Christmas Surgery

Glen had been putting it off for months, until the day finally arrived for him to have shoulder surgery.

He had a rotator cuff issue. The doctor went in, cleaned it all out and shaved off some extra bony growth that was in there. We were really happy he didn't need a full rotator cuff repair which would have taken him twice as long to heal.

He didn't look quite as chipper when he woke up from surgery. He kept holding his head way up off the bed and kept looking up at the ceiling tiles with his eyes darting back and forth and back and forth. He kept looking at me weird and was not talking to me.

When he finally said something, he asked if he had a stake meeting that night. Before I could answer that he didn't, he said, "I don't think I'm going to be able to make it if I do."

When the nurse came to check on him, she offered him a pillow because she thought what I had been thinking--that he looked so uncomfortable craning his head forward off the bed. She said she had offered him a pillow earlier, but he refused to let her get one for him.

He later told me he kept holding his head up because there were tubes under his head and it was uncomfortable for him to lay his head back. Which made me wonder why he hadn't taken the pillow offer the first time it was made? He said he didn't want to bother her with having to get one for him.

He also later explained to me that he had noticed the direction the ceiling tiles were going in the pre-op room. When he woke up the tiles were going a different direction (because he was in the recovery room) and he was trying so hard to figure out if they had moved him. He had been given drugs in the first room and he had been really out of it when they wheeled him away to the surgery room.

During his recovery, he asked me three times if the doctor had talked to me. I told him yes and showed him three sheets of pictures the doctor had taken inside his shoulder during surgery. He asked what the doctor had said and I told him I was not going to tell him because he would just forget what I said and would ask me again.

Sure enough, he asked me three different times if the doctor had talked to me and three different times I showed him the pictures the doctor had given me and told him I would tell him later what the doctor had said.

The next day the doctor called Glen to see how he was doing and after he got off the phone, Glen exclaimed to me a little indignantly, "Hey, the doctor said he gave you some pictures yesterday of my shoulder!?!" As if I hadn't already shown them to him three different times...!!

The anesthesiologist gave Glen a full shoulder block, so he was feeling no pain when he got home from the surgery center. He thought his limp arm and hand felt so strange.

Here he is trying to hold his hand up with his good hand. He got such a kick out of trying to use that limp hand to open up a Popsicle. That thing remained deadened clear into the next day.

My dad suggested we get Glen an ice cooling shoulder pad machine which he claims works better on shoulder surgery pain than pain medication does. We now have to agree it is a great invention.

For some reason, Glen always craves an Arby sandwich after he's had a procedure or a surgery.

He survived his first night and was happy to start getting a little feeling coming back into his fingers and hand.

By midday, he was doing his best to get something done on the computer for work. He's a crazy workaholic!!

Most of the time he would be hanging out in the basement eating Popsicles and watching the game show network. Sometimes he would even watch Hallmark Christmas movies with me. Loved that!!

One day the Brimleys brought over a tray of shrimp. Glen home teaches them and they are the tiniest people ever. They signed the card, "Love, the little shrimps."

 Bob Davis, his friend from work, brought over a box of different kinds of popcorn.

Several other friends stopped by with other treats for him and to wish him well in his recovery. These cookies were delivered by Bill and Jan Evans's grandchildren who proudly announced they had frosted them themselves!

When Ben saw the sugar cookies, he said, "They look very frosting-y."

And Glen, the man who says he doesn't eat sweets, surprised me when he ate some of them.

Quotes of the Week

"Gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic." 

 -- John Henry Jowett 

"Wherever you are, be there. Lifestyle is not something we do; it is something we experience. And until we learn to be there, we will never master the art of living well."  

-- Jim Rohn 

"Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!" 

-- Andrew Carnegie 

"Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good."  

-- Ann Landers