The Holiday Season

The last couple of weeks have been eventful and filled with way too many sweets. What else could you expect from the holidays?

Lego Christmas Tree in Sydney

Leading up to Christmas I got to spend some fun times with the young women in the ward. The two oldest girls and I went miniature golfing  and although we gave our best, too often were we beyond the maximum number of putts.

Fekita and I Christmas Sunday

Later for the mutual before Christmas one young woman, Sarah, and I delivered Christmas hampers (from the ward) to people that would be alone for the holidays. This turned out to be an eventful night. One of the receivers of the hamper was not very receptive and practically refused to take it. It was an awkward experience for both of us. As we finished early I thought I would take her to Max Brenner for dessert, but that proved to be a terrible idea! It was nearly impossible just to get into the car park because it was the big night where the shopping centre would be open 24 hours. Although I was able to get into the car park, we gave up and left wasting nearly an hour in the process. After McDonald's we went to drop off some chocolates to another family in the ward. I visit teach the mom, Rashika, and her daughter, Dev, is in Young Women's. We got partially lost getting there, and then took the wrong elevator. For a moment I thought we would be stuck in the elevator because we couldn't figure out where the ground floor was since 0 and 1 turned out to be more apartments. Luckily, Sarah tried the minus sign and 1 (-1) which worked and then we had to wait for Dev. Unfortunately the elevator to Dev's apartment allowed her to come down, but the button didn't work to open the elevator to go back up. We waited for her dad to come down and keep the door open so we could all go back up to the apartment. Their apartment was VERY festive and I felt bad giving them chocolates when they already had plenty. Finally, I dropped off Sarah at home just after 10 pm. What a crazy night!

Our pic to commemorate the night

The other days leading to Christmas were less crazy. I finished sewing the pillow for Shade's window bed.

Matt and I made an orange bundt cake and chocolate covered peanut butter pretzels (Costco pretzels). 

I should add that the three days before Christmas Matt had decided to do a cleanse and was only eating salad and other greens. This made him really moody the morning of Christmas Eve. He needed to finish his cleanse by taking Epsom Salts (a saline laxative), which hadn't yet arrived. We found out that they had come by when we were home, but we never heard them. Later in the day we drove the 35 minutes to some random airport to get the package and discovered one of the containers had broken open in the box. Naturally, Matt's mood wasn't improved. Nevertheless we had a good night watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Muppet Christmas Carol.

Playing with the cat Christmas Eve

A side back story is that my wrists are still sore and I get shooting pains occasionally. Doing the dishes hurts the worst so Matt has been in charge of that chore for a couple of weeks. This means he waits for about a week to do them. Well after all the cooking, our dish pile on Christmas Eve was horrendous! Knowing he wasn't feeling good due to the cleanse I stayed up late and cleaned the whole kitchen - there was no way I was going to wake up Christmas morning to a messy kitchen. I think the Lord must have helped my wrists since they didn't even hurt.

The next morning we were going to make ebelskivers (mini-dutch pancakes) and bacon. Matt wasn't feeling too good so he went back to sleep and I cooked and ate by myself. Needless to say, I was frustrated that my favourite holiday wasn't going so well. I spent the rest of the morning finishing the Book of Mormon that I had been reading since mid-November. In a way, I was glad I had that time to myself and finally completed my goal of finishing the Book of Mormon by Christmas. Eventually, Matt got up and we opened presents, which significantly improved my mood. I've decided I love Christmas because I am terrible at showing affection or appreciation and somehow by giving people meaningful gifts I feel I achieve that. Some of the most meaningful Christmas's for me have been the times I would have been happy with nothing, knowing my family didn't have much, but somehow they sacrificed anyway to give me what I needed or wanted.

This was a cheap pool I got Matt so we can sit outside in the summer and not die of heat!

Matt got me an ergonomic keyboard to help my wrists. It works great, but it's huge! 

For Christmas day we went to the Scott's house for a big linner (lunch/dinner). They are an awesome family and because they have a large house perfect for entertaining we have had many church activities there. Their two oldest girls I know well from young women's so it was easy to feel at home. They also had Bro. Scott's parents and a neighbour over. It was the most traditional Aussie Christmas I have had. Each plate had a Christmas cracker that opens with a pop and has a paper crown, a joke, and a surprise inside. Mine had a lock and key which I traded for small playing cards with their young daughter. We had ham, turducken (chicken within a duck within a turkey), some special meatballs, vegetable salads, and more. Matt and I decided to pass on the traditional desserts of fruit cake, Christmas pudding (looks like soggy fruit cake), and pavlova. We ate plenty of other sweets and Sis. Scott's homemade almond roca though.

He's a teenage mutant ninja turtle!

Our original plan was to go to another dinner and games with Racheal and David Laugery in the ward. Unfortunately, my stomach was really upset! I didn't want to go to their house and feel uncomfortable the whole time with my stomach doing somersaults so we ended up staying at home and watching Christmas movies. In the end I think we had a good Christmas, but it will never feel like Christmas here with the heat and lack of family. Hopefully next year we will be able to afford to go to Utah for Christmas.

With Christmas over I got some good news! My supervisor reviewed my thesis corrections and now I am just getting the final signatures to get it turned in! This leaves me time to work on finding a job and finishing our permanent residency paperwork. I recently learned that the visa we are applying for may have a 1-2 year waiting period. This could be bad for us if we cannot get a bridging visa (temporary visa while waiting on another visa application) or another type of work visa. Permanent residency is definitely a nightmare, but I just hope all will work out in the end.

Monday we went to have a family home evening with Brock & Kaytlin in Penrith. It is so sad they live far away now, but at least we can still hang out once in a while. After dinner and the lesson we played a game that I think is called  Logos. Most of the brands were Aussie so Matt and I didn't have a clue for a lot of questions, but it was still fun.

The following day we went to see the last Hobbit film in the gold class theatre with Brock & Kaytlin. Gold Class is a smaller theater where every seat is a recliner and they have a full restaurant where you can order food beforehand and get it delivered to you during the movie. The food is ridiculously expensive so we brought our own snacks. The movie was awesome, but the theatre was too cold! I was actually happy to go back to the heat afterwards.

That night Matt and I played one of the games that my family had sent us for Christmas (the package arrived the previous day). I was skeptical when I saw how many pieces it had, but it was a lot of fun! Basically you have a certain amount of time to build a ship and then you take that ship through various obstacles hoping to get as much cargo or "cosmic credits" as possible. The fun part is that your ship will change every time and so will the cards so you never know what to expect. Thank you Destin!! Tonight we are going to try the two-player game my sister got us, and perhaps do some New Year's celebrations as well.

Well that's it for the holidays and 2014! This year has been one of the hardest years of my life with the depression, jaw issues, wrist issues, and overall stress! Nevertheless, I have learned a lot about myself and I hope to only improve in the next year. "Tomorrow is a new day, with no mistakes in it." - Anne of Green Gables