Baby Jesus and a Shimp-Load of Presents

Christmas, at the Shimp home, is not just a one-day celebration. It is not even a two-day holiday.

It is a month-long festival, and when you cram all of that yuletide into the one week that your college kids are home, it becomes a week of dashing through the snow from mall to family party to classy Christmas event and back to the mall, at high speed and dragging along as many brothers and sisters as possible. Also, food.

This is us at the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Indianapolis. We watched the Nutcracker Ballet! Which is basically the music of my childhood, so I was in heaven the whole time. And Stephen liked it too.

We had a Christmas gift exchange for the kids on Christmas Eve. Stephen gave to Michael and Logan, and he told them he had gotten them a Hershey's bar. It was actually a rocket....that he ended up assembling on Christmas. 

Then we got our Christmas jammies!! And Stephen ruined some pictures. And so did Brandon. 

The whole family got Christmas jammies! I love this tradition!

My favorite decoration in the house was this ginormous ball of mistletoe. It is a very popular hangout with the newlywed couple and the engaged couple, and also the married-with-seven-kids couple. 

The girls and their Christmas jammies :) 

We like each other. 

 This is another tradition that they do - every year, someone hides the pickle ornament somewhere on the Christmas tree, while everyone else waits in a different room. Then the person who finds it gets a Christmas book that they read to the whole family, and they are the one who hides the pickle the next year.

...GUESS who found the pickle this year??

Well it was me :) I promise they didn't just let me win, either. I know because there were tears.

Then I read "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" in my best teacher voice and it was on to the next tradition of making gingerbread houses!

 This was not a "let's build our gingerbread houses and whoever has the most fun is the winner" kind of contest. Teams were picked out 2 weeks ago. Barricades were put up between competition sites so other teams couldn't look. And we were given a time limit of 18 minutes.

So it got a little intense and some feelings got a little hurt, but in the end, three works of art sat on the table, ready to be judged.

At some point in the middle of the night (or at 6:45 in them morning), Santa came and filled up the living room with gifts!

So that's how Christmas began up in here. More pictures to come of the rest of our break :) 

An Attitude of Gratitude

Of course, I am thankful for all the typical things: family, friends, food, the gospel, America, etc. Here's what I am thankful for besides those things:

- roommates who understand that my love languages are food and good parking spots

- boys who have 8-packs

- the Park City outlets

- that the one time I ran into an ex, he didn't know about it

- .....and he looked bad anyways

- 4-hour naps on Sunday - these are so essential to my happiness



- my sisters and their blogs

- the Draper temple

It is beautiful inside, seriously beautiful.

- that one time my mom dropped Crisco on Nicole's foot

- that other time when Nicole said, all nurturingly, "Jacob. When I was your age, I had e-coli." And Jacob replied, "What? Whose poop did you eat?"

- that time when Julie was squinting at the menu at Disney World and this employee came along and kindly handed her a menu in Spanish

- all the times when we have started singing at the table, quietly, and then Nicole has joined in, a little louder, so the rest of us have stopped singing, and my dad has looked up from his meal and gotten upset at Nicole

- the mental image I have in my head of Nicole in seminary

- Antoine Dodson....I know this was like 2 years ago but I still want to thank that guy for the hours of entertainment he has provided me with

- that I know how to make frittatas, lemon glaze, meatballs, parmesan broccoli, paper snowflakes, Hootenanny pancakes, and a plethora of other things

- that my roommates can make even more things

- that I don't have a unibrow

- Cassidy Jane Carbaby

- that one time when my dad started singing about a lemon tree at the dinner table

- that one of my students came in on Friday and gave me a piece of paper with a note that said: "Miss Connor you are the best teacher thanks for being my teacher see you after school!" and had a purple jolly rancher taped to it

- Owen Wilson

I don't know what it is, but I love him. And I am indeed thankful for him. 

"Eventually!" Freaks Yelp

The whole week at EFY is super spiritchal, but Thursday is the spiritchal day. *Note: I do know how to spell spiritual, but because of this lady, I always think it's funner to spell it like "spiritchal."*

Anyway, Thursday was full of wonderful things. We went to classes, had a "Living Christ" activity, and learned about what a testimony is. I think my favorite class was Brother Huso's. The Husos the session-directing couple and I want to be just like them when I grow up. 

They are the quintessential Mormon couple; she is tan, blonde, and teeny, he's tan, muscular, and kind-smiley. They both have perfect teeth and do things like hold hands in the hall and fall asleep on each other during the variety show. He runs Iron Man competitions and is a high school principal, seminary teacher, bishop, and swimming enthusiast. She stays at home with their 5 (obviously beautiful) kids, runs marathons, and is an adorable session director's wife. I could go on. 

This is the Husos with one of my girls :)

So as I was saying about Brother Huso's class: on Wednesday, he came around and asked all the counselors what their group needed to hear, and what he should talk about. He started off by showing our answers, and almost every single counselor said something about how their girls needed to know that they are beautiful and awesome and have self-worth and blablabla. 

Then he showed a picture of the Mesa, Arizona temple. 

"So, we're from Arizona," he said. "And this is our temple. And I hate our temple." There were a few gasps and some nervous laughter. "Look at it," he went on. "It's so dumb. Who designed that? It's all boxy...." He clicked to the next slide.

"At least we don't have to go to the Provo temple though. I mean, is this temple a joke? It looks like a cupcake. And that steeple.  I don't know what the designers were thinking." Click.

"I wish I was from San Diego," he sighed. "They have a beautiful temple. Look at it. It looks like a castle. Wooooow. Now that is a temple." Click.

"Salt Lake has a pretty temple, too," he continued. "People come from all over to see this temple. No one comes from all over to see - " clickclickclick " - this temple."

He turned to the girls. "How many of you wanted to punch me when I was talking about my Arizona temple that way?" Lots of girls laughed and raised their hands. "Good!" he said. "How do you think Heavenly Father feels when you talk about yourselves that way? What do you think God cares about more: bricks, or flesh and blood?" 

During this class, he also shared txts that he had the boys send in with a message that they wanted to give to the girls. Most of them consisted of the words "You don't know you're beautiful!" (very original) or "You are beautiful daughters of God!" 

But one or two said things like, "Sarah, this is Jake, and you're my COW! Here's my number. Txt me!"

And you know I teased Counselor Sarah about that. 

Thursday was also Variety Show Day. My group had the final act and it was awe-some! If you are my friend on facebook, I thinkkk you can see it with this link.

If not, I'm sorry. Trust me that it was awesome. And know that I didn't learn the dance, since every time they practiced it was when I was doing variety show tryouts, but I got really excited when they were doing it, so I just danced along in the back. And I reminded myself of Regina George's mom. 

  

Friday was also full of wonderful things. Such as.....

Finishing our morning devotional and opening the door to see this sign (above) that the boys in my company made for my girls. All together now: awwwwww :)

Hanging out with my broder. Who is so spiritchal and awesome and taller than me?? Yeah I'm still trying to get over that one. 

Taking pictures as a company. This is me with the boys who made that wonderful sign, and shared their soda, and asked me to interpret their dreams every mealtime. 

Being secretly photographed every time Dalin and I sat next to each other. 

Or planned Devotional together. 

Or walked around together. 

Or ate together. 

Sometimes the pictures were taken through the leaves of potted plants.

Dalin often begged my girls to take more pictures of us together. He was loving the attention. 

And thus ended a wonderful week in Cincinnati.

All for a Kiss

Winston Churchill once said: "There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you."

I can see his point. It would be hard to kiss someone who is leaning away from you. It is even harder to kiss someone who is running away from you, diving into a fetal position, and burying their head in the ground.

Have you ever tried to kiss someone under these circumstances? Have you ever done any of these things in an effort to avoid being kissed? (And I'm not talking metaphorically.) Have you ever worked so hard for a kiss that you actually got a bruise? Or a bloody lip? Or two kinda black eyes? Have you ever been tackled to the ground by a boy trying to kiss you? Have you ever been kissed by a complete stranger and not even felt mad about it?

Because I could answer yes to all of those questions, all thanks to my lovely friend Jeremy.

And I'm not talking about the same kind of kiss that Lady Antebellum made up a song about.

  

Imagine, if you will, that you have spent three days straight, doing nothing but packing and cleaning. You have scrubbed and swept, and in your mind, your apartment is spotless. And then a horrible lady who is in charge of the apartments comes along, and she is a beast, and she tears apart all your work. So you start cleaning again, resigned to the fact that you will be spending your last night in Provo (for a month at least) just cleaning and re-cleaning.

And then there is a knock on the door. And a boy with a nice smile is standing there, and he invites you to come play kissing rugby, and tells you that you are already wearing the perfect shorts for such a game.

When this happened to me, my immediate response was, "I have to clean my tub again" with a sad little sigh.

To which he responded, "No you don't. Come!"

Would you not have been persuaded by such an eloquent argument? I threw down my magic eraser and left with him right then.

Here is how kissing rugby is played: Every girl gets a letter. Every boy gets a number. Someone sits in the middle and calls out a letter and a number. If the person in the middle is a girl, the boy she called has to kiss her before the girl she called can kiss the boy she called. So the girl who was called has to try to kiss the boy while he tries to kiss the girl in the middle, and she tries not to get kissed. If there is a boy in the middle, the girl he called has to try to kiss him (with his help) while the boy he called tries to kiss the girl. Whoever loses then becomes the person in the middle. And when I say "lose," I just mean that they technically lose. Because let's be honest, even the losers can kind of win, don't you think?

Here's a video that I found online of some people at institute playing kissing rugby:

  

Doesn't that look so fun?? We played for 2 hours. Apparently they play every Wednesday, so you know I'm going to be joining in again as soon as I am back in Provo. We took some videos before it got dark, so hopefully I will have some to put up here soon!

Warning: My mom said that I look like a battered woman now. I have counted 12 bruises, but I'm pretty proud of them. I feel like it was worth it!

This is out of control.

There are way too many cute boys on campus. I don't even know what to do with myself. I just walk from one class to the next in utter amazement. Today, while walking from the JKB to the LRC, I saw more than twenty really really ridiculously goodlooking young men. I could feel my eyes getting bigger and my mouth opening a little bit, but I couldn't even stop it. I would see an attractive boy and turn my head, because I didn't want to stare, and right on cue, another beautiful man would step into my line of vision. At one point, I was walking through a set of double doors and an absolutely perfect boy opened the first door for me.

"Thank you!" I said, stepping through. Just as I reached the second door, a male model reached the same door, coming from the other side. He pulled it open and stepped aside to let me through. "Thank you!" I said, feeling like a princess. He smiled. "My pleasure," he said, and walked inside the JKB. Before I could even make it down the three steps in front of JKB, I had spotted two more cute boys just walking around like they were normal people.

Where did they all come from? That is my question. I just don't understand how one population of college students can be so heavily saturated with aesthetically appealing people! Not that I'm complaining....I actually quite enjoy it.

I remember being a freshman and my friend Steve tried to explain this to me by pointing out that no one going to BYU has a big beer gut, and the large majority of the boys don't have scraggly facial hair. These are two factors that are definitely present at other universities.

Whatever the cause, I would like to contribute something to it. I am so impressed with whatever force has put itself in charge of making so many attractive men come to school here. It is really exceeding expectations this year.

I seriously do not know what to do with myself. I'm flabbergasted. I think I am overwhelmed.

Last night was Winnie's birthday party, and for her present, Christine organized 21 guys to come and hand her a rose and kiss her. There was a DJ and cake and lots and lots of fun. If all the boys I saw in between the JKB and the library today were to come to my 21st birthday party, I would not even mind getting such a birthday present.