My heart just goes out to Eden tonight, because of a little thing during dinner. She was eating breaded salmon with us, but what she really wanted was to eat some Cheerios. We gave her a couple of them at first, but then I wanted her to eat more of her dinner. She had tried one bite of salmon and I guess she didn’t really like it. To get her to eat, I told her, “First salmon, then Cheerios.” I gestured back and forth to the salmon and the Cheerios. This is a little game that she started to figure out last week, except last week it was “First potatoes, then jellybeans.” So I think she understood what I was saying.

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.

Chad put together an amazing scavenger hunt for the Parry side of the family. He spent hours working on it after people showed interest in the puzzle he did for my birthday. Elisa did a lot of it too but she just likes to give me the credit. I think this tradition is going to grow.

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.