She looked at the salmon, and she really didn’t want it. She started to bring the fork to her mouth. She grimaced and then she started to cry. A tear rolled down one cheek. But she slowly arced the fork right towards her mouth the whole time. She ate the whole bite. She just looked so mature, forcing herself to do something she didn’t want to do. And as soon as the salmon was in her mouth, she looked at me, just knowing that she deserved some Cheerios. So we treated her really well for the rest of the night. She got all the Cheerios she wanted, and then angel food cake, and eventually a jellybean. That little girl trusts us so much! That’s a privilege we don’t want to take for granted.

Our final gift was a script, set and supplies to make puppets for a Christmas play. People got way more into creating their puppets than I expected and we got some great video footage of the chaotic production.

Daniel spent Christmas Eve doing our last minute Christmas shopping for my family. He is such a good sport. Oddly enough the rocket supplies we sent him out to get for my dad ended up being one of the gifts Chad received from his parents. David, Jason, Chad and I put together some pretty impressive contraptions. We didn’t do the rocket from the kit because I like building disposable rockets out of spaghetti and cardboard instead. David got even more creative and built a rocket-engine-powered pinwheel.

This was my first Christmas celebrating in Idaho. Santa Claus came to Christmas Eve dinner and I was way more giddy than half the kids there. I love Santa! Elisa’s excitement helped the kids get over their stage fright. It was nice getting together with family. I am so glad we are close enough to take advantage of the family celebrations.

Chad went back to Salt Lake to work for the first half of the week before New Years. Eden and I stuck around with cousins and got sick. When Eden’s nose is running there is no reason to ever put on clean clothes. Ever.

The day everyone left for home it began to snow. It was beautiful. I was bummed that I didn’t feel well enough to get out and play in it. Honestly it was nice to snuggle up on the couch and read a book.

Eden discovered that her favorite food is egg nog. She drank my entire glass on Friday night. She was practically hyperventilating she was so excited. We discovered we need to limit her intake. A half hour later we were at IHOP to celebrate my birthday. (We’re IHOP fans, OK?) All of a sudden Eden lost all her egg nog. 4 times. Good thing we weren’t at a posh restaurant, right? Or at home! It turns out that Eden wasn’t sick though. She had just lost her first gallon challenge. Surprisingly, the next night she still hyperventilated the same way when she was in the same room with egg nog. The second time we cut her off after half a glass.

My birthday was on Friday. Elisa made me a treasure hunt through the apartment. I didn’t have to keep asking for hints like last year, which is good. I was still pretty beat from being sick, so it was nice to have a laid-back night.

Elisa and I went to Park City on Saturday. Thanks JB and Hillary for watching Eden all morning! Elisa did great on her skis. She learned to turn again and went pretty fast all morning. The biggest success was that it wasn’t scary or freezing. That will make it easy to return to the mountain another day. It was scary, but I didn’t think I was going to die.

Two weeks ago a lady handed Eden a vial of hand sanitizer. About three quarters of a second later I saw her snatch it back away. Later she whispered to me, “As soon as I gave her the hand sanitizer, she went for the cap and started twisting it off. How did she even know what a cap was?” Yep, Eden likes caps.

Later on in the meeting she went to play with a man on the opposite end of the bench. He saw her staring at his smartphone. So he put it in its case and snapped it shut, and handed it to her. Eden didn’t hesitate. She undid the snap, flipped open the bifold, grabbed the phone, and started pressing buttons. Later he said, “She went right for those buttons, didn’t she?” Yep, Eden likes buttons.

Yeah, that’d be great–then people could go to a one-stop shop when they wanted to get dirt on us.

I wanted to go outside with Eden on Wednesday. It was Elisa’s birthday, but she was still in class. Eden had her coat on and was trying to pry open the front door herself. (We let her do whatever she can by herself, because it makes her happy). I opened the closet door. Eden started screaming! She had gotten her left hand pinched in the door jam! She had fit her fingers in the crack right by the hinge, because she was trying to get leverage to open the front door quicker. She had a tiny indentation on her third finger. It just felt horrible. We hugged for awhile. Soon she was feeling like she wanted to go outside, at least. Her finger didn’t swell up, and the indentation disappeared, so we were lucky to only have a small pinch. She was a little extra sensitive for the rest of the night though. When I called Chad on my way home from class and he told me about his evening, he sounded so upset (for him anyway). He really had a rough night. I think we take it much harder when something happens to Eden than she does.

Papi hid perplexing hints, skipping even-numbered appearing words. Apply your purpose and perception to apocryphal patterns. Principally listening supplies your epiphany. Thus prepared, find propitious matches apprehended on paper one. Perhaps more appears than people previously supposed in principal clues, apparently still dripping secrets.

Papi is one of my nicknames around the house. And here are the hints I gave her, in case you want to try to solve it too.

1. If you don’t know exactly what you are looking for in the first clue, then you’ll never find it.
2. The “even-numbered” reference means the second, fourth, sixth, etc. words in the above paragraph.
3. You have to be really precise on what the pattern is, to narrow down the matches in the first clue.

With that Elisa came up with the answer and ran straight to her present. (The present was OK, but she liked the treasure hunt more).

Everyone in the audience is breathless for the satzational circus performance. First two little clown cars vier into the center ring. A colorful figure jumps out and bellows, “Letzte have some fun!” He has a big wort on his temple.

He pops out a satzer bottle and sprays the crowd with water. The spectators on the front row need all night to drei out. Then he opens a mysterious bag and reveals a large envelope. “I need a volunteer to come forwort,” he announces. Without asking, he grabs the hand of a lady in the center sechsion. He passes her the envelope and instructs, “Read the card carefully because there are clues inside, and they will lead you to a prize.”