Winter is the Warmest Season

Some of my favorite moments of this Christmas season were not photographed.  Like hearing Spencer's unrestrained humming of "Santa Clause is Coming to Town" in the shower on Christmas Eve. Or like snuggling up for the kids' first ever watching of "The Muppet Christmas Carol" (one of my faves).  Or like l a u g h i n g together during our attempts to sing Christmas songs around the piano.  With me playing.  But some of those singing moments were really sweet too.  Sweet enough to make me practice and practice playing at least one Christmas duet so we could have an easier time.  After a few weeks of effort, sometime mid-December, Lucy left a note on my pillow that said, Merry Christmas Mom! Love you!  It's fun to hear you practice our song!  Her sweet encouragement made my eyes glisten and my heart smile.  Aren't those little expressions of love the real gifts of the season?  Of any season?  

Snow has certainly been a gift this year!

After the first big storm, I drove the kids home from school and sent them right out to play.  Neighbors slowly accumulated in our front yard to join the fun.  As I shoveled the driveway, I loved overhearing our neighbor Somae say to Lucy, incredulously, "My mom brought us home from school and said, 'Go play in the snow for a couple of hours! We'll do homework after  you come in!'"  Lucy responded immediately, "Yeah!!  When we got home, my mom said, 'First one in your snow clothes is a rotten egg!!!'"  They shook their heads together, the same delighted disbelief on both of their faces.  

There's a picture book called Winter is the Warmest Season.  I love that sentiment so much.  There have been some really cold, shiver-inside-your-house kind of days.  But the cold cultivates so much coziness.  Like read-a-thons around the fireplace.   

Or in the stairwell.

Like eating hot spaghetti for dinner with dear friends after a couple hours of mattress sledding.

Thanks for the pictures Rebecca!

Or like meeting cousins for breakfast at Grannie Annie's.  When the pancakes and scones are all gone, no one can move.  But it's a warm, contented state of incapacity.      

There were lots of cozy moments at Grandpa's.  Like when he hauled up the Christmas village for the kids to arrange.   Lucy loved the lighted, detailed scenes in each window.  Spencer loved untangling and engineering all of the chords.  

And there were cozy Christmas moments at home too.  

Including the day Lucy and Spencer stayed home sick from school and had the time of their lives holed up in Spencer's room and in the basement making an entire military out of cardboard boxes/tp rolls/whatever they could get their hands on.  I should have photographed their finished products (several tanks, ships, planes, tiny army men), but at the time I only thought to photograph their mess.

Another large chunk of this Christmas season was dedicated to fort building - kicked off by two spectacular creations at Mark and Michelle's and continued during every spare second at our house and Grandpa's house, both.  

But besides all the happy chaos of creating and celebrating, I so much love the still moments of Christmastime.  Our "JUL" candles (Norwegian for "Christmas," pronounced like "yule") on the windowsill this year were a sweet reminder of Wes.   

December 21st was our 13th anniversary and the kids and I celebrated as usual: "Santa's Workshop" all day, writing down our testimonies to tuck into Wes's stocking after dinner.  But the best part of the day for me was just looking out the window.  

So glad for that glowing reminder of eternal relationships.

We spent Christmas Eve in Bountiful with our cousins.  There was some serious gingerbread house decorating early in the morning.  And then Grandpa drove these three jubilant carolers around the neighborhood making deliveries before treating them to corndogs and dipped ice cream cones at Arctic Circle for lunch.    

The evening of Christmas Eve was bitter sweet.  Lots of quiet tears as we listened to last year's recording of Mom reading Luke 2.  But there were smiles too - especially as Wise Man Spencer tried so hard to to stay solemn while repeatedly slipping off his camel.  

His camel.  Ha ha. 

Celebrating Steph and Cam's engagement was a wonderful highlight of this Christmastime.  (So was the Christmas shopping I was able to do when Steph and Cam invited Lucy and Spencer over for a mid-December night of movies and hot-tubbing :)

Sam and Annalia  also filled starring roles this Christmas season, standing in as the perfect Mary and Joseph...

...as well as the perfect Mr. and Mrs. Kringle (as Lucy aptly observed when we watched The Story of Santa Claus earlier in the month ;)

After Christmas Eve festivities with family, we loaded up Grandpa's sleigh and drove home with him to Payson.  The kids were fairly oblivious to the layers of white on the freeway.  

 We woke them up at home to open their Christmas pajamas,

 and then sent them right to bed.

Dad and I stayed up way too late wrapping in the basement and watching It's A Wonderful Life.  But Christmas Eve is the best night of the year.  Why sleep through it?

Y a w n.  

On Christmas Morning I loved hearing Lucy and Spencer sneak around the house together, crawling back and forth to the living room to "check the tree"  before finally coming to get me.  

I'm sure ours was not the only house wherein these "little brother" snowmen were among the greatest treasures of the day.  

And how about that temple in the blue light of Christmas dawn!????

When Grandpa came upstairs to join us, the kids paused their unwrapping to sing the Infant Holy, Infant Lowly duet they'd been practicing all season.  

And, oh.  Their sweet little voices!

Flocks were sleeping, shepherds keeping

Vigil 'til the morning new

Saw the glory, heart the story

Tidings of a gospel true,

Thus rejoicing, free from sorrow

Praises voicing greet the morrow

Christ the babe was born for you 

It was, to say the least, a happy morning.  

I loved when, sometime, amid all the unwrapping, 

after various treasures had been delighted in,

Spencer noticed Grandpa sitting back, observing all the fun, and hollered, "Hey!  Grandpa!  Get in this!!"

Spence dug under the tree to find and deliver a few more gifts with Grandpa's name on them.  It was a sweet gesture, but someday Spencer will know the secret that moms and dads and grandpas and grandmas everywhere know...

 Christmas is a spectator sport.  

The watching, and the listening, and the soaking in of joy and gratitude...

...that's what Christmas morning is really about.  And the hugs.  

The soft-in-cozy-new-robes (from who???!!!) hugs.  

I'm also a fan of Christmas morning omelets and grapefruit.  

And this year, after all of that, I loved snuggling up to watch the Muppet/Mo-Tab "Keep Christmas With You" DVD before heading out in the fresh Christmas snow,

for the long drive to Uncle Brent's,

to enjoy homemade pizza and happy cousin time.  I have zero pictures of that happy time, because I spent most of it dozing on the couch (I suppose my Christmas Eve all nighters are numbered!).  But there was much love.  

Love which grew and blossomed even more during the warm-enough-to-play-at-the-park days we spent with our Truman cousins in Las Vegas.

And with Wes's Grandpa. 

I love this picture of little Spencer and cousin Wesley, with their Great Grandpa Spencer Wesley.  And I love that as our two families or 7 kids and three adults walked down the care-center hallway after leaving Grandpa's small room, I turned back to wave just in time to overhear Grandpa say to an approaching elderly lady friend, "And that's just a few of them!"  ;)

Our drive home after that Christmas visit was greatly prolonged by falling snow and icy roads, but Lucy and her two cousins riding with us passed the extra slow hours by practicing and practicing the harmony of a girls camp duet.  

There's a web like a spider's web 

Made of silver light and shadow

Hung by the moon in my room at night

It's a web made to catch a dream

Hold it fast 'til I awaken

As if to tell me my dream is alright

Winter is the Warmest Season.

  

Did You See Our Friend Lisa At Women's Conference? Also: A Few Teddy Bear Memories

Lisa and Wes served in Norway together.  She was one of Wes's dearest mission friends and is one of our greatest heroes.

Lisa worked at Huntsman throughout Wes's five year cancer battle. Her companionship was a highlight of so many of our appointments and she was always a true help as we juggled small children and battled strong emotion. 

One of Wes's Huntsman appointments, his last actually, fell on his thirtieth birthday.

Leave it to Lisa to make sure there was cake and singing to balance out the blood draws and sobering scans.

We love her more than we can possibly say.  As touching and wonderful as the Women's Conference clip was - it couldn't possibly capture the complete depth of such an amazing woman.  We feel so blessed to know her!

Also, these pictures remind me of some other moments on Wes's thirtieth birthday that I'd like on the record.  But I think they're best told directly to Spencer...

For Spencer:

On your dad's thirtieth birthday, he and I took you and Lucy (and a gift certificate from Uncle Brent and Aunt Tonya), to Build-A-Bear for the first time ever.

February 2011

You both chose and stuffed your bears,

while Dad secluded himself in the privacy of a Build-a-Bear restroom for the purpose of recording an eight second message to go inside each of your bears.  That seemingly simple task was an emotional one for him.   And a grueling one.  Articulation and word finding were points of great frustration for Dad at that time, but he insisted on recording something for each of you on his own.  So you and Lucy and I wandered around the store for about 30 minutes while he recorded and re-recorded those few seconds worth of love.  And then, when the bears were all stitched up, he helped you bathe and clothe them.

Thus came "Baby Bear,"

and "Goldibear,"

into the family.  

Where they have subsequently been much loved.  

March 2011

There was, however, one instance of heartbreak associated with your bear...

We moved into our new house about a month after Dad died.  Being already in the midst of so much change, I didn't want the move to be hard on you and Lucy.   I remember carefully turning down your sheets on our first night alone, and making sure to have Baby Bear and Goldibear waiting for each of you in your respective rooms.  We put Lucy to bed first.  We said prayers together and listened to Dad's voice from the recording in Goldibear's hand.  Lucy snuggled into her covers.  You and I told her goodnight and I carried you into your new room.  We knelt and had our prayers together and then we gave Baby Bear a squeeze to hear Dad's message to you.  But.................nothing.  No Dad's voice.

The batteries couldn't have chosen a worse time to die.  You panicked after a few failed attempts and I tried to smooth over the sadness by saying something about Baby Bear being "so tired too" and "Lets just go to sleep." But my silent tears flowed steadily as I laid by you in the dark, long after you were asleep.

August 2011

You continued to play with Baby Bear after that disappointing night.  You continued to love and snuggle him.  But one day, about a year and a half later when you were four, you asked me in frustration why he still didn't work?! and I found him later that afternoon scarred with several serious scissor wounds.  When I brought him to you and asked you what had happened, you didn't say anything - just burst into tears, so sorry about what you had done.  We tucked Baby Bear onto a shelf downstairs and I told you I'd try to sew him up sometime.  

Months, of course, passed before that happened.  But as Christmas approached, I thought that getting Baby Bear fixed would be a great job for Santa.  

Conversations with Build-a-Bear personnel had previously indicated that we probably couldn't salvage Dad's original recording.  So I tried my best to splice together a message from some other audio recordings we had, and I took them and Baby Bear with me to the store.  But before leaving the house, a few tiny batteries Heather and Royce had sent for your Hex Bugs caught my eye.  I threw them into the bag with your bear, wondering if they might work to save the original sound box.  And...they did!  The folks at the store were super hesitant to tamper with that original box, but I asked them to please try switching the batteries, and it did, in fact, work.  

So on Christmas morning,  a freshly stitched and miraculously fixed Baby Bear was waiting for you by your stocking.   

You were as thrilled as I hoped you'd be.

Almost in disbelief, you ran downstairs to the spot you'd last seen Baby Bear - to make doubly sure that this new Christmas bear was, in fact, your own cherished bear and not just a replica.  When you couldn't find Baby Bear where you had left him, you knew that the "new" bear must really be him. 

You were so full of happiness in that moment that you then spontaneously ran to your room, retrieved a brand new, much larger and nicer teddy bear that we'd been given at school a few days before, and with a sweetness and love I can't describe but so much want to remember, you solemnly offered the new, plush bear to Grandma Packer (who had been quietly watching on) followed by millions of hugs and overflowing love, all the while clutching your own sweet, stitched up old friend. 

It was the best part of our Christmas morning that year.

One other Baby Bear moment I want to remember happened a few months later.  After a long day of school for all of us, I was in the middle of making dinner and helping Lucy practice the piano and I asked your five year old self to retrieve something for me from the storage room downstairs.  You protested with terrified pleadings, saying how scared you were to do it.  "Please?"  I asked, without real hope, remembering how similarly scared I was as a child to go to the basement alone.  You refused again, this time near tears, so I said OK and turned my attention back to Lucy at the piano, planning to retrieve the item myself when I finished.

But a few minutes later, I heard the sound of Dad's voice, as recorded in Baby Bear's hand, floating up from the basement.  Over and over.  I realized that you had grabbed your bear, carried him downstairs with you, and kept squeezing his hand so that Dad's voice could give you courage to walk through the empty rooms.

My eyes misted up with love, and when you made it back upstairs with the requested item, I hugged you good and tight.

That was two years ago, and now you're seven.  Baby Bear's batteries have long since failed again.  Goldibear's too now.  But I hope you and Lucy will both remember to keep listening for Dad's voice in your hearts.  He will continue to whisper courage and love.

We love you both so very much! You're our Goldilocks and Baby Bear, after all,

 no matter how big you grow! ;)