Life and Times of The Johnston family: A Broken Toe, The Dicken's Christmas Festival and More!

Lets start last Sunday(like a week from yesterday) in the evening we met up with my parents and brother and and sister in law at the Bountiful Cemetery to put a Christmas decoration on my sister Linda Kay's grave, Elizabeth understands more about her every year...this year she gets that Linda Kay was mommy's sister and so she is her aunt, but as for why the name Linda is so important we're still getting there ;) The kids had tons of energy so they were having fun running around(we did our best to keep them off headstones), I got another 3 Linda's picture with my mom,(Linda Gail), sister (Linda Kay) and daughter (Linda Elizabeth). Oh how I wish my grandma Linda Mae was still alive for so many reasons but mostly I wish Elizabeth could have known her! But I'm definitely going to do my best to help my kids at least know of her!
Lets see....Monday was of course gymnastics. Tuesday, oh Tuesday! In the morning Elizabeth had an appointment with her new ophthalmologist(eye doctor), her old one accepted a teaching position out of state. But her new one seems very good as well. She very thoroughly checked her eyes, I could tell from the start that her prescription was off, as she struggled with the basic pictures just getting smaller test they didn't get that small before Elizabeth would say she couldn't really see it. And sure enough her eyes have gotten a bit worse, so we came out with a new prescription for her. The only good thing is that her glasses bit the dust a few weeks ago, so she's just been wearing her back-up pair since, so at least we didn't just buy new frames and lenses and have to replace them! They had to dilate her eyes of course which she for some reason absolutely HATES! So I promised her lunch after if she'd cooperate and it worked pretty well, so after we took her to lunch at Arctic Circle since their play place is always less crowed which works best when Devin is there, and sure enough our kids had it to themselves most of the time! That night was our Relief Society Christmas dinner which was very good! I had a great time visiting! And enjoying a great dinner and wonderfully spiritual program! Afterward I ended up ~~totally breaking down and loosing it~~ talking to the Relief Society President about changes that have somewhat suddenly come up in our lives(but all that is for another post) she was a great help and comfort to me, and sometimes ya just need to talk about that kind of stuff!
Then we get to Thursday which was one heck of a day!! It started with Devin's OT at the center so I dropped Elizabeth off with Kay a wonderful neighbor, friend and primary president! Devin did really well with the sensory exercises Dani did with him, we were both very pleased with the progress he's made! Feeding therapy even went well as he ate a couple newish things! I informed Dani of the changes that are coming in our lives and she was full of great advice to help Devin adjust and cope the best he can to them. That night was crazy to begin with, Elizabeth had a Christmas program rehearsal at 6:30 and we had a meeting at our house at 7, but we were all set to make it work when at around 5:45ish Devin got mad at Tony for not picking him up and holding him(Tony was working on dinner, which is why he wasn't able to hold Devin)so Devin out of anger pulled our medium crock pot off the kitchen cart, but showed no signs of pain like it hit him. But when I looked over at him across the living room a couple minutes later the tip of his sock was soaked in blood so I bolted over and looked at his foot and the big toe on his right foot was HUGE, stretched black, blue and bleeding. So he and I bundled up and went over to instacare which left Tony having to drop Elizabeth off at her rehearsal, and when it was clear I was not going to be back in time to pick her up, wonderful Kay agreed to bring her home. Meanwhile back at instacare they had to take an x-ray of Devin's foot to check for broken bones....the x-ray turned out to be by far the most traumatic part of the whole night(but that's an explanation for another time, though some of you already know why). The x-ray showed a small fracture at the tip of Devin's big toe bone :( They said that there's really not a whole lot that can be done, that the bone should repair itself just fine, so they got a flaming hot poker and stuck it under his toenail to release the built up blood under it. He didn't make a peep when they did it which totally took the doctor off guard even though I'd warned her that he didn't really feel pain, I think a part of her didn't fully believe me....she did now! They then wrapped and bandaged it up(which also didn't seem to bother him at all). He ended the visit with an otter pop so all was good! And by the time I got home it was the kids bedtime....so there went the night....thank you very much Mr. Devin!! ;) (his toe seems fine now, he didn't even loose his toenail! It's still the wrong color, but it looks so much better!) Friday my mom came down and did a little Spanish lesson with Elizabeth, though she had a really hard time staying focused and wasn't really into it(it must be December!) so it was short and simple! Friday night was our Ward Christmas party, which was wonderful! Tony ended up wandering with Devin as he wasn't up to sitting still...at...all. The primary acted out the story of the First Christmas, and Elizabeth got to be an angel, and she was so very excited about it!
Saturday morning Tony and Elizabeth went to a Lowe's Build and Grow clinic and Elizabeth got to build a gingerbread house! It is way cute! Then after Devin's nap we went to the Dicken's Christmas Festival, which was cold but lots of fun!! After we picked up a Little Caesar's pizza on our way home and had pizza and hot chocolate while we watched the Polar Express!
Oh and this past week Elizabeth and I learned about Hanukkah, neither one of us has been into full on lessons so we just had a kinda casual learning week. And that was our week!

These are the pictures from the cemetery

Elizabeth cutting paper snowflakes as one of the activities on our Countdown to Christmas

These are just some fun pictures taken through out the week of the kids silliness!

Putting up Elizabeth's little tree in her room(which is the master yes...explanation in next post, forgive the mess)

Elizabeth making a bird "treat"(another activity from the Countdown to Christmas)

Talking to Santa and Mrs Clause at our ward Christmas party, apparently Devin will go up to even Santa to get a candy cane...then again sissy survived so he knew it was safe!