Christmas in Cal Sac

I am well aware that we are pushing into the middle of January and so a blog titled Christmas in Cal Sac is either really early or really late, and it is the latter.  I've just got to document it and this is the time I finally have the time to do it.  

We were able to get our son Preston here on the Sunday before Christmas.  It wasn't without a little challenge.  He was flying in at 9 Sunday morning. We thought we could have the perfect pick up because we were looking at the flight status on our way to the airport and his flight was landing right as we were arriving.  He texted when he landed but said he had to sit on the plane until they had a gate open up.  We waited in the park and wait until about 10:00 and he was finally off the plane.  We pulled up to get him and he came out and told us that all of the internet was down in the airport and they couldn't get the luggage off the planes and on the luggage carousels.  They offered all of the passengers food on the second floor and so we didn't think that was very good news.  Food for passengers on the 2nd floor meant to us they were getting them ready to wait a while. We had no idea when they would get it up and going. So, we had him jump in the car, we said hello to him and gave him some money for an uber. We had to get back to get to church and we didn't know if we would make it if we had to wait.  So, we had about a 3 hour trip and came home empty handed. But, luckily he got here in time to go to church with us and he made a new uber driver friend to boot.  

My friend Brooke is the best example of seeing a need and serving without fan fare.  She brings flowers for the podium every. single. Sunday.  These are the Star of Bethlehem she brought on Christmas Sunday. She told me she brought flowers for the podium about 12 years ago and someone commented on how nice they were, and so she has been bringing them every week since.  They make me smile every single week. 

Monday morning, December 23, we started out early for our mini Christmas conference tour.  The calendar wasn't our friend with transfers this year and so we took our show on the road. We had to have three meetings, with all of our zones, in one day.  We wanted to bring some fun, deliver their packages, and leave them with a spiritual message.  We started with the El Dorado, Folsom, Carmichael and North Sacramento Zones at 9:00 at the Deseret Building.  We then went to the Wissemann building at noon with the Sacramento, Elk Grove, East Sacramento and Cordova Zones.  Then it was off to Lodi to meet with the Lodi, Stockton and Manteca Zones at 3:00. It took all of our senior missionaries, our assistants, us and Preston to pull it off, but we did it and I think it was a success.  I think everyone had a lot of fun, got their packages and felt the spirit.  

I have a ton of pictures, thanks to Patrick Twomey and so I am going to group them by activity, rather than by the morning, afternoon and late afternoon sessions.  They are all going to be mixed together, because it was just that kind of day.

There was a lot of excitement and Christmas spirit as they gathered. 

We started out with one of our favorite competitions: Gummy bear races.  We gave each companionship 2 paper clips, 2 andes mints, 2 gummy bears and all the tape they needed and 10 minutes to create a sled out of those materials.  We then had each district race all of their sleds and come up with one district entry for the competition.  Then we had a bracket where the districts raced against each other until we came up with the final winner.  The winning district got a gift card that they were supposed to use for lunch for their next district counsel. It was a lot of fun, and we had some serious competitors.  

The Brackets

The sled builders

Off to the races...

The winners

We then had each zone perform their Zone Christmas carols.  We had each zone come up with a Christmas carol that represented their zone. They all took a traditional carol and reworked it to fit their zones.  They love it and so do we.  I am always so impressed with their talent and creativity. 

We had some generous donations that we used for some prize give aways. After the zones had done their carols, we had everyone look underneath their chairs. We had put numbers under some of the chairs and if you got a number, you got a prize. 

After the fun and games we got a little more serious. I talked about Joseph Smith.  He was born on December 23 and every year on that day, in our family we have a Joseph Smith birthday dinner.  We have a fancy dinner and we talk about what Joseph Smith means to us.  We love that tradition and so I brought it to our mission family.  We talked about our testimonies of Joseph Smith and how our lives are different because of him.  We always end our Joseph Smith birthday dinner with a birthday cake, and so we brought birthday cakes with us. We did wait until the closing prayer before we sang Happy Birthday to him. 

Scott finished off talking about Christmas and talked about celebrating Christmas in three ways. The first is the traditional Christmas of gift giving, etc.  The second is when we talk about Jesus as a baby in the stable, and what his birth means to us.  The third is to think about Jesus as our Savior, of his entire life, his mission, his ministry, his atonement, and how he affects all we do. Not just as a baby, but to think of the entirety of his life. 

 We finished off with birthday cake and we gave them our Christmas gifts.  I think they really loved their new exchange bags. (thanks to my friend Sister Hewlett for the great idea)

And that was our day, and we did it three times.  We were pretty tired when the final one was done, but it was a great day and it was so much fun to celebrate with every one of our missionaries so close to Christmas. 

On Christmas Eve our missionaries got to eat dinner with members and call their families if they wanted to. A lot of the districts or zones went Christmas caroling as well.  I think it is wonderful and different to be a missionary at Christmas and I think our missionaries would agree.  

It is different for us as well.  We were a little party of three for Christmas Eve this year.  Different isn't bad, it's just different. Scott, Preston and I still had a wonderful, if quiet, Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning we FaceTimed some of our kids and then we had brunch for the missionaries who serve in our Stake, our assistants and the office Elders as well as Elder and Sister Mair.

We had a great morning with them, and then we were able to talk to the rest of our family.  Again, it was a very different kind of Christmas, as we didn't even open gifts until later in the afternoon.  

Late Christmas night Ethan and Camee flew in to town and we had a wonderful week with them between Christmas and New Years.  We had a lot of fun with them. 

Camee and I got pedicures while the boys were next door getting massages

We explored downtown, including the capital building and a tour of the Leland Stanford mansion, which has been on my bucket list since we arrived here. 

 It might have been the funniest tour we have ever taken.  I wish we could have recorded our very passionate tour guide.

We celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary (man, we are getting old) on December 29 by going to dinner (on the 28th)and then we took a drive through the fabulous 40's which are famous for their Christmas light displays.

 Our cute waitress found out it was our anniversary and wanted to bring us wine.  We told her we didn't drink alcohol and so she brought us non alcoholic drinks to toast our 36 years together.  But we weren't drinking wine!

The kids fixed us dinner on our actual anniversary, which was so sweet of them.

It seems when our family visits, a lot of our activities are focused on food.  We went to breakfast one day at a place Ethan and Camee had heard about, The Tower Cafe.  It was so good, and this is our third winter here and I still can't get over the fact that we could eat breakfast outside on December 30th.

Scott had a lot of missionary business that day, but the rest of us went shopping and exploring.

I was dying to do a puzzle over the holidays, so we bought one.  It was 2000 pieces and we knew as soon as we started that we were over our heads, so Camee and I ran to Target and got an easier one, that also fit with our food theme of the week!

We had enough food on New Year's Eve for our whole entire family, not just the 5 of us! I really can't believe it is now 2020.  I have to admit, when we watched the ball drop on 2019 and it turned to 2020, I cried just a little.  I can't believe it is here.  So, so many mixed emotions.

All too soon, the week was over. We took the kids to the airport on New Year's Day and then headed off to Carmichael to do interviews.  The holidays were officially over. 

That evening, we picked up Hermana Bowen and Hermana Nielsen. They finished their missions mid transfer so they could get home for school. We took them to dinner and then they stayed at our home so we could get them to the airport early the next morning.  We had a great night with them, we were able to do our 'finish strong' Book of Mormon reading with them. It was special to have them in our home.  And Hermana Nielsen made us breakfast the morning they were off.  We sure love them and are going to miss them so much, but we are excited for them to start their next adventure. 

We also had a few visitors over the past few weeks as well.  We were able to have a wonderful visit with Sister Coombs.

We also got to visit with Elder Anderson

We always love these visits. We are so grateful for our continued relationships with our missionaries after they are home.  We love them so much. 

We had a wonderful holiday.  Ready or not, here comes 2020. We are ready to make it the best year ever in the Cal Sac Mission.  So very, very grateful for our opportunity to serve here.