Band Concert and Choral Fusion

Thursday the 11th was Charlotte's holiday band concert. She again had her best friend Ivy there and her mom, Jen, who is my friend. They were so awesome to come on late notice. The 11th was also dress rehearsal for the Choral Fusion concert. I drove both girls over there to Richland and left a little early with Charlotte to get her back to her concert on time. Then Jen brought Alice with her to the concert. Curtis was traveling and thought he would be back in time, but he just missed it. Jack came to watch but then left after Charlotte performed because he had a lot of homework to catch up on.

Playing with the Grinch, ha ha.

The girls loved watching Jack perform in Choral Fusion (a show choir) last spring and decided they wanted to do it in the Fall, so they did! They have had so much fun and looked forward to going to practice every Thursday evening. It was the highlight of their week. Choral Fusion is actually broken up into 3 different age groups: Junior Fusion, Mezzo Fusion and Choral Fusion. Junior Fusion is ages 7-9, so that was Alice's group. Mezzo Fusion is ages 10-13, so that's Charlotte's group. Choral Fusion are the main performers at ages 13-18 and that's where Jack was in the Spring. In the Fall they always do a Christmas themed show because they perform in December. I really enjoyed watching Forte and Fusion this month. 

Friday the 12th, Curtis and I came to watch the girls in their first performance along with his coworker, Elise, and her son Lucas. We paid for her ticket to thank her for all the cat advice she gave us for Coco. She is also going through a tough time right now with a divorce, so we wanted to invite her out to do something because she never goes anywhere. They both enjoyed the show. Then on Saturday I went again with the activity day girls. We decided that since 5 of our girls were in the show that we would make this the last activity for the year, to go watch and support the girls in the show. It also helped that kids 12 and under were free at the matinee performance. Because I have to drive the girls over to Richland for the shows, I ended up watching each show (and yes, I had to buy a ticket each time, but it was worth it!). On Saturday evening I used that show to get videos of them. Then the last show was on Monday and that's when both of the boys came to watch.

Those two are sisters and daughters of the director.

Charlotte and Charlotte

Big brothers

Having fun with friends after the last performance.

It was a great time for them and me. I can't wait to watch all three of my youngest kids do the show again this spring!

The 1st Weekend of December

The first weekend in December was very busy! Friday the 5th was Curtis's 46th birthday, but we held off on celebrating until we celebrated Alice's birthday on the 22nd. However, I think a coworker took him to lunch that day. It was also opening weekend for Jack's first ever play. He didn't have time in his schedule to do Choral Fusion because of marching band in the evenings, but the club that does plays practiced right after school, which allowed for him to participate. I guess the teacher in charge picks out different plays they will do that year, and the students decided which ones they want to be a part of. Jack chose the one titled "Our Town". Curtis and I have heard the title but had never seen it before. Jack didn't really care which role he got, he just auditioned and they gave him one of the higher roles. He played Mr. Webb, who is the father of one of the lead characters. His role allowed for him to be a little funny, and he did so well for his acting debut. The best night for us to be able to go was on opening night on the 5th. He said that by the 2nd weekend he felt like he improved a lot and just really enjoyed doing the play. The night we went, we swapped kids with some friends. Their daughter, Harper, is good friends with Jack and it was the only night she could go watch his play and she really wanted to go support him. Well, their family had bought tickets to go see a hockey game and since Harper wanted to go to the play, they invited Charlotte to go to the hockey game. It worked out great because Charlotte got to hang out with one of her best friends, Ivy. She's just sad that she never got to see Jack's play.

Charlotte at the hockey game.

I had also spent that morning baking a bunch of mini loaves of bread for Alice's school bazaar bake sale. It was happening the morning of the 6th and I also volunteered to help with the bake sale for a couple of hours. It was fun to help out and nice to bake something that wasn't sweet. I also baked a couple of big loaves for our family because I knew the kids would want some. I baked 18 total for the bazaar. I know at least half of them got sold by the time I was done with my shift. More of them were purchased on the shift before I got there though. All of the leftovers were donated to the teacher's lounge for the teachers to enjoy.

Directly after Jack's play, we came home to watch BSU play in the Mountain West Championship against UNLV and they won 38-21! Curtis had purchased a subscription to YouTube tv so that we could watch all of their football games, plus BYU's (except there was one of BYU's that we weren't able to watch). It was nice because we could record them and then watch later if necessary and fast forward through the commercials, etc. 

Saturday evening was our ward Christmas party. Curtis smoked a ham, and Charlotte baked some oatmeal cookies as part of our contribution. There was a young couple in charge of the event this year and they sent a signup sheet around for baking desserts or other items. However, not very many side dishes were brought. So, we mostly had ham and desserts. Hopefully they will have learned from this and make a separate sheet for dinner items vs dessert items next time. There were some musical numbers and remarks by the bishop. They also had Santa set up in the Relief Society room before the dinner started and a nativity in another room. (I kind of missed that one unfortunately but saw it later when doing clean up)

Alice is here with some of her friends.

One by herself.

Then I forced both girls to get a picture together with Santa. It was hard because they wanted to run around and play with their friends.

Alice and Violet

Alice and Aliyah

Because the party started at 5:30, we were done by 7:00 and had time to watch a movie when we got home. Charlotte also had time to work on her talk that she was asked to do in primary the next day. I gave her a little help, but she typed most of it up by herself and practiced several times. It would be her last ever talk in primary since she'll be in young womens in January. Sunday evening Jack started to read "A Christmas Carol" to the girls. Unfortunately, he got sick the next day and they never did finish.

There is another show choir group in Kennewick that's just like Choral Fusion, only much more well known and bigger. They're called Forte. I had never seen them before and wanted to watch the show. The girls and Jack and I all went Monday night. Jack had a friend, Molly, who was in it this year. She had done Fusion last Spring and that's where they met. Unfortunately, Jack started to feel sick that day and so much that he had to call Curtis to come get him at intermission. You know he's not feeling good if he wanted to leave something like that. The girls and I really enjoyed watching the show and it got us excited to see the girls perform in Choral Fusion's show that coming weekend! One cool thing that Forte said they added to their show this year was a light show with music for one of the songs. It was fun to watch. I couldn't believe that they filled the whole Kennewick High School auditorium. We sat up in the balcony. That's how popular they are. Fusion has only been around for 4 years, so it may become that big eventually.

Jack's friend, Molly (they went to homecoming together)

These were the main performers of the Forte group.

Home MTC, Lights, and Coco (Not the drink)

Garrett officially started his mission on Monday, December 1st. He had one week of online/home MTC (missionary training center) where he attended a two-hour class each day Monday thru Friday on Zoom. We continually had trouble with the Zoom application on my computer and the camera. He could see the other people in the meeting but for some reason his camera wouldn't work. They tried to walk him through how to fix it but without much success. There were a few times I was able to do some things, and it worked for a little bit during his meeting and then it would quit working. It was frustrating! Besides the Zoom meetings, he also did scripture study over the phone with his new companions. There were three of them put together. I don't know if it's still that way. Companionships for service missionaries are mainly just for scripture study. It's not like proselyting missionaries where they have to be with a companion 24/7. 

The following week his advisors picked him up to take him to see different places that he could volunteer at during his mission if he chose to do so. His schedule after home MTC week was over included a bread run on Mondays over in Pasco (11am-12pm), temple worker on Tuesday morning (6:30am-12pm), 7th Day Adventist food distribution on Wednesdays (8am-12pm), bread run (11am-1pm) and Family Search Center (1-4pm) on Thursdays, and helping at the Hermiston Regional Bishop's Storehouse on Fridays (8am-4pm). Then a meeting on Sundays that is online at 7pm. The only thing that has changed in his schedule is that Garrett decided he didn't want to do the food distribution on Wednesdays. He wants to go to the temple on Wednesdays as a patron, although he hasn't been able to the last two Wednesdays because of Christmas Eve and today being New Year's Eve. He did, however, get Curtis and I to go with him to the temple a couple of Saturdays ago at the 7:15am session. I think that's the earliest session I've ever attended. It was a little hard to get up that early but at the same time nice to start the day with a temple session and then get busy with other stuff later. 

We did upgrade Garrett's phone from a Gabb (that does not have social media or internet browsers) to a regular phone that does because it would be better for while he's on a mission as far as people being able to contact him and having a better map for directions, as well as needing Facebook messenger for missionary group messages. Since he has the new phone, he also added the Duo Lingo app so that he can teach himself Japanese. He may not have been able to go to Japan like he wanted, but he still wants to learn the language and go there some day. Maybe we'll take him after his mission is over. The things he does when he's not out doing the service things are really up to him. I just hope he's making good decisions and doing things that missionaries should be doing. I'm trying not to pry too much because he's 19 years old now and a missionary. He needs to learn to discipline himself. 

First day of home MTC in his bedroom.

The first week of December my kids helped get our decorations up. The girls did the Christmas tree and then Garrett decorated the remainder of the inside of the house. Alice and I finally broke down and bought some new outside lights for the front door and yard. Curtis later bought some blue and white icicle lights for the roof. It felt good to have lights this year!

A couple of weeks later with the added icicle lights and wrapped chimney.

The day that we had returned from Lewiston and gotten Garrett set apart as a missionary, was also the day that Curtis discovered our cat Coco had something going on by his left shoulder. There were a couple of scratches there that must have been from a cat fight and there was pus coming out of an abscess that had formed. We were fortunate to find a stack of animal cones hanging out in the garage that the previous owner had left there. They were small enough to fit Coco! We put one on him that night to keep him from licking the abscess and causing bacteria to get in. We got advice from my friend, Whitney, and from Curtis's coworker, Elise, who used to work at a veterinarian's office as a vet tech. We were told to use warm wet compresses, and I also saw online to use a saline solution. We didn't have any saline solution, so I used Epsom salt in the warm water compresses. Curtis squeezed most of the pus out the first couple of days, but then it filled up again. By Wednesday that week I decided to take him into a vet. The problem was that our vet we have for Milo hasn't seen Coco yet and they were booked out until the end of December. I called a couple other places and was basically told that I would need to take him to the Horse Heaven Hills Pet Urgent Care/Hospital. The people there were super friendly. They wanted to give him meds for the infection and to insert a drain tube and clean him out, but the fees for all of that would have been about $1400! Fortunately, because of the cost they gave us an alternative to just get the meds that he needs today and try to do the rest from home. We opted for the home care and meds and paid around $330 (for the visit and the meds). They had given him a shot for antibiotics that would last two or three weeks. They also gave him pain pills and a pain pill that also relaxed him, for while we cleaned the wound. We were able to get him to take those pills by putting them in his wet food. He and Sage both got a lot more wet food than we normally give them because of this.

One thing I didn't realize until the vet tech got Coco out to look at him, was that he had peed in his carrier, so he was wet on his rear end. After getting him home from the vet, the first thing to do was give him a bath, or at least a half bath (cleaning the bottom half of his body). He still had the cone on and when I put him in the water he started twisting everywhere. The next thing I knew, he had peed in the water, his abscess ruptured and squirted pus and blood everywhere, and then when I got him in the water again (after draining it and refilling), he proceeded to poop. It was quite a little fiasco that I had to deal with myself because Curtis was at work, the kids were at school and Garrett was in his MTC meeting. After cleaning up the poop mess and getting him cleaned up I had to clean his carrier and the tub with chlorine bleach water. I think we unintentionally cleaned most of the pus out of his wound during that bath session. Curtis only got a little more out the next day and that was it. I was so worried that we were going to do something wrong and that we would need to reopen the abscess area to make sure it cleaned out, but in the end, we did not need to take him in again and he's healing up just fine. I did use scissors to cut hair back and then animal clippers to shave his hair down around his wound, so now his hair is slowly growing back in.

What it looked like a couple of days after we discovered it.

At least he could still eat with the cone on.

He didn't like the cone, but he got used to it.

This is when it was healing and doing better. It did cause some bruising, but he was fine by this point. He wore the cone for about 2 weeks total.

We know better now how to take care of him if he ever gets an abscess again. I just hope he doesn't. This is the first time it's happened, and we've had him for 5 years.