Gingerbread Trees

I think Gingerbread houses are neat, but not neat enough in this instance to warrant dealing with crumbly graham crackers that won't stay glued together. So we did trees instead. Short, sweet, fun with no "glue" involved. Lauren thought it was "SO FUN MOMMY!" I'll call it a win!

Gavin just ate his. :)

Lessons from the Vacuum Salesman

We ran into an unexpected missionary opportunity last night with the Kirby vacuum salesman. I'm such a sucker for free stuff and getting the chocolate milk stains out of Lauren's carpet for "free" was too good to pass up. But long story short, the salesman ended up being stuck here for over three hours because the boss was being slow to come and give the final price and what not.

We were ready to eat dinner and he was all done with the presentation thingy so we invited him to eat with us. Chase asked if it was okay if we said a prayer and he asked if we were religious. We talked a little about the church and then he was amazed with the bottled pears I'd brought up from the storage room. So we told him about emergency preparedness.

He asked questions about how long we'd been married, school and such. He made a comment that made me think he was sad that he didn't have anything to "show" for his life up to that point... especially since he was only two years younger than we are and selling vacuums. (Not that it isn't an honorable profession...but yeah.)

I commented later to Chase that he had seemed intimidated by all we'd done with our lives as far as school, house, and family. Chase responded, "Well, that's what the Gospel does for us. It gives us a purpose and a direction so we don't have to wander and wonder what to do with our lives."

So true, I guess I'd never thought about that in terms of the decisions I made to go to school, get married and have a family; it was just second nature to choose those things because I'd been taught the Gospel my whole life.  I felt sad for this guy; we could tell he was floating in life, trying to figure out what he was supposed to do and not having any answer.

How blessed we are that the way to happiness is lined out so clearly and living the Gospel makes it possible to make the decisions to get there.

So in the end, we learned a lesson, and I got to vacuum our whole house with a fancy vacuum for free! :) (And for the record, Bissel vacuums don't hold a candle to Kirby's.)

Lately

Seems like we've been busy... but not sure with what! We've been getting ready for Christmas I guess.

Lauren is really into the whole Christmas thing this year. Christmas morning is going to be awesome! She is a little upset that there isn't snow every morning, so hopefully we'll get some eventually so she can build a snow castle. She's been doing great at preschool. She's so funny; she doesn't like to walk in by herself but will wait in the driveway until another kid gets there and she yells, "Hi friend!" and then run in together. She's become quite the creative little negotiator trying to get out of things. I'm excited to see how she does starting sunbeams in a few weeks.

Twirling in the tree skirt

Gavin is just Gavin, sweet and spunky. He never sits still, loves to empty all the drawers in the house, squeal and scream, run, play outside and eat cookies. He learned how to fold his arms for prayers and thinks he's hot stuff. He's such a tease and so friendly with everyone. Both of us are very ready for nursery though! Three more weeks... First time back in Relief Society last week with him was interesting, to say the least.

"Chillin' on the couch Mom."

Chase finally got some contract work coming through after a year waiting for the company to come through. It's been exciting for him to try out something new.

I've just been sewing, cleaning and cooking. Although with two kids trying to give up naps it's been interesting trying to be sneaky about getting presents done!

My brother was in another bad typhoon last week. Not as bad as Haiyun last year but still strong enough to evacuate and move the missionaries. He was finally able to email this morning with some crazy stories. The wind blows the rain so hard it seeps through the concrete walls of the apartments! We're very thankful that all the missionaries are always watched over.