Wednesday, December 28, 2016

December Happenings

"Mom, take my picture here by the toys!"

Spend 6 hours at work, these two might just build a Lego base together



"Mom, take my picture". The kids' favorite bear at the home teacher's home

Christmas Adam sleeping around the tree

Brennan and Asher konked out first, but Kieran held strong well past 11pm. Whew, finally all 4 asleep


Brennan asked to put lights up around his room. It looked pretty cool in there

Nativity story puppet show, this year at Grandma and Grandpa's

2 youngin's, one doll house, lots of fun

 Two snow days for what would have been the last days before winter break. Add that to the Monday New Year's observance day and they end up with 3 extra days of winter break this year. Woot!


Ward Christmas Party

2nd bell choir performance (the first was at the Nativity Festival). Brennan played the xylophone solo for one song.





Asher got really into combing and styling his hair this evening and asked for a picture so he could recreate it. And then promptly forgot and he's maintained his crazy locks after all.

Underwater Audio Christmas Party




So fun for him to still have a friend-since-birth around. And so fun to have Angeli working with me at Underwater Audio since last August.




He did win "Most Outrageous" in the Ugly Sweater contest


 This kid had his very first band concert. They did pretty good, really. We heard mainly selections from their workbook like hot cross buns and the like, showing a progression of how they started and how they've progressed already. They ended with a Christmas Medley and I couldn't tell you what the individual songs were, lol. So fun.



These boys, right here. Love them.

 When I watched the 3 Butler kids for a week it included cheering one of them on at the Mustache Dash with her Girls On The Run team. I managed to not (permanently) lose any of the 7 kids at that busy event and we had a great time!



I'd begun the holiday season with much more motivation than last year, but it lessened as the month went on and in the end, we didn't do very many of our usual traditions. Actually, we went from the week with visitors, to a week of sickness, to a week of bad weather, and then bam! Christmas arrived! Still, there was plenty of fun. My home teachers (former Bishop and his son, and the wife is my former VT companion) invited us over for their Christmas Eve celebrations with included 3 sets of Elders, a traditional Swedish Christmas meal, and a German tradition of finding the pickle ornaments in the tree to win a present. You probably can't picture this, but Asher completely talked one of the Elder's ears off, and we all had a wonderful evening.

Christmas morning was spent at our home for the first time in years. The kids had been watching Santa Tracker the night before and figured he comes around midnight. So in the morning as they awoke me to go downstairs I confessed that I'd accidentally stayed up until about 1am and that I was afraid Santa may have skipped us as a result. Asher's face froze in fear.  Thankfully, it turned out to be ok. Kieran saw his main gift and brought it onto the couch and wouldn't, no matter how much we encouraged, go check out the rest of hi stocking. He got something cool and was good.