I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

Since we were in Arizona for Christmas, dreaming was all we could do in order for us to have a white Christmas. Here is our travelogue:

Saturday, December 21: We left early to drive up to MSP for our flight. We had no trouble getting with parking, the shuttle to the airport, getting through security, etc. Russell did awesome on the flight falling asleep shortly after take-off and then charming the ladies around us when he woke back up. He loved being on the 'ai-pa'. We got our rental car and then drove to Phil and Karen's house, and relaxed after our flight.

Sunday, December 22: We went to church. It was the Christmas Sacrament Program, so there was some nice music. Abram and Rebecca were also there, so Russell got to decide if he was going to like Annette (which he did). He did not like nursery, though. After church, we enjoyed a restful Sunday afternoon. Joseph and Hannah came over to see us, and the Mike and Lori dropped in about the same time. Russell got very excited to see lots of little boys to play with.

Monday, December 23: We drove down to Tucson to visit Mary Anne. She went to lunch with us, and then we enjoyed a scenic tour of Tucson. Mary Anne hadn't been out for a while and enjoyed seeing the town. Part of the grand tour included a drive to Sentinel Peak where the A for the University of Arizona is. It is not nearly as awesome as BYU's Y Mountain, but it had some nice views of Tucson. We had a nice visit with Mary Anne while we were there. We drove back up to Phoenix that evening.

Tuesday, December 24: We got things ready for Christmas (including shopping for some presents). Ben, Russell, and I went to the park so Russell could finally play on the playground again. he was very happy he could be outside! Ben's Duvall Grandparents arrived that afternoon also escaping from cold snowy weather. We had the traditional Joslin Christmas Eve Dinner of eggs goldenrod and sausages, the read the Christmas story and lit the special nativity Abram brought back from Germany.

Wednesday, December 25:  Christmas Morning! Ben and I got a special awakening at 3 AM because the fire alarms were going off in one of the apartment buildings here at home. We had to call the lady we asked to 'be in charge' while we were gone and have her go turn them off. Then we got up had breakfast and opened presents. Russell was excited for his 3 pack of 'nacks' (fruit snacks) and his 'brmmm-brmmm' (steering wheel toy) that he got. Ben was happy to get the cologne he has been searching for since he came home from Italy. Once again, the three of us took a walk to enjoy some nice sunshine and collect some citrus fruits from neglected trees. Later that day we went to Becky's for Christmas Dinner and the Secret Santa gift exchange. On our way home, we stopped at Joseph and Hannah's and Abram and Rebecca's to see their homes.

Thursday, December 26: Dave and Lindsey invited us to join them at the zoo because they had some extra passes they needed to use. It was fine, and Russell enjoyed seeing the animals. I hadn't been to a big zoo like that for a long time, so it was fun to go again. There was also a sibling basketball game that afternoon, in which Ben was victorious at everything they did (a game, and then horse).

Friday, December 27: We went to the temple with Ben's grandparents, while Russell stayed home with Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Rebecca, Annette, Lowe and Kingston. It is always nice to be in a larger temple, but I enjoy the nice small St. Paul Temple. You can't get lost, and there usually aren't tons of people. We went to lunch afterwards, and then came home to a napping Russell. He didn't have quite as enjoyable time. He did like Aunt Rebecca. That night we went to Nathan and Alicia's for dinner. Afterwards, we went to see the lights at the temple.

Saturday, December 28: We went to Mike and Lori's. We tried going to their favorite Chinese buffet, but it was closed. The second Asian buffet we tried was vacant, but we got lucky at the Asian Mall and had some Thai food. We ate lunch and then let the boys run around outside. After that, I took Russell back home for a nap, and Ben helped Mike fix some things around their apartment. When Ben got home, he fixed Aglio Olio Peperoncino for dinner.

Sunday, December 29: We went to church again. Russell was not happy to be at church, so Ben spent the whole time in the hall with Russell and they kept peeking in through the window into the Relief Society room. That afternoon we went and visited Ben's Aunt Barbara who had recently gotten back to Arizona from New York City. For dinner, Dave and Lindsey, Abram and Rebecca, and Joseph and Hannah came over. We had cheesecake for dessert. Russell didn't want to eat his, so I helped him out :)

Monday, December 30: We hiked up A Mountain with Joseph. Once again A Mountain isn't nearly as impressive as Y Mountain, but the walk from Joseph and Hannah's apartment through campus and to A Mountain was enjoyable. I fell on the way down, but only suffered sore hands from catching myself. Ben helped his Aunt Barbara hang some curtains and his other aunt, Beverly and her grand daughter were there. We just spent the rest of the day getting things ready to go home. 

Tuesday, December 31: We got up early so Phil and Karen could take us to the airport. Once again we had no trouble in the airport. They even let us go through a special security line that made it super quick to get though. Once we were on the plane, we learned the entire row next to us was empty, so the other guy in our row jumped over there and we had the whole back row to ourselves. Russell did pretty good again, but was getting a little grumpy by the end. When we got back to our car, it wouldn't start. The shuttle driver got the battery jumper truck and the car started right away. We drove home and then enjoyed New Year's Eve.

I'll put pictures up in a different post, so this post doesn't go on forever...
 

The Chair

Back in May we bought a comfortable & cheap chair at Savers, which unfortunately had really gross fabric on it. So we also bought a lot of really cool blue upholstery fabric to reupholster the chair with.

Russell lounging in the chair we just bought from Savers back in May. Notice how dirty the chair is! 

 We started the process by slowly and methodically peeling back the layers of fabric, and we eventually got to the bones of the chair. I did most of the deconstruction, and Joanna did the fabric.

Dissection of the chair started with removing the skirt, which was just stapled in place with cardboard. 

At first we couldn't figure out what was holding the side panels to the chair, then we discovered that flaps of the panels were wrapped around this tack strip and hammered into the wood of the chair! Chair-makers are clever! 

Here's the chair with no back and side panels, no skirt, no cushion, and no rotating/rocking metal base! 

Once the back panel was off, we started removing the staples from the front panel.
This is the top of the chair which has fabric, fluff, and a supporting web-like rigid mesh all sewed together! 

Here is the front pillow/panel of the chair detached from the frame, and the arm-rest panels have been removed too.
Hundreds of staples were removed during this project! 

This is the lower arm rest exterior. There was soooooo much nasty junk caught in here!
I found toys, popcorn, coins, rocks, wrappers, etc.
And the fabric had lots of stains all over it! Gross! 

 When we were all done with the deconstruction, then came the fun part! We put the chair back together the best we could remember that it went. . . .

Here's Joanna with the completely naked chair frame.
She is attaching the first of the new upholstery panels!
She's thrilled. 

After an evening of work, we had the pillow back panel reattached, the front panel, and the left arm panel
Joanna spent a lot of time meticulously copying each panel from the old fabric, and making sure all the pieces were sewed together properly! This was here uber-craft for the fall! 

 We ran into a little bump in the road when we couldn't get the tack strips to hammer nicely back in to the chair, so we improvised and ended up with a more fancy looking chair! (Joanna had to hammer in most of these silver button nails because for some reason I kept bending them!!) Plus Russell loves to push the chair's buttons!

Finally the front-facing parts of the chair are all stapled back on! I did most of the reconstruction up to this point, but then I turned it over to the hammer skills of Joanna to put the new back panel on.
I did this because I kept ruining the upholstery nails/buttons we bought, and the tack strips were too bent out of shape to re-use. . . 

Tah-dah! Here is the finished product!
Notice how bright and vibrant it is!
Now that IS a chair we want to sit in!

Russell loves it!
He is very proud of  his mommy and daddy for this new-look and feel comfy chair for his room! 

Here is the chair back in its spot in Russell's room.
Russell is admiring its splendor . . . . 

Bonus Russell picture!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All in all, it was a great learning process, and the chair now looks fantastic!!

So everyone should come visit us just to see our newly reupholstered chair!!!!!

- Ben

Just kickin' it

We spend most days just kickin' it around the house. We are trying to cut trips into town to save gas (one of the reasons we moved close to Ben's school). It hasn't been as successful as we hoped due to one church calling requiring someone to go in more frequently than we expected (three times this week, not including church).

So, Russell and I try to find ways to keep from going to crazy.

 No-shave Movember. Russell isn't a fan.

 I guess when you are 18 months you can wear whatever you want.

He is so happy when he is helping. I'm keeping this to remind him in a few years when he starts complaining about  having to do work around the house :)

Halloween

This Halloween was much more exciting than last years Halloween. We started off with the ward chili cook-off and trunk or treat and young women fundraiser. Our trunk or treating experience wasn't nearly as bad as Sarah and Brian's, but we have way fewer children in the ward, and they did it inside in the classrooms so kids couldn't go around super fast.

Russell really got the hang of getting candy in his little trick or treat bag pretty quick. He even would say trick or treat if he was prompted.

Two scientists and a little mummy. I made the mummy costume which worked out pretty well once I figured out what I should do.

Ben was sad his chili didn't win. I was sad because I made some little boy ties to donate to the young women bazaar/bake sale and left them on our kitchen table. Now Russell has lots of new ties for church.

We also carved our pumpkin and played with the Mr. Pumpkin-head kit my visiting teaching companion gave Russell.

The Mom Smile (or Grandma Smile in his case).

 Real pumpkin carving wasn't quite the smashing success as the pumpkin-head kit was. Russell didn't want to touch the inside of that pumpkin at all, but he enjoyed smelling them (?) and then the finished results. He liked looking at the jack-o-lantern everyday.

That was how we celebrated Halloween this year. My last mission companion came to visit and flew in on Halloween day. We didn't end up getting back from the airport until almost 7 so Russell didn't get to go outside and do any real trick-or-treating. He still had lots of fun anyway, and we still have plenty of candy to eat.

This is the day we've waited for!

Today was the big day we've been waiting for for years! All Ben's hard work in law school and enduring the bar exams was recognized today at the Law Admissions Ceremony.

 

There were 544 of the 670(ish) people who passed July's bar exam there to be sworn in. Some of them had sponsors who moved to have them admitted (and then gave a long discourse of how this person is the 4th generation of lawyers in the family and it would only make the Minnesota State Bar so much better to have them as part of it, blah, blah, blah). It was pretty long especially for an 18 month old who only has energy to burn.

The ceremony was an official session of the Supreme Court of Minnesota presided over by the Supreme Court State Justices.

Here is video of Ben's name being read. Listen closely right at the beginning and look for the fuzzy person to stand up. That is Ben.

Russell and I are very proud of Ben and all his hard work and perseverance. We know it wasn't easy to study while we were around and always finding fun things to do, but we are thankful for the sacrifice he made for us!

Here are the random pictures Russell and I took to keep him occupied while we waited and waited.

 Shoes

The service dog who sat in front of us. All the kids in the area really wanted to pet it, including Russell. He repeatedly said, "A daw! A daw! A daw!" just in case the people around us weren't aware that there was a dog sitting in front of us.

Fall time

The weather has definitely turned cooler here in Minnesota after a nice Indian summer.  With the cooler weather, though, it means we spend more time inside which drives both me and Russell a little crazy.

Russell has been doing lots of warm clothes modelling. He loves his puffy vest and likes to pat his tummy when he wears it. Russell loves to carry his chair around the house so he can always watch the action wherever it is happening.

I've done some sewing projects recently to use up the fabric I have filling boxes and boxes here in the apartment and in our storage shed. I am must excited for Russell's Halloween costume which started out pretty rough, but after a few changes turned out to be pretty darn cute. I'm hoping over the next week I can teach Russell how to properly trick-or-treat, but that might be hard since he doesn't seem to want to say very much.

Ben has stayed busy with school and projects around the apartments. This week is MEA break so he tackled the garage and is checking things off our winterizing to-do list. He still can't believe he has passed the bar exam. He still checks just to make sure it is true. Ben really enjoyed our date night last week so he could preview the movie Gravity to see if he could work it into his conceptual physics curriculum and take his class to see it. It was good, but there were a few scenes that I did not enjoy thanks to the 3D.

We hear that snow is looming on the horizon and are hoping that we don't get much more than a few stray flakes for a few more weeks.Until then, we will try to get as much outside time as we can.

Done.

Well, I passed the bar exam! Yay!
The Admission Ceremony will be held on Friday, October 25, 2013, in the Roy Wilkins Auditorium at St. Paul Rivercentre, 175 Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul, MN. 
Ceremony start time is 10:30 a.m.
Expected end time is approximately 12:00 noon.

Thanks for all the prayers!
Thanks to Joanna for always helping me in the right direction and to Russell for being a great son.
AND to everyone else!

We went to Red Lobster tonight to celebrate! Yum! The crab, shrimp, cheese rolls, and lobster pizza were well worth it!

If you need legal assistance and live in MN . . . . then ask me after October 25th . . . . and I'll see what I can do!

Work is fine for me. Chemistry and physics are interesting topics to teach, and the kids are good enough. Joanna and Russell continue to charm the residents here, and get work done.

Russell on the prowl for food. . . .