House O' Sullivans

. . . unless, of course, something amazing happens tomorrow. Lindy: I can't believe how grown up she is looking these days. My friend Cody knitted Loo this cute little red sweater more than a year ago and Lindy finally fits it. We call it her "Christmas sweater." Lindy likes to search it out and bring it to us so that we'll put it on her. Lindy in her Christmas sweater.  On Christmas Eve, we joined with the rest of the Sullivan siblings, several of the in-laws’ parents, and some family friends, for the annual nativity in the barn except this year it wasn’t in the barn. Our numbers grew to epic proportions, necessitating a last minute change in venue to a local church building. We started with dinner and moved on to the nativity, this time on a stage complete with a mural of Bethlehem taped on front (thanks to Kim’s dad). At least we were warm . I thought that maybe the church gym would feel impersonal and cold, but it was one of those smaller gyms and w...

Yesterday we spent the day stoking the Christmas Spirit. Our friend Catherine came over in the morning and brought the kids some early Christmas presents.   Then we loaded everyone up (including Catherine) and visited the local assisted living center were we sang Christmas carols, visited with the residents, and distributed oranges and chocolates. Zeke with our friend, Larry, at the assisted living center.  We thought it would be fun to build a snow man for the residents to look at and came up with this beauty, which we parked just outside their dining hall, for maximum visibility and enjoyment. After lunch, we started in on our afternoon service project: clearing a fallen branch from a single neighbor's front yard. She has a giant tree that lost a limb in the last big snowstorm. This tree is so massive, that one limb is the size of a normal tree, so were talking a whole lot of volume here. This neighbor's been out of town all week, so we combined with ano...

Coordination has never been Sophie's forte. She's strong, fast, and athletic, but ask her to do jumping jacks and . . . what ? In the summer I proposed numerous possible activities for her to participate in this year: swimming, art classes, music lessons, more gymnastics classes, more sewing lessons. She considered the options for a long time and then confidently announced that she'd like to take ballet classes. In my mind I was thinking, " What ?!" Then my next thought was that maybe ballet could be a blessing. Improve she has.  Here are some pictures that I took of her this week when we all went to observe her class as well as a dance from the Nutcracker that she's been working on.     Lindy wanted to get out there and dance too. It was hard to hold her back from joining the throng of little ballerinas. (She did plenty of her own dancing on the sidelines.) Our beautiful Sophie.

My kids are known in these parts for their Guerrilla-style water fights . Last summer they laid siege on our backdoor neighbors in an infamous and well planned attack and then staged several skirmishes with a neighbor across the street--a man named Ed--who is 70-something years old. Zeke was sighted brandishing a super-soaker on multiple occasions, once even shooting Ed through his open window as he drove past. Ed will often call across the street, "Hey Zeke! Want to have a water fight?" I think Ed is usually joking, but my kids, especially Zeke, always take him seriously. Well, we received this little note (along with a box of orange Creamsicles) on our back porch yesterday in a late night doorbell ditch event: Spiderman is Zeke, of course. Everyone around here sees Zeke posing as Spiderman often enough. (The best is when Spiderman runs up and down the street pulling in the old people's trash cans.) Well today Zeke drafted the following response with Sop...

Well, here they are: Two pretty burly looking guys, aren't they? You'd need to be burly to survive what these two did today!  They were eaten. Consumed. Swallowed. By Lindy Loo. She disappeared into Zeke's room for a while today, but I had no idea what she was up to since I was occupied with Christmas crafts (hard to believe, if you know me), and making dinner for two new moms in our neighborhood. So how, you ask, did we find out about the plight of the these two? Well, Lindy barfed all over me during our Friday family movie and there they were. At least we know they're safe and I'm so glad that I won't be seeing these two staring up at me from her diaper in the morning. 

Yesterday I declared a family snow day. (One of the benefits of being the superintendent of my own school.) The day was magical! We woke up to a foot of new snow and the sky continued to drop flurries all day long!  Casey with Hallee and Sophie, hitting the streets early yesterday morning. The kids all built their own personal snow forts in the banks along the driveway. I piled up a mountain of snow in the backyard so that we could hollow out a family-sized snow cave. Yesterday was a day for playing outside, drinking hot chocolate, and baking homemade gingerbread. For family night, we each put together and decorated a gingerbread house from the pieces we'd baked earlier in the afternoon. It really was the perfect day. Zeke's gingerbread house Soph's gingerbread creation Hallee with her masterpiece Our little gingerbread village After Casey and I put the kids to bed, it was time for us to play in the snow some more. We shoveled our neighbors ...

We've been busy this month with home school activities, Christmas concerts (Salt Lake Children's Choir at the Cathedral of the Madeline and the Mount Olympus Stake's quasi-professional production of Handel's Messiah ), get-togethers and dinners with friends and neighbors, family outings, and December Sullivan service (finding a way to serve someone outside our family meaningfully each day of the month).  Here are a few of the activities that I actually  documented so far this month: This was the second (or maybe third) attempt at installing the mantel. After removing it yet another time, it has now been reinstalled for good! That is correct. We have a mantel!!! Casey is working furiously to get the stone filled in below the mantel, so we'll at least have the lower half of a finished fireplace. The living room is starting to look more homey, less like a work site. The first Wednesday in December always marks the one-day Bonneville Glen live nativity. My ...