Christmas Letter 2014

It's been my tradition to share my Christmas letter with you, but I wrote it about a month ago (look at me, trying to be proactive...), but haven't had time to share it until now. It's a little outdated, so keep that in mind as you read.

November 2014

Oh, where to begin! Everything is just so crazy here! Wonderful, happy crazy, but still crazy.

If you remember, last year about this time, Gamer was baptized into the church and now he is approaching his one-year mark so that he and Bossy and their family can be sealed in the temple for time and eternity. Their plan is to be endowed on December 23 and sealed on January 10. I know that seems a little crazy to wait for 3 weeks, but there is a very good reason for that. The Beast and his beautiful finacee, Beauty, are being married in the Salt Lake Temple on December 30, and Bossy and Gamer want to be there. But we feel like they need a special celebration of their own and they had always planned to be sealed on their half-anniversary. (That also gives me 2 weeks to recover…)

Beauty and The Beast were engaged on November 15 and if you want to hear him tell the story, you can visit my blog at www.twelvemakesadozen.blogspot.com. We are completely busy now planning Thanksgiving, Christmas, and basically 2 weddings, but it gets better.

The Drama Queen is moving home after Christmas to prepare for the mission she is planning to serve in the summer. She made arrangements with her principal to be let out of her contract in January. It’s been difficult for her to get the support she needs in Nephi and if she moves home she can concentrate on mission prep and institute classes. She hopes to get a job at the bank where Beauty, The Beast, and Teach are all working.

Teach returned from her mission in August and started grad school at UVU. She is hoping to start teaching sometime soon, but in the meantime, she is working as a lender at the bank. The Beast has moved up the ladder from the lending pool and is now a customer care consultant (I probably botched the official name) and he is doing very well. He bought his own home in West Valley and Beauty will join him there after the wedding.

The Dog Walker started his mission in January at the Special Needs Seminaries in the valley. He has worked at 4 different schools and loved every one of them. So much in fact, that he has extended his mission from the original one year to 18 months so he will continue to serve until June. He will also graduate next semester from SLCC with an AS in Education. His goal is to become a special ed teacher on the elementary school level.

Princess is mostly enjoying her senior year. She is so busy! She is the Deputy Mayor for the South Jordan Youth City Council, and the President and Founder of the Cupcake Club at Bingham. She is a Sterling Scholar in FACS and an FCCLA Vice President of Service. She is still dancing and is the captain of her Elite Performing Team as well as the Sugar Plum Fairy in South Pointe Ballet’s upcoming performance of the Nutcracker. It is a role she has been training for since she was 3 years old and it includes a couple of solos as well as the partnering dance. I think she has been a bit surprised that there is falling when it comes to the ballet lifts! She is all set to graduate with her AS from SLCC in the spring as well, making her a New Century Scholar.

Prima Donna is super busy too. She is currently performing in the musical, Peter Pan at Bingham. She is a pirate and barely recognizable as female in her stage makeup. She is also in the Nutcracker playing the part of Madame Ginger for the second year in a row. She is VP of the Cupcake club and the VP of Star Events in FCCLA. She is also on track to finish her AS degree from SLCC when she graduates in 2016. She is interested in everything except getting her Drivers License. She did an amazing job on her Gold Award project this summer by writing, producing, and staging her own musical. Now if I can just get her to finish up the paperwork…

Crafty loves dancing and reading. She is also on a performing team and she is super excited to have two parts in the Nutcracker, that of the Snow Ensemble and Chinese. Both dances are done on pointe. She is a PTSA officer at So Jordan Middle and a member of the MathCounts team. She just recently received her Girl Scout Silver Award and she and the other girls had the opportunity to dance at the National Convention.

Sport just finished an outstanding football season playing center. They were undefeated going into the championship game. Unfortunately they lost in triple overtime. But he is over that already and moving on to basketball. He loves all the sports. He pitched for the first time this year and had some of the best stats in the league. He is an excellent student and he is on the safety council and the Math Olympiad team at Jordan Ridge. He just finished up Cub Scouts this summer and earned his Arrow of Light. He is moving right along as a Boy Scout although he doesn’t plan to earn all the merit badges like Dog Walker did.

Speaking of Dog Walker and Merit Badges, that is something else amazing that happened to us this year. The Dog Walker was approached by the National BSA to participate in a training video about inclusion. We had a real film crew come to the house and everything. It should be live on their website by January 1.

Scout is also a dancer and very into sports. She played softball and basketball this year and is excited to start the new basketball season with just girls this time. This is my 3rd year in a row coaching her team. If I would have known about the weddings, I’m not sure I would have committed. Scout is a buffoon in the Nutcracker, but I think her favorite dance is tap. She and Baby Doll and Curly are all in the same class and they just love practicing together at home. She is also very happy to have some girls closer to her age in our Girl Scout troop.  There are 3 of them now besides our older girls. I have 10 girls in my troop and that works well. I am also in charge of Scout’s Activity Days group. There are 18 girls there but we usually have closer to 12.

Curly loves dancing and singing and acting. He is the youngest Lost Boy in Bingham’s production of Peter Pan. It’s been rough on him with all the rehearsals and now the performances, but he has loved being part of the show. He does tap, ballet, and jazz at the dance studio and he loved playing baseball. He was chosen as one of 2 MVPs for his team (as was Sport). He is looking forward to basketball starting up in December and Christmas, of course!

Such a silly bunch!

Baby Doll turned 4, started preschool and her second year of dance. She loves to dance and she is very serious about it! She also took swimming lessons this summer but so far we have avoided sports for her. Life is just so busy already. She loves church and her primary class. Her tap class danced at the expo center this past weekend and she is not afraid to take the stage. She is actually really bossy…

My sweetie has been on a crazy project for about 6 months now. He works an average of about 70 hours every week. It’s hard on him and it’s hard on us. He is the team leader so he always wants to work harder than everyone else. He was finally released as the Cubmaster and immediately put in as the Young Men’s Secretary. He has lost about 60 pounds so far this year. His doctor wanted him to lose 100 and I’ve no doubt he will get there. I am still in charge of Stake Women’s Sports and my ward’s Activity Days group. The Dog Walker is the Assistant Cubmaster so I am supporting him in that calling as well. We are getting ready for the Pinewood Derby next week. I’m still selling a little Tupperware now and again. I’m also on the South Pointe Ballet board, and I work for the dance studio maintaining correspondence and the website. It’s so weird to have a couple of hours to myself 3 days a week while Baby Doll is at preschool. I try to get errands done and run to Curves, but that doesn’t always happen.

Not that our life isn’t without its challenges. Yesterday the Dog Walker put an entire 50-lb bag of fertilizer on the front lawn. We are trying to figure out how to save the grass so we don’t have to replace it in the spring. It took Baby Doll about 8 weeks to recover from her broken arm and I still have pain in my little finger from basketball practice the first week in January. I broke it then, but tried to treat it myself until March when I finally had corrective surgery. And we won’t even talk about all the things that keep breaking around here besides bones. We passed our 20-year anniversary in the house this summer and it’s amazing what random things decide to go out on us.

I post on my blog pretty much every day, so if you really want to see how we live our lives, head on over there.  Hope you all have a healthy and happy New Year!

Sandy and the Clan