Missionaries

Today my parents entered the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, where they will spend five intense days preparing to be missionaries for our church. They will serve in the Charlotte, North Carolina, mission for 18 months. Charlotte is only 1 1/2 hours from us, but my parents will actually be living in Yanceyville, North Carolina, which is four hours away. Still a lot closer than Utah!

Serving a mission is a privilege in our religion. David (Italy) and I (Argentina) both served. My siblings (Taiwan, Japan, New Hampshire and Philadelphia) have served. My dad served in New York City at the World's Fair when he was younger. Both sets of my grandparents (Guatemala and NYC) served when I was a pre-teen and their example has stayed with me all my life. My grandad served in Brazil in his youth, leaving his new bride who gave birth to a daughter who died after only a few hours while he was gone (husbands no longer leave their wives to serve missions). That bride, my granny, even served a mission without my grandad when she was in her 60's. It was hard for her and I have always been humbled by that sacrifice.

I know it will be hard for my parents to leave their home, friends, life and especially their grandkids. The littlest ones will be completely different 18 months from now. But I also know that their example will serve as a benchmark for generations to come.

I love you Mom and Dad!

How to Spend 12 Hours in an Airport Without Losing Your Mind (and other myths)

I love my flight benefits. It's great to be able to hop on a flight and go anywhere I want, whenever I want - that is, when it works. Every now and then a trip evolves into a nightmare. We were supposed to return home from Austin on Friday. I looked at the flight loads and decided it would be better to wait until Saturday when the flights had several open seats and it looked like we would for sure make it. Turns out we would have made it on Friday. I hate it when that happens.

We got up a little before 5 a.m. and started the drive from Austin to Houston. We had to drive because on the way to Austin, we got bumped in Houston. We ended up renting a car and driving the rest of the way. It was cheaper to keep the car all week and drive it back to Houston rather than drop it off in Austin. We got to the Houston airport around 9 a.m. for our 10:20 a.m. departure.

As fate would have it, a heavy fog rolled in Saturday morning, covering a huge hunk of Texas, including everything between Austin and the Houston Intercontinental Airport (making the drive a little scary). Thanks to the new rule that fines airlines if they spend too much time on the tarmac, airlines now just cancel flights to avoid the fines. (As for me, I'd rather sit on the runway for a couple of hours and get where I'm trying to go rather than have my flight cancelled altogether. I agree there have been some extreme cases that were handled incorrectly, but the legislation has created more problems rather than addressing a few isolated incidents.) Our flight was cancelled. The next flight wasn't until a little after 3 p.m. Sigh.

So what to do ...

We exited back through security and headed downstairs in Terminal B.

Terminal B has an open area downstairs by baggage claim that is usually empty since it's basically just a big hallway. It's filled with beautiful mosaics and is open and light. It was a great place for the kids to be noisy and able to  move around without bothering anyone.

Daddy and Baylie played a few rounds of princess slap jack.

Baylie kissed a frog.

We made our voices echo under the domed ceiling.

There is a little tram that runs around the entire airport. Now that there is a monorail connecting the terminals, few people use the tram. I would hazard a guess that most passengers don't even know it's there. (The tram runs outside of security and the monorail runs inside security.) We rode it around for awhile, pretending we were on a Disney ride.

There is a walkway by the tram track. We ran around that...

...until we dropped from exhaustion.

We played the giant matching game in Terminal E. (Note: Terminal E is the best place to eat and is much less depressing in the gate area than Terminal B, which is dark, hot and gross.)

We ate some fruit...

...and some vegetables.

We had several potty breaks.

Baylie especially liked the "princess throne" in this stall.

We rode the monorail...

...several times.

Everyone but me slept, but I neglected to get a picture of that. Too bad because it looked pretty funny.

The 3:00 flight ended up being delayed until around 9 p.m. or so. We were told our crew had been at the airport for an hour, but no one could find them. When they finally showed up, David was able to get the last seat on the plane with Jalen on his lap. They sat on the plane for five minutes, after which the flight was cancelled because the crew timed out. (This means the crew had met the maximum amount of time they are allowed to work based on FAA regulations. Kind of made us wonder where they had spent the hour wandering around the airport...)

So we met up again and realized we would have to spend the night in Houston.

We spent 30 minutes waiting for our bags, then headed to our hotel. We got to the hotel at about 10:30 p.m. At least we were able to watch the ball drop at midnight.

In the end, we flew to Greenville-Spartanburg Sunday morning and rented a car to get home to Columbia. Flying for "free" is relative when you end up paying for two car rentals, a hotel and airport food, but it's still cheaper than paying for three tickets. Thank goodness my kids are good travelers.

At least we're home now, and so happy to be here! Let's hope the rest of 2012 goes a little more smoothly!

A note to my airline friends: We could have boarded a United flight with seats available, but the gate agent - and a red coat - refused to board us saying early out employees couldn't fly UA. So annoying when airport personnel aren't up to date on current policy! I've found a copy of the Employee Travel Bulletin issued back in June and will now carry it with me. 

Batchin' It

The day after Christmas, we headed to Austin, TX, to spend some time with David's side of the family. The kids loved playing with their cousins, especially since Aunt Casey has a big back yard with a trampoline. We had a great visit, right up until we tried to come home. The journey home deserves a post all its own.

Granny LOVES doing puzzles! 

And this time she had lots of helpers.

The kids wanted to spend all day every day on the tramp. 

Jalen took good care of his "little" cousin Ezekiel.
(Note that the bottle is actually for a doll.) 

 Jalen also liked spending quality time with Princess.

Bayie accompanied Daddy on Uncle Adam's guitar. 

(Uncle Adam served three terms in Iraq and died while on active duty.)

 It's always fun to spend quality time with family.

Christmas on the Sabbath

For the first time I can remember in a long time, Christmas fell on a Sunday. At first, I was bummed because I just wanted to stay home Christmas morning. But then I realized that there could be no better way to recognize the birth, life and atonement of the Savior than by going to church and partaking of the sacrament. We had two wards and a branch combine for a meeting that was primarily music. It was really beautiful and I found myself crying at the end, grateful for my Savior and grateful to be surrounded by fellow saints who also wanted to praise Him with song. What an awesome Christmas!

I remember a time when I was a child and we had a similar experience. It's one of my most memorable Christmases because I had to wait to open my presents. It made everything seem more special. I hope my kids remember today as well. 

When we got home, we changed back into our jammies to open presents. I didn't think Baylie was going to be able to wait. She was so anxious! She loved her presents, but mostly just wanted to open them. Before she was even finished opening her own she told her daddy and me that we had to share our presents too.

Jalen could have opened one present and played with it the rest of the day. He loved everything he opened and didn't want to stop playing with one present in order to open the next.

When we were all finished, I had my highlight when Baylie said, "Thank you, Mommy, for this lovely Christmas."

Merry Christmas!

My Favorite Christmas Tradition

Funny Kids

My kids crack me up. I am always amazed at their personalities, the things they say and the things they do. They have made my life so much richer than I ever imagined it could be. I take WAY too many pictures of them, but hopefully one day they'll look back on these photos and realize how much I loved watching them.

I've posted these pictures on facebook, but since I don't turn status updates into blog books, I decided to put them here.

We go to the zoo about once a week and every time, Baylie wants to climb the rock wall (ever since her cousin Cameron did it). You have to weigh at least 40 pounds to climb the wall and she's usually a couple pounds under. Yesterday they didn't have the scales out, so she got to climb! It was harder than she thought it would be. She got up about 12 feet, which isn't too bad for a first time. She can't wait to try it again.

The kids wake up around 5:30 every morning and David and I have resorted to locking our door to keep them out. The other day we decided to cut out their afternoon nap to see if they'd sleep in longer. Jalen didn't make it past 6:30 p.m. before he crashed. And they still got up before the sun!

The other day I came into their bedroom to find they had taken all their toys out of the cupboard, put them on their bed and covered them with blankets. I asked where they were going to sleep and they opted for the obvious choice.

Baylie has started dressing herself. She has a real flair for color. (She's also quite a poser.)

Yesterday Baylie called my mom at 5:30 a.m. and sang The Twelve Days of Christmas for her. (I guess that's Grammy's thank you for buying the book that taught her the song.) Here's a peek at what Grammy's wake up call probably sounded like.

The Christmas Jar Revisited

A couple of years ago, I posted about The Christmas Jar. Well, tonight we got a knock on our door and opened it to find a cute little Christmas bag. We opened it to find this...

It is mostly quarters and is a lot of money. We are so humbled by how kind people are to us. I'll be honest, sometimes it's really hard to be on the receiving end of charity. Until the past few years, we were on the giving end, which is much easier. But knowing that people are mindful of us and love us enough to share what they have is truly humbling and comforting. 

This has been a long and emotional week for me. I'm so grateful that it ended with this selfless act that reminds me why we really celebrate Christmas.