January 14, 2018

We had a great Christmas Break.  We celebrated Christmas at home. Christmas Eve was a Sunday, so we went to church for 1 hour, we had our traditional Chinese food for dinner, this time from Costco.  We acted out the Nativity. And this year the Sisters invited us to go caroling to some less-actives.  It was great.  And then we came home and opened secret siblings gifts.

Christmas morning started at 6:30.  We had a great time opening presents.  Bob was in charge of Christmas day food so he made pancakes for breakfast and ham and funeral potatoes for dinner.  We played with toys and did puzzles and had a nice lazy Christmas.  We also did our traditional family testimony meeting.

The day after Christmas, Danny had a basketball tournament so we stayed in town for 2 days for that and then we left to go to Visalia, where everyone was there because grandma and grandpa are leaving on their mission.  We had a great time with everyone.  We went shopping, watched movies, played games, went bowling and to a trampoline place.  We stayed until New Years' Day.  All 5 kids stayed up until midnight on New Year's Eve.

We came back after New Years' so Bob could work and Danny could go to practice.  It was also nice to have some lazy time, time with friends and time to work on Kwanzaa.  We went out to dinner to celebrate Kwanzaa this year.

Now we're a week back into school.  Danny ended with a 3.7 gpa so he does qualify to be able to drive so he is anxiously looking forward to that.

For Thanksgiving we were invited to go to the Salmon's Mexico beach house again.  Danny had practice and Bob had to work so they stayed home while the kids and I drove down on Saturday after school got out.  We stayed until Wednesday when we drove up to Ryan's house and met Bob and Danny there.  We had fabulous weather in Mexico.  It was even better than when we went during the summer a few years ago. The kids all had a great time swimming (except for Seth) and playing games at night.  We went to the Mexican market one day.  We went to church, which was a great experience.

The only disappointing thing about our trip was that Seth got sick.  About the time we crossed the border on our way there, Seth started saying his throat hurt.  He was sick with a fever and cough for the whole trip.  He got a little bit of a red rash on his trunk, but I just thought it was from the fever.  He also had his cast on, so he wouldn't have been able to get in the ocean anyway.  He was still sick when we went to Ryan's house and on Friday Seth's finger tips started to peel.  That was too much, we decided he needed to go home to see a doctor and get better.  He had scarlett fever.  That turned out to be a horrific illness.  He was put on antibiotics and hydrocortizone to help the skin.  Over the next 2 weeks his entire body peeled, like a sunburn, but deep.  Skin fell off everywhere and his bed looked like it had snowed.  But then it peeled so deep that his skin was red and raw.  We were constantly working to make him comfortable.  He needed lotion to hydrate the skin, but it stung.  So we would lotion, then ice while we waiting for the stinging to stop.  His hands were so dry and cracked and fragile that we would lotion at night and then use press n seal to wrap his hands all night. His scalp peeled and looked like dandruff.  And even his fingernails were damaged.  So now a month and a half later, his nails are growing out and there is a line where the nails are fragile and peeling.  He seems fine now and it was awesome that he didn't give it to anyone who stayed at the beach house with us or anyone who was at Ryan's, he was sick around a lot of people.  But that was one huge ordeal.

I'm helping with basketball right now.  I also helped with Rachel's volleyball team, I was the team mom.  Now I'm helping the HS basketball coach like I did last year.  And I was helping middle school basketball too.  Then a few weeks into the season, they fired their MS athletic director and asked me to help in that roll until they could hire someone.  I did it for about a month and I spent a lot of hours organizing and coordinating.  I enjoy being involved at the school, but that one was a little too big of a job so I'm glad I don't have to do that one anymore.