DisneyWorld 25-26 - All Good Things

Sunday, January 4 we were all sick. We managed to attend church on Zoom and otherwise slept the majority of the day away. We finally gathered in Pop and Grandma's hotel room for one of the most important parts of our trip:

John-Thomas received the Aaronic Priesthood!

Hyrum was voice, with Pop, Uncle Steve, and me in the circle as he was ordained a deacon. Even though everyone was still tired and worn out, it was one of the higlights of the trip. He has loved serving as a deacon, having a quorum with activities, and passing the sacrament to the congregation.

We had planned to also take him to the temple for the first time on our drive home, but enough of us were still too sick to make that happen. :( 

Monday - Epcot day 2?

Monday was the first day all of us were well enough to get to spend most of the day all together in the parks. Frozen, Remy, and the Guardians of the Galaxy naturally got more love. 

We wandered through Moana's water fountains. It's such a lovely walk! Joy eventually decided to park herself there for a time and rest. "I wanted to stay there because it was so peaceful and beautiful. They even recreated Te Fiti. They did an amazing job with her. I wouldn't be surprised if she was the same one they used in the movie ;)  ."

We finished doing most everything at Epcot and Hyrum had a hard choice. We had talked about him leaving the group to go to Animal Kingdom that he had missed because of being sick or maybe he could catch a couple roller coasters at Hollywood Studios. JT and I would follow wherever Hyrum wanted to go, so I said, "We just want to ride the Hyrum." That was one of JT's favorite memories. In the end, Hyrum decided to stick with the rest of the family for the afternoon. 

We had dinner at the Space restaurant, where Hy told JT he had really been wanting to go on the Tron ride with him. JT: "That was the best time of my Christmas vacation!" The space restaurant had this chocolate cheesecake, covered in decorative chocolate to look like a planet with dusted chocolate chip asteroids and a somethingberry swirl. I liked the whole thing. Joy liked the asteroids. 

After dinner, Hyrum, Nia, JT, and I raced from Epcot to Magic Kingdom (which takes quite a long time, really) to ride Tron. That was Hyrum's last ride. 

Tron is pretty awesome. Since I wore the MagicBand+, it took pictures of me and whatever person I was with, but missed the rest of our party. Here are Nia and I experiencing it for the first time.

On our way out of the park, I parked the kids at the corner of Main Street to watch the electric light parade while I did a little errand. Joy had seen A and L enjoying some giant Mickey chocolate chip cookies and she wanted one. We asked at every cookie shop all over the place, and no one had them. Finally we just asked Emie, and she told us where they were. The cookie shop insisted they only had M&M cookies. I got several, which were WONDERFUL. But the searching and debating with the staff took a while. Once I came out, the parade was just ending. Hyrum said that watching the parade was "the perfect end for my trip." We were all very sad to put him on an Uber Tue morning early and ship him back to the Y.

Tue - Magic Kingdom

At some point I finally had the bright idea of letting the professional photographers around the park take pictures of us when we had a little time to kill waiting for someone else. I wish I had done so earlier when we still had Hyrum. I didn't know my parents were going to buy the full set of pictures. I just figured it was a little fun and maybe we'd be able to find a way to use a miniature or preview version of one. Instead, here are JT, Nia, and I outside Adventure Land:

One of the things I really loved about the trip were the Christmas decorations and especially the Christmas music in every park. The variety and, especially in EPCOT, the cultural versions of beloved Christmas songs were delightful. I've been scouring the internet to find similar renditions and just cannot. Disney is missing a trick, not selling me the international Christmas soundtrack! One of the sad things, was watching the Christmas decorations slowly vanish. There were a few fewer every day after New Year's, and by our last day they were mostly all gone. I sure do love me some Christmas!

Nia's favorite souvenier was a mini Eiffel Tower. She has loved learning French at school, so greatly enjoyed her time in France at Epcot. Here she is posing with it outside Tiana's water ride that replaced Splash Mountain. Sadly, it broke. Both the ride (again!) and the tower. Pop and Grandma were staying in Florida an extra day or so beyond what we did, and even though they were feeling very sick, they did a quick jaunt to Epcot to get her a new tower. My parents really spoiled all of us!

Our second time on Tron.

Wednesday morning we flew home (well, my old home), arriving in Santa Barbara in the early/mid afternoon. We rearranged all the stuff we had left at Pop and Grandma's, fed the cats, and drove off to Riverside, CA for the night. That's where we had hoped to do temple work Thursday morning. Instead we got off to a late start, ending in our usual stop in Deming, NM before finishing the drive home Friday. We were very thankful to have taken two nights for the drive instead of just one. That gave us permission to pause or rest when we needed to. I attended my college meeting on Zoom as we drove.

And THAT was our great adventure to DisneyWorld and California this Christmas!

Return of the Blogger?

 Some time ago, all the backup copies of our family pictures failed. Computers and external hard drives all. I only have a very few of them saved on my work computer, and really only since, like, 2022.

I finally realized that not all was lost. I had this blog and our old one. And we have saved pictures! I shared pictures and wonderulf, wonderful stories. Over the last month I've gone from 2008 or so up through 2012, saving every single picture I uploaded and reliving all those early glory days of baby/toddler Prince and baby Princess. (Baby J-T had not yet arrived, much to his dismay when I start sharing stories).

How very deeply thankful I am for this old blog, for our Newlywed History, for Facebook, and for the scattered physical journals I and we have kept over the last 20 years of our marriage.

... and maybe I should try to get back to This Old Blog too.

Christmas trip to Disneyland, 2024
Joy, Princess, JT, Derrill, Prince

Jolly Old King Benjamin

In 2005 I came up with the following parody of "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas," using the teachings of King Benjamin from Mosiah chapters 2-4 in the Book of Mormon.

Jolly old King Benjamin said: “Pitch your tents this way.

Don’t you trifle with the words that I’m going to say.

Jesus Christ is coming soon, so my countrymen,

Choose this day whom you will serve and be born again.

“I have served my whole life through that you might be taught:

When you serve your fellow man, alone then you serve God.

And if I, your chosen king, have labored to serve you,

Ought ye not to do the same: serve each other too?

“Oh what thanks we all should give to our Heavn’ly King!

Though we serve Him, we are just unprofitable things.

First off, He created us.  We are in His debt.

Then we serve, He blesses us, and we aren’t out yet.

“When the clock was striking twelve, I was fast asleep.

There appeared an angel bright, and my heart did leap.

He gave me a message clear, and I know ‘tis true:

Jesus is the only way salvation comes to you.

“We must be little kids, and be easily taught;

For you know the nat’ral man’s an enemy to God.

Yield unto the Holy Ghost, put off the nat’ral man,

Trust in God, be humble too; with His help you can.

“If you’ve felt to sing the song of redeeming love

Keep in mind how great and wise is the Lord above,

Then, my friends, you will retain remission of your sin

And you will teach holy things to your children.

“Last of all, please watch yourselves, your thoughts and words and deeds.

Do not let your brothers beg – answer all their needs.

See that ye do all these things in order and wisdom,

Then one day you will return to God’s great kingdom.”

Christmas differences

They have "wrapping sheets" in "bookstores" here, but bookstores are where you go to buy books of empty lined paper, not reading books. We found three packets of wrapping sheets, and it's a pretty good term for them: pre-measured sheets of wrapping paper. You get a lot in each package, and it was really high quality, but it cost $8 per package. Coming from starving-grad-student days of buying dollar store wrapping paper, that feels expensive, so we actually saved some sheets to reuse for birthdays.

The price of rice goes up starting in Sept or Oct, I am told, as farmers and traders prepare for the big Christmas rush to buy rice. Rice is apparently the traditional celebratory food for Christmas. For our part, Christmas preparations involved driving the dirt back-roads looking for the one guy in town who butchers a pig (that's right, A pig ... one) each day so we could have our first pork in Nigeria.

Even my brother might appreciate the machete he used

Speaking of livestock, I ought to mention that Joy loves eating the skin ... but only in the US. There's something indefinably different about the taste of the bird skins out here. There is one part that is definable, though. We soak all our meat in a vinegar solution for about 10 minutes and scrub it before we put it in cold storage, and that helps, but there's still sometimes dirt on the skin, and the pork came with some of the hide still attached. There's no attempt to give rib cuts or differentiate between good cuts and bad cuts. I could just specify "not from the leg" and be thankful for what I got.

First World Problems: in the US, people complain about decorations going up so early. They complain about Christmas music blaring everywhere for months. I missed those problems! I miss Christmas decorations everywhere. I could find a few small plastic trees with a strand of singing lights. I was glad we kept the top of our old tree to be our new one.

(some*) People who don't celebrate Christmas in the US complain about its use and over-marketing. Here, most of the Muslims I spoke too also celebrated Christmas and were quite happy to wish each other Merry Christmas. Eventually I got over being timid about wishing people a Merry Christmas around here. This was nice.

Caroling is apparently a Western tradition. Most everyone was surprised that I was wearing a "Father Christmas hat." Prince occasionally sang and mostly hit a can of nuts with a bit of stick to make a drum. We caroled to our guards, and one fellow in their post turned the radio up while we sang. We caroled to our neighbor the chicken farmer and they sang with us. "We only do this in church." We offered to carol to some neighborhood women on their way, but they didn't have time and thought the idea was strange but invited us over another day. We caroled to our next-door neighbor just as they got back from a 7 hour drive and they were happy. They apologized for not having cider to offer us and we apologized for not having brought fudge. (Ah, the exchange of proper seasonal apologies was sweet: the acknowledgement that we both recognize the same Platonic/Rockwellian traditions and know we can't do it "right" here, but are sure trying hard! *sigh*) We caroled to another family in the compound ... and found a fellow Latter-day Saint who said, "You are stealing our songs! Those were from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir." When our mouths dropped (quite literally in my case) he realized he was no longer alone in Yola.

I tried to find out about Nigerian Christmas traditions, but was met only with the bland "We get together with our families and eat food and go to church." Then again, I imagine it is a difficult for someone who has only lived at home to know what they do differently from other countries. What, you mean the Wise Men don't come and leave presents in your shoes and Knecht Ruprecht doesn't make the children recite a poem or song they learned that year or else get a beating in America (Germany)? Why would you celebrate on the 25th when everyone knows Christmas is January 7, and what's up with all the commercialism for a strictly religious holiday (Russia)? Maybe next year we'll figure out what a true Nigerian Christmas means.

Safe and Sound

Today was a quiet day. We got some extra cleaning done, Princess was adorable, we played a lot of board games (including introducing Prince to Solarquest, a galactic version of Monopoly) and made chocolate cake. Prince and I finished reading the Wizard of Oz and he asked to go on to read book #2 in the series. Oh, and I cut my own hair and did more than just shave it all down for the first time. It turned out more layered than tapered, but it works. Everything was quiet outside.

If you want to know what's going on in the rest of Nigeria, look under the fold. The point of this post is that we are happy and healthy and well provided for. Only look under the fold if you want things to worry about or to make your prayers a bit more specific. We're fine and feel at peace.

When I was a Lad 2

As a stream of consciousness exercise, this is what each of us thinks about that title

My version:

When I was a lad I went to Yale.
Cause I knew then that I could never fail
For I studied very hard, and furthermore,
I polished up the apple for the professor.
    [He polished up the apple for the professor.]
I polished up the apple so frequently
That soon I had a Phi Beta Kappa key.
    [He soon had a Phi Beta Kappa key from polishing the apple very frequently.]

On graduation day I made a stop
At a very exclusive clothing shop
I opened up a charge account and asked them for
The best grey flannel in the clothing store.
   [The best grey flannel in the clothing store.]
That suit was a part of a great intrigue
For it proved I was a member of the Ivy League
   [It was part . of a great intrigue for it proved he was a member of the Ivy League.]

More of Allan Sherman's parody of Gilbert and Sullivan's lyrics here.

Joy's version:

When I was just a young boy, Christmas meant one thing:
That I'd be getting lots of toys that day.
I learned a whole lot different when mother sat me down
And taught me to spell Christmas this way:

C - is for the Christchild born on Christmasday
H - for herald angels in the sky
R - is for our Redeemer
I - means Israel, and
S - is for the star that shone so bright.
T - is for three wise men, they who traveled far, and
M - is for the manger where he lay.
A - is for all He stands for
S - means shepherds came.

And that's why there's a Christmas day.