Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well! Things are good out here, and we're definitely getting into the Christmas spirit! This past week Brooke's dreams finally came true and we made our ginger bread house kit (or as she says, ginger bread man house!). It had been sitting on the fridge for a while, and she's been begging to do it for about a week, and we kept forgetting, but we finally got it out last Sunday. We got one of the kits with 4 mini houses and we let her do her own, with a little help to make sure the walls were standing :).
Brooke continues to love to raise her stuffed animals. Here she is feeding Foxy. Foxy is of course dressed in his pajamas, and sitting in his chair ready to eat some cereal. Brooke is even kind enough to help with the eating so Foxy didn't spill on himself!
Back to the ginger bread houses, here's Brooke's final product. I took a lot of pictures of her next to it, and she is not looking at the camera and smiling in any of them! But this one was still pretty cute. She did a good job and she picked the candy and where she wanted to put it. We helped put down the frosting for her.
Brooke made hers just before bed, and then after she went to sleep we made the rest of the houses. Here is our finalized village! Monica made the one next to Brooke's house in the front. We both did the teepee looking one, and mine is in the back.
Monica also made a wreath for our front door from the branches we had to cut from our Christmas tree. She likes to do this each year, and I love it because we get a free wreath. And they always look really good! We might invest in a little light strand for it one of these years, I think that could be fun to have, but I'm not the wreath engineer...
For those of you who didn't know, the 7th was dress like your phone day, and Monica celebrated in full force! When I came home from work and saw her sweater I immediately thought of her phone and had to take this picture! It may have been coincidence, but it's still awesome!
Friday night we made reindeer ornaments for our tree with Brooke. I didn't take pictures of the process, or anyone else's final results... but here's my reindeer! We got everything to make them last year and just somehow never got to it. Sadly, the pine cones didn't still smell like cinnamon this year!
As mentioned in the title, I finished framing the basement this past week. My dad is coming out today and I took Monday off work so we could work on the basement, and I wanted to be able to work on things like wiring and plumbing, so I spent a good chunk of time making sure I had all the framing done. In fact, for date night on Friday, Monica and I went down and I drew out the whole plan on the floor of the basement and measured how long all the walls were, etc. It was definitely a good plan because there are a lot of 45 degree angles in these walls, and I don't think I would have done it right if I went wall by wall!
Here is a picture of the framed out bedroom.
And here's a shot of the closet for the bedroom.
Here's the laundry area now that the framing is finished.
And here's a picture of all the fun framing around the vents I had to do. We have the privilege of having a lot of low ceilings! Yay! Fortunately it's the worst in the hallway, and other than that it's next to the walls of rooms.
Here's a picture of the hallway leading into the open room that's been in pictures before. The hallway will have a closet in it on the left side. That's where we're planning to move our board games, as well as having other toys on the lower shelves. We anticipate this room being a play area for the kids, and we'll probably spend a lot of time down there once the basement is finished.
And here's a panorama of the basement from inside the hall closet. Why from inside the closet? Because that's the location I took all the other panoramas from! I don't think these panoramas will be as exciting once drywall is up... but at least everyone will be intimately familiar with our closet!! :)
Saturday night was Christmas party night. It was our ward Christmas party and my work Christmas party! We wanted to go to my work party because we don't get many chances to do fancy things. Fortunately some friends in the ward were willing to take Brooke with them to the Ward Christmas party and them come put her to bed until we got home. Brooke had a lot of fun dancing and even sat on Santa's lap and got a candy cane! The Bentley's said she was great the whole night, and went right to bed. I think we might need to start getting a baby sitter every night!
We also had a good time at my work party. My name got drawn and I got to go unwrap a present. I got a Southwest gift card! So that was awesome! Good thing we went. The dinner was great, and we sat next to a guy that I'd worked with a little this past year and got to talk with him and his wife. We had a lot of fun talking together! The dinner was great, and so were the desserts, and shortly after dessert we headed back for home!
All in all it was a great week!
Today in Gospel Principles the lesson was about the final judgement. The teacher shared a part of a talk from Brad Wilcox talking about the atonement. Bro. Wilcox talked about how grace completely fills the gap between us and God and that our works in no part save us. Instead, our works are meant to show our gratitude to Christ for his atonement, as well as to help us learn how to live a Celestial life. I am so grateful for the atonement, and that Christ has paid for our sins. I am grateful that we can return to live with God and Christ again. I am so grateful for the gospel, and for all of the benefits it has provided me through my life. I share these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
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