The Land of Oz: December

After a slightly longer wait than we anticipated (probably due to the Thanksgiving weekend), I finally opened the mailbox one day to find a big fat letter addressed to Elder Taylor Leon Oswald!

And of course it was on the day that Taylor ended up working an all afternoon/evening shift at work. So we had to wait and wait and it was about 10 pm before he finally got home for the big moment. We took a video but didn't manage to snap even a single picture of him opening the envelope! I think we were all completely stunned when he read that he had been called to serve in the Utah St. George Mission! In fact, Kalen thought he must be kidding and kept saying, "Seriously???" We had joked about Taylor being called to Utah, but never in a million years did we actually think he would. We have family all over the state! Taylor just laughed and said, "All right!" It was funny when he pulled out the map and showed us the mission boundaries. It is a large mission that covers from the middle of the state all the way south and we laughed because it cuts off at Price which is very close to my family in Duchesne and it cuts a corner off in the south just after Moab which is very near Blanding where some of Kalen's family is! So even though we have so many family members there, not one of them is within the mission boundaries! Taylor is SO excited. It was also interesting because the mission covers several parks like Zion and Bryce and Canyonlands and Arches. My brother in law Mike joked that it was like Taylor was being called to serve in his version of Disneyland! The other crazy thing about the call was that the date that Taylor was supposed to report to the MTC was January 20th! We were totally thinking he'd probably take off in February or March. He had only about 6 weeks to get all his stuff together and be ready to report! Needless to say it was a very chaotic and crazy 6 weeks.

On December 7th, we celebrated Kendall's 15th birthday. Before we know it we'll be saying goodbye to another missionary! We are so happy to have the privilege of raising such a remarkable and wonderful person. Seriously, I think this kid has to be one of the best kids in the entire universe.

And one of the amazing things about Kendall is that he is becoming quite a cook/baker. He loves to be in the kitchen creating something and one of his specialties is becoming this chocolate marble cheesecake. It is seriously special. He's made a few of them now and they are so unbelievably delicious.

Because his departure date was so soon, and because we wanted Taylor to have at least a few opportunities to go to the temple after his own endowment session, we got him scheduled before Christmas. I can't really even express how awesome it is to be in the temple when your own child goes through for the first time. Just so amazing. We are so proud of the decisions that Taylor has made in his life to get to this point. He was able to go back again with the his old YM leader/scoutmaster and his wife, and again with another ward member (they did two sessions) and then we were able to go with him again with my parents.

And of course, it isn't December without Christmas! It was a little bittersweet knowing that this was the last Christmas we'll have with Taylor for at least a couple of years. But it's always an exciting time and one of my favorite times of the year.

Kaya and her latestAG doll Julie.

Spencer loved his giant collection of Kinetic Sand.

And Lynnsey got what she says is her last AG doll, Samantha. We'll see if she sticks with that!

Kendall got a bunch of decorating tools to assist with all of his baked creations.

Lucky Taylor got CD's of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and a luggage set.

This year the kids got one extra handmade gift from me. I decided that I'm constantly making things for the Etsy shop but not ever doing much for my kids. So Taylor got a Doctor Who bookmark that looks like the 4th Doctor scarf, Kendall got a fox hat (he totally asked for one!), Lynnsey got a hat with a flower to match the cowl I had already given her, Spencer got a little basket to put whatever he wants to in it (he's got a lot of DS games in it right now), and Kaya got the owl hat she was admiring without realizing it was for her.

We had a great Christmas full of our usual traditions of homemade chicken noodle soup on Christmas Eve and omelets for breakfast on Christmas day plus a delicious ham dinner later in the day, countless Christmas CD's and at least one or two viewings of A Christmas Story. Also, apparently another tradition that is becoming a yearly occurrence is me catching a nasty cold! That part is not so fun but I guess I'll take that over the stomach bugs of Christmases past.

We ended up our 2014 with a second ear surgery for Kaya. Her surgeon has been monitoring the situation and prolonging the repeat surgery to fix the hole in her ear drum that never closed after her last surgery. Finally last summer he decided it was getting worse and he felt like we needed to get it done within a few months. So they scheduled her for December 29th which was nice so she would not have a lengthy school absence.

It was a so crazy because the whole situation was so similar to the last time! The surgery took a bit longer this time though and about the time I was actually starting to worry, the surgeon came out and told us she was done. Unfortunately the damage was far more extensive than he'd been able to see in his office and he actually had to remove her entire ear drum! The good news though, was that since her hearing bones were still intact, he was able to take a graft of skin from behind her ear and craft a brand new ear drum! The recovery from this surgery is a lot longer than the other one and there is a chance that scar tissue can form and she could lose some hearing. The doctor was optimistic though that any hearing loss still wouldn't be bad enough to require a hearing aid so that's good. We have to go in fairly frequently, every couple of weeks or so, to check things out and make sure it's healing up well. So far so good!