Giving Thanks

We are wrapping up a nice Thanksgiving weekend over here at the Roper house.  For the first time in 5 years, we celebrated with just our own little family.  The last time we did that was the year Adam was born and we had brought him home from the hospital just 2 days before and had Boston Market takeout for Thanksgiving dinner.  After almost a month of living in the hospital, a little quiet family time was exactly what we needed.  Not a single picture of the celebration, but we did capture a moment when Adam was dreamily thankful to be home snuggled up tight for Thanksgiving (you can see some of the bruising from the IV’s in his head at the hospital if you look close).

This year there was no Boston Market or sick baby, but the mood felt a little bit similar.  We’ve had a very busy past couple of months.  Glenn has been working extremely long hours.  The only time I can remember a period this miserable in his work life was about 6 years ago when he was working from Sunday afternoon to Friday night in Wisconsin, of all places, week after week.  He was home so little that baby Evan (who was about Amelia’s age at the time) would cry if Glenn tried to hold him when he came home because Glenn seemed like a stranger.  At least Amelia is still wildly happy to be around her dad, so it must not be as bad as it was then!  The period of long hours has lasted a long time though, and I think we’re all starting to get worn out.  Add to that his new responsibilities as the bishop at church and the long hours of rehearsal for the Savior of the World production that our stake is putting on for Christmas (Glenn, Derek, and Evan are in it and have spent about 40 hours of rehearsal time over the past 2 months), it all just adds up to the need for some quiet family time!

Even though I haven’t felt particularly grateful lately (in fact, kind of grumpy to be honest), I know that I have a lot to be grateful for.  My parents have been unbelievably helpful over the past few months.  It seems that they are constantly cooking up a plan to help relieve my stress and make me feel loved and taken care of.  They have been my saving angels during a tough time for me.  My sister Amy and Mom Roper have been good listening ears when I need someone to talk to without feeling judged, and Amy even called me up and gave me a girls’ night out at the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Denver when she was there on business a few weeks ago, just when I needed it most.  There’s nothing quite like sleeping with your sister in a luxurious king-sized bed in a corner suite on the 16th floor with a great view of the city to make a girl feel refreshed!  Unlike that quiet Thanksgiving 5 years ago, all of my children are healthy this year.  They are great kids, and I could not love them more.  As icing on the cake, Amelia has decided that she loves to pose for pictures if it means we can text them to Aunt Amy (see below).  There is nothing more adorable!  Despite the long hours, Glenn has a good job and does everything he can to lessen the impact of the time he is unavailable for the family.  Even the Savior of the World production which has eaten up all of Glenn’s precious free time is ultimately a blessing.  After all, half of our family is able to go and sing songs and hear scriptures relating to the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ week after week.  How could I not be grateful for an opportunity for my sons to strengthen their love and appreciation of their Savior?

And, I am grateful that we were able to spend a quiet Thanksgiving together as a family and that Glenn did most of the cooking and ALL of the dishes.  The food was even quite delicious!

We spent Thanksgiving morning running the Highlands Ranch 5K Turkey Trot as a family, finally accomplishing our goal for the year of having everyone in the family finish a 5K.  It felt good to get some exercise and achieve something we had set a goal to do.  I was grateful that Derek and I were able to keep ourselves going by taking slow motion videos of ourselves on my phone for entertainment.  And I was especially grateful that the weather was not 17 degrees and snowing like the forecast predicted just a few days before.

Today we put up our Christmas decorations and are headed full swing into the next season.  I feel guilty that I’ve felt worn out and acted crabby despite the fact that I have a wonderful life.  I’m hoping I can use this holiday season to align what my head knows with how my heart feels, and renew my faith and gratitude for the baby Jesus and His life and mission. 

Glenn and the boys just walked in from FIVE more hours of rehearsal in preparation for their two dress rehearsals tomorrow, one of which I get to bring Adam and Amelia to watch.  It seems like the perfect way to get us in the right spirit for Christmas (I hope)!  Now I’m off to bed to get a head start on my new attitude of gratitude!

Adam is FIVE!

How is that possible?  I think Adam will be perpetually three in my mind, because he is just so cute and enthusiastic.  Five year olds aren’t usually nearly so adorable, so I just can’t believe he is already so old!

Adam’s birthday somehow crept up on me (like everything seems to be doing these days), but luckily he is a pretty easygoing kid.  A few days before his birthday I asked him if there was anything special he wanted.  He responded with conviction, “Yep.  I want something from Target.”  I figured I could make that wish come true without too much trouble, so on the actual big day I headed to Target with him sitting in the cart and promising to close his eyes while I picked him out a present.

We have a little book with birthday cake ideas that Adam loves to look through.  He has had his cake picked out all year from one of the ideas in that book.  Lucky for me, it was easy enough to pull off in about 10 minutes (after baking)!  It was even forgiving enough that when I was in a hurry and trying to get it out of the pan before it was cool and it broke in half, I still managed to salvage it.  It certainly did not turn out looking professional (check out that glob of chocolate frosting that is supposed to be a football in the middle), but Adam was thrilled which is all that matters to me.  In case you can’t tell, it is a football field with BYU playing against “the red team.”

Adam is a unique soul.  He throws his heart and soul into whatever happens to tickle his fancy at the time.  Recently he has gotten really into writing Chinese characters.  We’ve been taking Chinese lessons from a cute (and brilliant) PhD student from Beijing named Fairy.  She doesn’t really teach us about written Chinese, but Adam has decided he is going to be an expert Chinese calligrapher.  He spends many mornings sitting on the kitchen floor tracing or trying to duplicate various Chinese characters.  He loves to come and tell me all about whatever he is doing in his eager way.  His eyes get big and round with an animated look as he nods his head intently to emphasize his point.

Speaking of Chinese, Adam’s eyes also sparkle with enthusiasm when he comes up with funny jokes to tell.  He loves to use the term “aka” in his jokes.  On Adam’s birthday I sent Glenn a text asking if we could come downtown to his office for lunch after a stop at the downtown aquarium (a pretty good birthday, if you ask me!).  Glenn responded “Sure.”  When I told Adam what the text said, Adam’s face lit up and he said with his wide eyes and bubbly nod, “Sure- AKA-ten in Chinese?  So Dad said ten?” (Ten in Chinese actually is pronounced a lot like the word “sure,” so Adam was pretty proud of his bilingual play on words.)

We “sure” had a good time downtown seeing the sharks and feeding the stingrays (despite the crummy phone pictures)!

Adam also likes to play with matchbox cars at the moment.  He lines them all up in a row and then narrates complex plots while racing them through the house.  He is great at playing with Amelia and manages to be mostly patient with her demands.  He and Amelia also love to color and spend long periods of time at the kitchen table drawing and coloring their creations.

Adam is slowly learning how to read.  I think reading the actual words hasn’t seemed particularly important to him because his imagination does just fine in making up stories to go along with any book.  He is getting pretty good though.  The other night I heard him long after his lights were off, reading Hop on Pop out loud in the dark.  He made some interesting guesses on words that he couldn’t sound out, but got probably 75% of it right! 

Growing up with big brothers has served Adam well.  When he turned five he BEGGED me to let him empty the silverware from the dishwasher.  Somehow he managed to overlook all the whining and complaining that both Derek and Evan do about their dishwasher jobs.  For some strange reason Adam views it as a great privilege saved only for the mature and capable in the family.  Now that he’s five, I would say he fits into that category!  He gets the job!

Adam is in a pretty non-picky phase with food, which is nice (he has always been a pretty good eater).  For his birthday dinner he chose “Cowboy Quesadillas” which is basically a bunch of ingredients thrown in a tortilla with barbeque sauce and pan fried to a crisp.  He would eat macaroni and cheese every day for lunch if he could, and he always wants to be the one to put the cheese in.  He has recently started to like snacking on dried seaweed.  It isn’t something I love, but he and Amelia will fight over it during the day.

Adam’s heart is doing well.  I took him in for his annual checkup recently, and Dr. Miller told us that we can stretch his visits out to every two years now!  When I think back on what his first few months of life were like, it is an unbelievable blessing that his body is so healthy and strong.  And he thinks it is unbelievable that he gets to watch Frozen for 45 minutes while getting an echocardiogram (another grainy iPhone in the dark picture)!  Sorry, Adam!  Two more years until the next time you get such posh treatment!

We have discovered a new side of Adam, which is his competitive side.  This fall he played soccer for the first time on a team.  Glenn was his coach.  He is a feisty little thing and would really go after the ball.  We learned quickly though, that winning is important to him.  His team played four games.  The first two games they lost 2-1.  He was pretty heartbroken about the loss, but the fact that he was the player who scored the one goal in each of the games was consolation.  The second two games they lost badly- about 8 to nothing.  It was so funny to watch poor Adam!  The first couple of goals just made him run faster and work harder.  After that point, the other team scoring was just devastating to him.  They would score and he would burst into loud sobs.  Glenn or I would get him to calm down and get back out there to try again, only to have them score again and then tears springing forth uncontrollably.  By the end of the last game he was learning to control his wild emotions. When the other team scored for the 6th or 7th time, he would just look over at one of us with tears in his eyes wanting to spill out.  Instead, he would manage a fake smile to hide his quivering chin and a weak thumbs up followed by his signature nod, and he would turn and run after the ball.  What a kid!  We certainly got our money’s worth out from entertainment this soccer season!

Well, that’s probably enough for one blog post.  I could go on and on about how much Adam fills our lives with joy.  Happy birthday, buddy!  We’re lucky to have you in our family and we love you!

Halloween Family Style

I realize that Thanksgiving is just a week away, so it is time to get cracking on documenting the holidays that have recently flown by.  Our Halloween festivities were extra fun this year since we all ended up getting involved and getting dressed up!

It started on Monday evening when we had our annual pumpkin carving family night.  Those pumpkins were BIG!  We weighed them on the scale.  Derek came the closest to weighing the same as his pumpkin.  Derek was .2 pounds heavier than the pumpkin.  They all came in weighing around 50 pounds.  The best news about that?  Lots of seeds!  Worst part?  Very thick skin for pumpkin carving.  Luckily, we have some dedicated pumpkin carvers in our family, and they all turned out fantastic.

At least two people who came to visit our house commented on how clean the insides of our jack-o-lanterns were and wanted to know how we did it.  This is how…

We also carved and fried some jack-o-lantern tortillas…

Somehow an idea slowly emerged that we should do a family garden theme for Halloween this year.  It was based on Amelia’s beautiful flower costume that she ended up hating.  At least we got her to wear it for a little while!

Derek got some extra bonus points for being good natured enough to dress up as a rake, at least for the ward party.  For the actual trick or treating event the next night, our garden theme fell apart and Amelia went as a flower stem, Derek a ninja, Evan a cowboy, and Adam as a little boy wearing black tights and a superman shirt.  Oh well, at least we managed to get all festive for one night, right?

All in all, a very successful Halloween!