Christmas Fun

We're finally back from our long Christmas break. We had a great time with family. I have tons of pictures so I'll be doing a bunch of posts over the next few days. Make sure you check back so you don't miss out on the Christmas fun!

We opened some presents to each other before we left Indiana. Dallin loved his present: Beans!

I got the idea from his occupational therapist. It's a plastic container full of dried beans and it has measuring spoons and cups in it. Playing with the beans and feeling the texture is supposed to help with his food sensitivities. He loves playing in the beans so much! He will sit contently for an entire hour playing with the beans. It's the best cheap present ever!

We spent the first week of our Christmas break in San Jose, California. We stayed with my parents at their new place. All of my siblings were there for Christmas (except for Joseph who is on a mission in Micronesia) so we had a big group and we had lots of fun.

Dallin really loved the foosball table.

Dallin loved waking up every morning to play with his cousins. He also loved the huge canister of cheese puffs that grandma got for him. He amazed us all by learning how to climb up and down stairs. I know it's a shocker, but we don't have stairs in our tiny apartment, so Dallin has never really been around stairs. It took him a few days but he figured out how to climb up them, and towards the end of our break was getting better at going back down.

Dallin didn't seem very interesting in opening presents this year. He was much more into ripping paper last year. He loved the presents inside the paper though.

He really loved this squishy ball from uncle Bret.

And he liked sitting in the trash box full of paper.

With 19 people around the tree on Christmas morning, it took quite a while to open all the presents. Dallin was the first one up on Christmas morning (making me the second) so he got worn out pretty quickly.

Grandma and Grandpa Crapo brought out the train set hoping it would entertain the kids. Unfortunately it turned out that it only entertained Mckay. Here is the evidence:

Clearly, an engineer has built this.

Stay tuned for posts about our trip to the beach, the Children's Museum, and Big Basin.

Christmas Card Holder

I got my first Christmas cards in the mail the other day. It was so much fun to get mail and see how loved ones are doing. Then I realized that I didn't have anything to display the cards on. How would I be able to enjoy them all season long if they sat in their envelopes amongst a pile of bills? No no, this would not do at all. I decided to come up with some way to display them using things I already had at home.

Presenting my Christmas card line!

It was super simple and cheap to make. As a result, it's not the best looking thing but it's functional.

I took a piece of green ribbon (probably 2.5 or 3 feet long) and fastened it to the wall using two clear push pins. I positioned the pins so that the ribbon would sag a little, creating an arc.

Then I tied an extra bit of red ribbon into a bow on the middle of the line to give it a little extra holiday flair.

Using paper clips, clothespins and any similar devices, I attached the cards to the ribbon. I happened to have these adorable mini clothespins left over from another project, but they are not necessary for having a card line.

And there you have it! A beautiful, easy way to display Christmas cards.

Great Sunday!

We had a wonderful Sunday yesterday! I wouldn't have predicted it being so great, but it really was.

It was our ward's Christmas program in church. Mckay and I are part of the choir in our ward, so naturally we participated in a large chunk of the program. We had 3 choir songs and I played the piano for all 3 of them. One of the songs had a very important and difficult tenor part, and Mckay being one of only 3 tenors in the choir, was nervous about getting it right. In another song, Mckay sang a solo for the first verse. A week ago we were asked to give talks as part of the program. I could have just said no because we were already participating in the musical part of the program, but I said yes. On top of that, I was asked 2 days before Sunday to play in a violin piano duet for the program. Granted, it was a song that I had already practiced and knew well, but it was one more thing to do for Sunday. AND on top of the the program, we still had our regular Nursery duties for church. I had to plan my Music time, and Mckay had to plan his lesson.

In case you couldn't have guessed it, Saturday was a stressful day in our home.

Of course, we had procrastinated writing our talks until that day. Mckay had 2 finals on Monday (today) that he should have been studying for, but had to write his talk. We were up until the wee hours of Sunday morning writing and perfecting our talks. Just to add to all the chaos, Mckay and I were both starting to feel sick. Ordinarily, we might have considered staying home from church, but you just can't skip out when half of the 3 hour meeting block is resting on your shoulders. Since we had to be at church at 8am for an extra choir practice before church started at 9, we didn't get much sleep.

I'm sure you're thinking, "Wait a second, Sheri said they had a great Sunday and this sounds like a terrible one." Don't worry. It got much better.

We had a wonderful Christmas Program. The music sounded beautiful. Mckay did a wonderful job on his solo. I made a few mistakes on the piano here and there as I played, but no one noticed. The violinist that I played with is amazing and I would perform with her any day just so I could hear her play. I feel very privileged that she asked me to play for her.

Our talks were wonderful, especially considering the amount of time we put into them. My talk was about the wise men and how they searched for Christ. I talked about how we need to come unto Christ and shared some ways that we can do that during this Christmas season. I used a lot of Elder Uchtdorf's talk from The Christmas Devotional last week. Mckay's talk was about how Christ has shown us the way to be with him again. We learn about His birth at Christmas time, but more important is that we learn about His life and atonement. He used the following line from the song "Once in Royal David's City" (the song that Mckay's solo was in): "And our eyes at last shall see him, through his own redeeming love. ...And he leads his children on, to the place where he is gone."

I've always thought that giving a talk in sacrament meeting is almost more uplifting for the person giving it than those listening. I learned a lot while researching for this talk and it made me appreciate the wise men's role in the Christmas story so much more. It helped me to see them more as spiritual leaders for their people who sought for Jesus out of faith, rather than astrologers who sought for the star out of curiosity.

Nursery was..... Nursery. It can be very draining on your energy and patience, but it's hard not to love those little kids. Especially when you're teaching them how to sing Away in a Manger and they rock on the 'asleep' chorus. They can roll around like crazy and cry for hours, but then they can be quiet and reverent as they pretend to be wise men, follow the star through the building, and present the baby (doll) in the manger (wicker basket) with gifts of gold (plastic fake coins).

The rest of our Sunday was spent relaxing. We had a Choir Christmas Get-together where we ate treats, played a game and talked with friends. At home, we listened to Christmas carols and had Gyoza for dinner. Perhaps the best part of the day was putting Dallin in bed, having spiced apple cider and pumpkin chocolate chip bread, and snuggling on the couch. We reflected on how much we actually enjoyed giving our talks. It's been really easy to get caught up with finals, travel plans, Christmas decorations and presents. It was nice to a have a day to recognize the importance of this season. Our talks helped us remember why we celebrate and it got us into the true Christmas spirit.

Christmas Parties

We've been to a few Christmas parties in the last week. It's really getting us into the Christmas spirit and I'm getting so excited for Christmas.

Our ward had a "Night in Bethlehem" Christmas party at the church. Every one dressed up in biblical time attire.

Here is our little street rat.

(Recognize the vest and hat from the Abu/Aladdin costumes from Halloween last year? Who knew I'd be able to use them for something else!?)

The whole family sitting together.

All the families brought blankets to sit on in the cultural hall. We were given bags of coins (i.e. pennies) to buy our dinner from the various shops and stall around the room.

There was a fruit and vegetable stand, a soup stand, a snack stand, a dessert stand, and my favorite, "The Bishop's Winery" where we got our drinks.

We sat on our blankets, ate our food, and enjoyed the company of others.

Then there was a Christmas program and the nativity story was told.

The songs we sang along the way were accompanied by guitar. Yes, there were electric guitars at the time of Christ's birth.

It was a really fun ward party. I liked that it was a little different and it was fun for us to dress up.

Our apartment complex had a Christmas party last night. It wasn't anything really big or spectacular, but there was a free ham dinner and LOTS of desserts so we went.

They had Santa Claus there for the kids to get a picture with.

Dallin really liked Santa. (Go figure, when has Dallin NOT liked a stranger?)

It's hard to tell his emotion in this picture, but he was just staring at Santa the whole time with this happy grin. We couldn't get him to look away to smile at the camera.

I think all this partying has worn Dallin out though.

He fell asleep while I was doing the dishes.

It's a Christmas Miracle!

Dallin had a check up with a cardiologist last week. This was his first time seeing a cardiologist here in Indiana. He got an EKG like he has gotten for every visit and everything looked normal (like it does every time). We met with the doctor, talked for a bit and she was pleased to hear how well Dallin has been doing. (Her file on Dallin included all of his recent hypercalcemia adventures in the hospital.) She asked when the last time was that he had gotten an echocardiogram (heart ultrasound). I realized that he hadn't had one performed since he was 2 months old and still on oxygen. Since it had been almost 18 months since his last echo, she decided it would be good to do one that day while we were there to see how things were going in there.

He did so much better this time with the echo than he did when he was a screaming newborn. He really just wanted to play with the ultrasound wand and the goo on his chest. After the technician finished, she called the doctor in to look at the images. The doctor saw them and wanted to look at Dallin herself with the machine. That worried me a little, thinking that she saw something that might look serious and wanted to find it for herself. She spent a few minutes studying Dallin's heart and then told us what she saw.

She said that his narrow pulmonary valve (the whole reason why he has to see a cardiologist) is barely even there anymore. He still has a slight heart murmur, and the narrowing is still there, but it's very slight. She said she would categorize it as VERY mild pulmonary stenosis. We were so happy to hear that great news. His check ups with the cardiologist have been every 6 months, but she said that we didn't need to come back for another 9 months, and if things were still looking good then (as she expects them to be), we might lengthen the time between visits to a year. I'm so happy about this! It's great to hear that something is going well. Most people with Williams Sydrome will have either aortic stenosis or pulmonic stenosis. With aortic stenosis, it usually gets worse over time as the child grows up. We feel very lucky that Dallin only has the pulmonic stenosis, because that mostly gets better with time and is usually cleared up on its own in infancy.

Dallin has also been doing very well with his calcium levels. He gets his blood drawn every few weeks (it sucks, I know) to monitor the calcium. His most recent number from last week was 9.9 for his total calcium. The normal range is 7-10.5. He's finally in the normal range for something! The kidney specialist said that now that his calcium is at a good level, we can start cutting back on his medication doses and see how his levels continue to do with less medication. You have no idea how happy that makes me, even though it has only cut out 2 medication doses. I'll take what I can get.

In short, Dallin's heart is great, his calcium is low, and he's gaining weight.

It's a Christmas Miracle!

(No, Dallin did not get really huge, it's just a miniature tree.)

Thanksgiving Feast

We had such a delicious feast. The brined turkey was amazing! It was so juicy and flavorful. I did a lot of research on the turkey cooking process and I think it paid off very well. That Alton Brown is a genius! Seriously, the white meat was even juicier than the dark meat. We had our feast with 4 of Mckay's engineering classmates, at the house that a few of them live in. I made most of the food and there were a few other contributions, like spanish rice, Pillsbury biscuits from a can, and jello that never set up properly. Our lovely food selection is pictured below.

I made carrots, Julie's AMAZING sweet potatoes, asparagus, turkey, gravy, and cranberry sauce.

The food was quite a hit with the boys. I'm guessing it's probably been a while since they've had a really good home cooked meal. One of the guys said he didn't like sweet potatoes, but Mckay made him try the ones I made. He liked them and even went back for seconds. It's amazing what soaking something is sugar and butter for 3 days will do. Thanks for the recipe, Julie! (Or I guess thanks to Christian's grandma.) Even though we somehow missed a few essentials like stuffing and mashed potatoes, we managed to stuff ourselves quite well.

Of course, I had to make some pie. It felt weird only having 2 pies for Thanksgiving, but I wasn't about to make more than 2 for just 6 people. We went with some classics: pumpkin and pecan.

We stuffed ourselves full of food, watched some football and played cards games. Dallin enjoyed crawling around and getting into stuff. Single guys don't really have baby proof places, but Dallin kept himself entertained with a 30lb weight, empty soda bottles, pizza coupons and a screw he found. We all had a really great time.

Today I had a great Black Friday experience, with no waking up early and waiting in line out in the cold. We've been needing a vacuum cleaner for a while, so I've been searching online for good black friday deals on vacuums.

It's like the stars aligned and the vacuum gods paved the way for me to get this great deal. I left home at 9am for Target. The parking lot was packed but I found a close parking spot as soon as I pulled in. I walked right into the store and got the last Dyson DC17 on the shelf. There was no tag on the shelf anywhere, no DC17 model on display, but I knew what the sale ad had printed. I went to checkout, waited no more than 30 seconds in line and got my vacuum at the sale price. Normally $449, I got my dyson for only $269. That's $180 off! And Target was offering a $10 gift card for purchases over $100 before 10am. So I saved essentially $190 on my vacuum. Pretty awesome. It's a lot to spend on a vacuum but I'm hoping it will live up to the Dyson hype and keep us happy for years and years.

Dallin was pretty excited about it...

...until he realized it was a vacuum. His strong sensitivity to loud sounds (related to Williams Syndrome) makes him hate it when I vacuum. He starts to cry when he sees a vacuum. He had fun playing with the box and packaging while I set the vacuum up. But when I had it assembled and rolled it around on the floor (before I had even turned it on), he realized what it was and got really scared and started to cry. It got worse when I turned it on. (If people try to tell you that a dyson is a quiet vacuum, they're wrong. It's still a loud machine that Dallin is scared of.) But beside all that, I'm pretty happy with it so far. It picked up A LOT of dust from our carpet and our apartment looks semi-decent now.

Yay for good Black Friday Deals!

And Yay for yummy food!

Brined Turkey

For Thanksgiving this year, we are staying here in Indiana. Unfortunately, this means we won't get to be with any of our family, but it also means that I will be making my very first turkey! I'm really excited to make a turkey and all the fixings that go with it. I wanted to try soaking the turkey in a brine. I've heard it makes for a juicier meat. We'll see. Today my turkey is soaking in brine. I used this recipe. On Thursday I'll use this recipe to make a delicious Roast Turkey with Apple Cider Gravy.

If it ends up tasting as good as this looks

I think I'll be pretty happy.