Amelia in Wonderland

I found this photo session from last October 2013 that Eliza and Amelia did out in the front yard. Amelia wants to work at Disneyland someday and be a princess...this is a pretty good start. She makes a pretty cute Alice!!!

Beauty and the Beast

So, last October of 2013 we took the girls to see their first ever broadway showing of Beauty and the Beast. They loved it! Amelia came home saying that she wanted to grow up and work for Disney and even be in plays and sing and dance. Afterward we went back stage and got pictures with the characters. My cousin Carson Wright went to BYU with a couple of the actors. It was a lot of fun. Olivia fell asleep toward the end, but overall she LOVED it! We even had Nana's dress to wear to the show. Nana and Papa John always send the sweetest gifts. We sure do love them! Here are a few pictures!

Winter Memory

This was in the winter of 2014. Julia had a dance competition that day and when we were done the girls wanted to go to gulley park…I thought this picture was adorable of these two sweeties. They played on the monkey bars and they just seriously love each other. They are the best sisters ever!

Easter Morning

Happy Easter. We have a beautiful field in front of our yard...put the girls in their white dresses and had some fun!

Christmas Card 2013

For Spring Break we went camping at Petit Jean State Park, a region famous for its bacon and cliffs. To say I don’t like camping wouldn’t describe my feelings accurately. It’s not that I dislike it. As a suburban Boston boy (and recovering Boy Scout), I just don’t understand the concept of it. So much work and money goes into an attempt to recreate society out in the woods, even though we have society back at our home. Creating a fire and a place to cook our soggy igloo food, setting up a table and the little chairs to sit on, and pitching a tent in which to embark on a greasy night of not sleeping. Thankfully, the girls seemed to enjoy it all, even after I “woke up” the first morning and had a brittle plastic pitcher with freezing orange juice disintegrate and fill up my shoes. Throughout the few days, I made the best of going to the “bathroom” and even was treated to cleaning bacon greased dishes in cold bin water. At a few points, I had imagined myself suffering the same fate as poor Petit Jean herself and being buried nearby, but the hiking, Adriane’s great cooking and Richard’s gift of the tent trailer made up for the freezing temperatures we really did have a wonderful time as a family.

Adriane is our excellent school music teacher. She does great, even with her triangular head and square body, as described by our young Olivia recently after Adriane complained about being out of shape. Parties are planned, people come over, lives intertwine and all is well with the world. She loves to see the good in everyone and never passes up the opportunity to make someone feel good about themselves. She is in our regional youth ministry, as we call it around here, which keeps her busy visiting the other congregations in the area on Sundays. She’s like my personal TV show that I just enjoy watching as we go through life.

We’ve had our athletic club membership installed as metal brackets and wires into Amelia’s mouth. I’m still disappointed by the demise of my morning tennis matches with the Southern society ladies due to this American obsession with straight teeth. I also have since started to wonder what happens if you stop making payments on the braces. Do they have repo men who pull up to your house with tiny, pointy instruments and a lot of small talk questions? Whatever they would do to her, it can’t be worse than my orthodontist lady in Germany who was almost certainly a descendant of Josef Mengele.

We’ve discovered the threshold to insanity to be the fifth snow day in a row. Snow days one through four are magical, where we float several inches off the floor, hot chocolate just seeps from the electrical outlets and heavenly beings come and go at will. That changes around day five. By then, the walls are dripping with moan, we’ve started to actually take on physical characteristics of oatmeal pancakes, and tropical fruit TUMS start to actually taste OK.

I’m involved in the men’s group leadership at church (Elders Quorum) and I have very much enjoyed getting to know the guys. I recently had our group of about 15 men engage in the first ever Elders Quorum Group Hug centered around one of our guys who had just lost a baby. It was as awkward as it sounds, and it’ll take a lot of disaster for it to happen again, but my goal has been to follow the example of the women’s group at church and see what happens.

Amelia is thirt-screen years old now and loves her dance classes, reading, drawing and writing. Life is exciting. I’m starting to call her iMelia, due to our strange decision to buy her an iPhone a few years ago. Like all the screenagers, she loves to communicate with non-present friends on the little glowing box. It fascinates me, this obsession that we have with the people who aren’t physically with us until they are physically with us and then they’re not as important as the other people who are not physically present. #whatshappening? But she does love being with friends out here in meatspace and is in the leadership of her small cell group at church (presidency of her young women’s class).

If Eliza, 11, were to get a bad cut, I think refried beans might start pouring out. Not only that, she has started to grow stripes and a large mouth and ears, or so she appeared on October 31. Her dream is to live in and rule a sock monkey world. I’m getting nervous that she’s the Caesar in the impending Rise of the Planet of the Sock Monkeys and it’s going to be me in a loincloth pounding my fist in the sand looking up at the remnants of the Statue of Liberty. But I guess that means Adriane would play the part of Nova, and that’s good. Eliza is the only one in the entire school not thrilled to have Adriane as the school music teacher. She attempts to pry up the tiles in the cafeteria and ooze herself down into the sub floor every time Adriane dances around on the stage. She reminds me of a certain someone. She is a happy and talented girl.

Julia, 8, just about has to be held back from going up on stage and dancing with Adriane during school assemblies. Every day she comes home and announces who her new best friend is. She reminds me of a certain other someone. She somehow discovered those foppish One Direction guys and thankfully doesn’t seem to be following the impending Götterdämmerung of the Biebs. She was baptized into the church in September and we’re so proud of her for choosing to do so. Her ansisters and anbrothers, as she said recently, are also surely proud of her.

Olivia, 6, never wears her glasses, and it’s not for a lack of having several pairs. She’s a tiny, blonde bully, and just removes them, mostly when we’re not watching. Wherever Julia is, there Olivia is also, and they’re best friends. The two sides of their room are equally disastrous and they share and jockey for many friends. She loved showing off her princess dress to the fake real Belle after the national Beauty and the Beast tour company a few months ago. Lately, she walks around the house singing “Do you want to build a snowman?” and prepares to play with the Anna and Elsa dolls she thinks she’s about to receive.

I love this time of year and am grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ. In 125 B.C. a Book of Mormon prophet said, “O have mercy, and apply the atoning blood of Christ that we may receive forgiveness of our sins, and our hearts may be purified; for we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who created heaven and earth, and all things; who shall come down among the children of men.” And we read in the Bible that He did come. “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” We love you all and have a Merry Christmas! 

Julia Jeanne's Baptism

So, one week ago we had a very special day. My 3rd daughter Julia was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was so beautiful and so happy on this special day. Her daddy Tom baptized and confirmed her. It was a memory I will never forget. The amount of love and support shown by family was pretty incredible. I was humbled. The spirit was there and well...it was just really amazingly beautiful. Love the gospel.

We had lots of friends there and had a sweet little reception afterwards.

Christmas Card 2012

Feliz Navidad. While I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas “from the bottom of my heart,” I have to report that I cannot. The fact is that I’ve again lost the battle of attempting complete avoidance of the song “Feliz Navidad.” I try to quarantine myself from this 17-word song, and I fail every year. When I hear those first few dreaded notes, I leap towards the computer to stop it, but by then enough notes have implanted themselves in my brain and I’m lost. For the rest of the day, I’m strutting around the town like Tiny Tim, adjusting the cadence of my steps to the words of the song in my tortured head. I have 42 years of enjoying the Christmas season and its music, but I can’t hear this song again. The only solution may be to come down on all holiday music next year with an iron fist. That means I’m coming for you next, chipmunks.

I’ve begun to grow breasts. I’d like to think it’s because I live with a wife and four daughters and have just inhaled too much “product.” Sadly, it’s probably that I’m well into my 40s and my riotous, destructive use of cold cereal in the evenings is finally catching up with me. I’m already getting dressed in the mornings and then asking Adriane how I look, so maybe there’s no re/capturing my true manhood at this point. 

Cheap anatomical jokes aside, Adriane and I often talk about ways of being more refined and sophisticated. We devour Downton Abbey, admiring their manner of speaking and elegance, and we recently drooled all over the magnificence of the Nemours (Dupont) Mansion & Gardens in Wilmington, Delaware. I’m pretty sure I could live like the Crawleys or Duponts. I have to admit that I’m one of those people who actually regrets watching the breakdown of the snobbish class system on Downton Abbey. Sometimes, I think there should be a staff that irons my newspaper in the morning and brings it to me with my soft-boiled egg, and then quickly retreats so that I don’t have to see them anymore until I ring a bell. Not really, of course. That would be complete rubbish.

Adriane and I and a bunch of adult family members visited the Yucatan peninsula back in May. Hot, beautiful, exotic and utterly breathtaking are only a few of the words to describe Adriane and me in our swimsuits on the condo beach. At one point while sightseeing, we were stopped by a bloodshot, shifty-eyed guy with a rifle and “uniform” who stops tourist vehicles. And we were way out in Mayan country, learning all about hearts being ripped out of living people and ancient ball players being sacrificed for winning their match. So, as I sat in the unfortunate spot of “shotgun” in the 12-seater van during our interaction with Old Red Eyes With Pseudo Authority, my body was near to self-inflicting Montezuma’s revenge. He slowly glared at each of us with one of his eyes as he decided our futures. After an eternity, Maria Elena McRae, sweet-talked him into allowing us to keep our blood-pumping organs and, more importantly, our day’s itinerary, and on we merrily went. We visited viny, ancient ruins and swam in cool, deep cenote water holes. It’s amazing to visit a place with a bunch of outgoing Spanish speakers who ask more questions about the tour guides’ personal lives than the surrounding ruins. What a fun family and trip.

This year we bought passes to Silver Dollar City. It’s a huge Ozark and Hillbilly-themed amusement park up near Branson, Missouri. My favorite game while walking around is trying to figure out who the costumed theme park workers are and who the regular visitors are. Sometimes, that happens as I sit on a bench waiting for Adriane and the girls to come off a roller coaster. I don’t like constantly negotiating with my stomach on the likelihood of violently parting with my recently eaten sausage mash with onions. The theme park workers are extremely nice and it’s a fun place, especially around the holidays.

Adriane worked for a year as a full-time music teacher at an elementary school in a neighboring town, finishing up in June. I enjoyed calling and texting her often at her work when I knew she wasn’t able to talk. This had nothing to do with a backlog of years and years of her calling me in the middle of teaching university classes and sitting in meetings, then complain that I “never” answer the phone. And have you noticed that when you initiate a phone call to Adriane, she begins the conversation? That’s how happy she is to get a phone call. Every phone call she gets is a present. Even though she’s become much more interested in reading, she often says that her main hobby is people. In fact, it’s her genuine, Christlike love for everyone she meets that I love to watch. Even if she had a VERY hard time turning 40 this year, she’s still my eternally young love.

Amelia is 12 now. I don’t know about this whole thing. But she loves her dance class and loves to read and write. Adriane has to coerce her into having a friend come over to “hang out,” but she would just rather read. It’s hard for Adriane to understand that Frodo is every bit as real as the kids at school and that it’s OK for her to want to spend some time in the pages of a book. She’s getting so tall and ladylike, has become quite the Anglophile herself (Tolkien and Rowling), and we’re so proud of her.

Eliza, 9, is writing a comics series about gingerbread people in everyday situations that keep us laughing hysterically. Already, she loves and gets The Far Side comic. She was spinach in the school musical, and in the talent show this year got up on stage and sang and danced “a duck walked up to a lemonade stand.” Being the shy one, it was completely out of character for her. Always a nature lover, she stops to point out the unique color of the sky, and she insisted on a good burial spot after our three-day fish died. She is silly and precious.

Julia, 7, loves life and people. Every day is a gift, that contains indescribable possibilities of seeing people and being with people, hopefully with music and a party involved. We’re always trying to figure out where she gets all of this behavior. Biebs is still on her marriage radar, though I’m not sure how, and she wins the award for best big sister ever. 

Olivia, 5, says most words well but has trouble with her Rs. Therefore, she can say “Amblyopia” with no troubles when asked why she wears glasses and a patch over one eye. Her favorite magazine seems to be “The Kid” (The LDS church magazine The Friend) and, though tiny, she scored anywhere from 5-10 goals in every soccer game last season, and yes that’s a humblebrag.

Especially towards the end of such a difficult year for so many, I’m so grateful for the true meaning of Christmas, being the birth and celebration of the life and sacrifice of our Savior Jesus Christ. It is the hope of a re-united family throughout eternity. I hope to emulate him more and more. Therefore, similar to Jose Feliciano, I wanna wish you a fine Yuletide and a joyous beginning of a new 365-day cycle from an undisclosed location in my chest.