Thanksgiving in Oregon
Our family was assigned a new Nelf this year. It's name is Nosnap (No-snap or Nos-nap?) and a Nelf in training. Santa let me know that Nosnap was inducted into the Nelf community on Sunday the 21st at 8:00 pm North Pole time. Nosnap earned his official Nelf hat, was dubbed with a candy cane, and got the dose of glitter all Nelves receive when inducted. We knew something happened because there was a smatter of glitter on my bedroom floor right under the ceiling fan, I'm guess Nosnap took his maiden adventure to our home, opening the portal for the season. Nosnap was quite startled to learn the truth about Christmas magic. It walked around for a few days connecting dots from the years. That same night Miss Evelyn frantically woke me up at 3 am terrified about the Nelf in her room that was perched on her head and waving in front of her eyes. She was so scared poor kid was shaking. She snuggled in between Justin and I. Evelyn jerked awake a while later, once again shaking with fear because she could feel the Nelves on our bed, I explained the movement was actually from the fan ruffling the quilt. Then Justin whapped her in the head with his hand, another startled waking. I made sure to text Santa in the morning about how scared Evelyn was. He wrote her a letter back saying that our house had rules about Nelves established when Amelia was little:
Nelves are not allowed in bedrooms between 7:30 at night and 9 in the morning. Most of the time Innej, Nitsuj, Naejma, and Nosnap stay away from your bedrooms because they don’t want to see nakey bums, they do peek in to see if you are messy or fighting! I have a special Santa/Elf alarm that goes off when kids start fighting and throwing fits.
Don’t let yourself be seen by a human child. My Nelves are small, like 6 inches tall and very cuddly. They are the cutest creatures, I know you would love them if you could catch sight of my Nelves.
Innej was your Mom’s elf growing up! Do you know one day on of the Nelves will be assigned to your kids? You Nelf is still training up at the North Pole for another 4 years. Her name is Nyleveju. I hope you can meet her after she learns to make toys.
No peeking when kids are in the bathtub, shower, or changing clothes. My Nelves are equipped with automatic blindfolds that look like a sleeping mask with Rudolph’s face as a design. Those Nelves just love ole Rudy.
We learned from Santa that the new Nelf accidentally opened a portal into a bedroom but it was immediately moved into the loft area. Nosnap was so excited that he made a couple whoopsies. Evelyn is relieved that Nelves are not at all allowed into rooms, even on Christmas. They can only leave stockings outside the door. She also learned that when Nelves talk it sounds like bells to humans, the bells were loud last year because the kids yelled so much. Santa promised that if the kids are not so loud, the Nelves would not need to yell. Santa felt so bad that his sweet Nelves scared Evelyn, just like Jesus wants us to try each day to do a little bit better that is all Santa expects of us. We are pretty sure Santa is a member of the church.
During our Sunday meal we were talking about our week ahead. I suggest we could do our Horse Duvers on Saturday after Thanksgiving. Everett gave me a blank stare like, what are Horse Duvers? I explained that the phrase Horse Duvers came from the Punkles and is a play on the actual French phrase Hors d'oeuvres. Amelia had a stricken look on her face..."you mean...horse duvers are not really a thing?" Ah man! I felt like she just fulfilled a 14 year social experiment...took her 14 years to realize a made up word was well, made up. She is very glad that she did not ask for horse duvers in public.
Poor Josie was still sick on Monday this time with a nasty cough, runny nose, and low-grade fever. She enjoyed having complete control over the TV. I took her with me to grocery shop in the afternoon since she was feeling much better. She felt worse the next day but her cough and runny nose were nearly gone by the evening. We decided to attempt our planned visit to Oregon because her fever was gone. I made our traditional cranberry salad plus rolls, peanut butter pie, and an apple cake. I made the dough then had Amelia pop it into the freezer so it would not rise. The consequence was that the dough was left in the freezer. Bummer, I was the roll lady for Thanksgiving. We packed up bedding and stuff for a couple days of fun with the Adams clan up on Elgin, OR. The drive is only about 3.5 hours so not terribly long or far. We listened to the Proctor's podcast on Joseph Smith's martyrdom, it was so touching most of us had leaky eyes. Towards the middle of our drive Justin realized the sleeping pads were left at home, doh! We stopped at a Walmart along the way to snag some inflatable mattresses, thank goodness on sale for $20 per mattress, just in case we needed them. It was nearing dark when we pulled up. The girls got to feed the hogs and pet the horses before dinner. Justin and I snuck out after dinner for baking supplies to make rolls. Thankfully, I brought along my mixer and quite a few ingredients to finish my other desserts. We only had to get flour, sugar, oil, and eggs. Richard, Nancy, and our family spent the night in an emptish house slowly being turned into an Airbnb. We only had to open 3 air mattresses, the rest of the kids scattered onto couches or found enough bedding to sleep on the floor.
I enjoyed a morning alone while making rolls and finishing my desserts. I used Madison's bundt pan roll recipe (a friend from Nebraska). It took much longer to bake than anticipated! It takes time to mix, roll, rise, and bake 6 pans of rolls. Carla, Esther, and Joyce came along later to visit for a while. I hear Everett plays an awesome game of football! Phillip opted to stay home and snuggle the dog. I got to jump on a zoom call with the Lance family. We reported on things we are grateful for! We are all extremely grateful Grandma Jean is back home, although she has a hole in her abdomen to drain off the excess fluids around her stomach. After lunch the boys enjoyed an epic game of airsoft with the Adams clan, Everett scored a lovely bruise on his leg from a direct shot. He was quite proud of that tag. Josie was acting really tired and mopey so did not play much with the kiddos. Madilyn did saddle up Dahlia for a ride around the pasture. The girls thought it was hilarious the calves were in the same pasture. Evelyn quite enjoyed petting Bumper the calf. Everett got to canter and post for a turn around the pasture. Thanksgiving was about ready by the time horse rides were over. Dinner was yummy, quite traditional with all the fixings. Esther organized a rotating schedule of kitchen duty so the dishes were cleaned up quickly. We played a few rounds of "what would happen if...?" You write a question then pass it a couple times, provide the answer to your original question to the new question you were passed. Everyone headed to the high school gym for an hour or basketball and volleyball to burn off dinner. The little kids played up on the wrestling mats and weights up in the loft area. I mostly monitored the kids or played kid ball with the 3-8 year olds. Everett once again showed off natural skills learning to spike and volley the ball after just a few tips and tries. Dessert was waiting back at Gina and Matt's home. Lots of pies and fresh whipped cream to nosh on. My peanut butter pie was pretty good, it at least looked incredible. The crust was too hard, my only complaint. We headed back to the house earlier than Nancy and Richard. Josie was running another fever by this time, she was falling asleep and quite out of it.
We packed up quickly the next morning to arrive at the Adam's house for breakfast at 9 am. I arranged to take senior HS photos with Erika at 9:30. It was a whirlwind of crazy at the house with most of the family trying to leave for a Christmas Tree hunting trip up into the mountains. Justin and the kids went back to the other house to finish cleaning and packing stuff up. I helped Erika with her hair then we set off for our little adventure. I spotted a fun logging company with thousands of felled tree logs neatly stacked up. The lot was off-limits but we saw a small business with a pile of logs we could use instead. I asked the owner for permission then we were set for a moment. Erika wanted volleyball photos but once we reached the HS and she changed Erika realized she had the wrong socks, it would bother her too much so we headed back to her home for the right socks and to meet up with my family. They drove with us back to the school for the last few photos. Josie was full-on sick by this time, she had a fever and nasty cough. Justin rallied the kids to empty the van before it was beyond dark outside. I started laundry since we missed a couple days and Justin was leaving for Utah on Sunday. The kids were thrilled to find the Nelves had visited while we were away! Dog Vader had a Christmas scarf on! Each kid had a couple candy canes and a cute stuffy Elf friend on their beds.
Saturday we started decorating for Christmas. The kids were excited to get all the decorations, boxes, and trees out. The kids had their tree set up and decorated within an hour. Took me three more days to slowly work through decorating. I loved how this year's decor shaped up, I never know what will be created from year to year. For dinner we had our annual Horse Duver meal with a relish tray, fancy crackers, 5 types of cheese, martinellis, and deviled eggs. I took Josie to the instacare around 7 pm because she had a really high fever and her tonsils were whitish. She did not have COVID or Strep, some viral infection of flu that made her very sick. She ran a fever for another two days before the antibiotics started working.
I did spend an entire day working on the latest blog book because Blurb was running a 50% off special. Their new software took some getting used to and annoyingly the new collage maker I used for 9 months was set to make images only a few inches by a few inches. That meant all the images were too small or pixelated to see. Gah, took me hours to remake the images or resize the collages.
Justin and Amelia headed to Utah for Uncle Gene's funeral down in Payson, UT on Monday. They stopped for a visit and dinner with Charity where Bruce, Diana, Spenser, Laura, Anson, and Gary were also visiting. Justin was not very keen to be around Bruce but he made it through without worry or negativity. Josie and I stayed home Monday and Tuesday, it worked out that I had lots of time to finish decorating, christmas shop from home, and snuggle my sick girl. Justin said the funeral was very nice and uplifting. Uncle Gene was a great man. Justin and Mia made it back home before bedtime on Monday.
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