December Advent: Day Twenty-Two

Today we had a full day at the Elementary School. It was the last day of the year before Christmas break and there were all sorts of things going on. First we went to the school’s “Singing Around the Christmas Tree” (except there was no Christmas Tree--but there was lots of singing.) Each grade prepared a song to share with the school. Nathan went up first so I hadn’t gotten the camera settings right yet-that’s why his picture is blurry. The sixth graders sang “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Tessa and the first graders sang “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer” her part was the echo. The second graders Sang “Little Saint Nick” by the Beach Boys and most of the kids had surf boards. Ryan was an Elf and had extra singing parts. He has been working super hard to memorize all the words and also asked his guitar teacher, Scott, to teach him how to play it on the guitar.




Ada and the fourth graders sang “Christmastime is Here” by the Chipmunks. They had all sorts of really cute actions to go along with it. In between songs, the principal started asking kids to lead everyone in their favorite Christmas songs. Ryan was one of the brave souls that got up there and started singing into the microphone. He chose “Jingle Bell Rock.” We were so impressed with how fearless he was getting up there and leading everyone in the song! We especially wished we had brought our video camera for this. The fifth graders like to sing “Feliz Navidad” every year to annoy their favorite teacher, Miss Kelly. So that is what Kielle was singing. After every grade had finished singing, The school choir performed. Kielle and Ada joined the choir this year and have really enjoyed being part of it. The choir performed “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer,” “Pat-a-pan,” “Winter Wonderland” & “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” We really enjoyed watching the kids perform!



The day didn’t end with the singing though. Mom & Dad went home for lunch and then came back for the school awards ceremony where Ada received an award for scholarship. Then we went to Nathan’s class and helped with an edibe craft. The 6th graders have been studying about Ancient Greece for a while and ended their unit with Greek “Olympics”. Nathan was part of the “city-sate” of Sparta and he was a council member which meant he was responsible for tracking everyone’s scores in the various events. The had events such as discus, javelin throwing, lfoot races, and others. Nathan won medals for Sparta in tongue twisters and long jump. We had to leave the games early to watch the first grade play “The Christmas Engine that Could.” Tessa was a narrator. It was such a cute little play with several songs. She did great. Ada & Kielle had a choir party after school and then we topped off the day with Brick Oven Pizza and the BYU Las Vegas Bowl games against Oregon State. BYU won this very windy game 44-20.

December Advent: Day Nineteen

I am taking a different approach to this "advent" because some of the prompts are similar and so I feel like I had already answered them. I know I am behind and I will put pages up as I finish them, but here is what we did last night and our tradition associated with it.



We have a family tradition of going to see the Spanish Fork Festival of Lights. We have missed a year here and there, but generally have tried to make it every year. We love looking at all the beautiful lights they have on display. It is particularly beautiful when there is lots of snow on the ground. They charge $5 per vehicle so sometimes you see people bundled up in blankets sitting on a huge trailer pulled by a truck. Our family enjoys seeing the familiar favorites as well as what new things they have added. Part of our tradition is going out to Coldstone for Ice Cream afterwards. It is always cold but we LOVE it! This year we started our day with the kids shopping for Christmas presents with Dad and then Mom joined everyone for dinner at the new In-N-Out burger joint, Followed by more shopping to kill time till it got dark and then off to the lights and ice cream! We were glad we went early because when we left the lights, the line to get in was a mile long!

December Advent: Day Six

(I am still working on the photos for Day 5--coming soon.)

Prompt: Write about one symbol of the Holidays that has particular meaning to you.

We love our Nativity sets. As a wedding gift we were given a children’s nativity set. I thought it was sweet at the time, but didn’t realize how much it would mean to us through the years. It has been nice to have a set that the kids can play with and get up close and personal with the Christmas story without me worrying about it getting broken--it actually has been broken and we have had to repair parts of it and parts are missing like the tips of the wise men’s crowns or a bit of the angels wings. But that’s OK because it has always belonged to the children and over the years they have all loved playing with it.

We also were given a Nativity that only had Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Another wedding gift we received was a lone Camel made of Olive wood that one of Aaron’s college roommates, Dale Green, brought back from Jerusalem for us. Later we received a camel that used to belong to Aaron’s Aunt or Great Aunt and it came from her mission. We decided to add them to our Nativity and since they didn’t really match we have tried adding somewhat mismatched figures over the years because when you think about it, the shepherds and the wise men and all of us who come to Christ come from so many different places and we might not match up exactly, but we still belong to Christ no matter what we look like or where we come from. So that is the theme we created for this Nativity. We are still looking for one more wise man to complete that trio and are always on the lookout for pieces to add, but it is difficult to find just one piece of the Nativity.

December Advent: Day Four

I wasn't sure that anyone was reading these, but Mark, my brother, just called and asked if we had stopped. I am just a little (or a lot behind) We write down our answers to the prompts every day, but it takes a little more time to actually get my pages together.

So here is day four's prompt: Talk about a sentimental piece of holiday decor.



The bow on top of our Christmas tree is from our very first Christmas together in 1996. We didn’t have many ornaments so we went to Target and bought a bunch of ribbon and made our own bows to decorate the tree. We made several tiny red ones and this big one to put on top. It has stayed as our tree topper every year since and Aaron has always been in charge of topping the tree with the bow. It reminds us of that simple first Christmas of ours. It is a cherished memory that we recall every Christmas.

December Advent: Day Three

Think Back to a time of Holiday joy in Your Life. Where were you? Who was there?

Our First Christmas
1996

One of our most joyful Christmas Memories is our first Christmas together.We had been married for almost a whole year, we didn’t have a lot of money but we had each other and were so excited. We went and bought a big, bushy Christmas tree that overtook the family room of our tiny basement apartment in Provo. We didn’t have very many ornaments so we put candy canes and handmade bows all over the tree. It didn’t show up in our photos but we topped the tree with a great big homemade bow too. We went shopping for each other’s gifts with our friends Bryn and Dan Brody at Crossroads Mall in Salt Lake City. It was a lot of fun picking out our first gifts for each other. On Christmas Eve we made chocolates with Andrea and Gene Anaya. We were making chocolates til midnight or so at their house in Springville and then we all decided to go out to Denny’s for a late-night breakfast on Christmas morning.

The reason I bought the camera....

I definitely take more photos but Aaron takes GREAT photos like this one:

and this one:

I love the photos he takes!

December Advent: Day Two

Prompt: Do you remember making any specific recipe with older family members? What was the experience like?

We actually answered more with what our favorite food was and maybe a memory associated with it:

Tessa: Fudge
Ryan: Rolls
Ada: Gingerbread Christmas Ornaments
Kielle: One year we made green and red Jell-O popcorn balls.
Nathan: Rolls
Mom: Every year on Christmas Eve we would make a birthday cake for baby Jesus and leave a piece of the cake for Santa Claus.
Dad: My mom made cinnamon rolls baked in the shape of a Christmas tree, adorned with red & green maraschino cherry ornaments.

Today we also found some cute wooden ornaments at JoAnn's for $.50 each so we got 2 for each child to paint for their ornament collection.

December Advent: Day One

I took a free online class from Jessica Sprague called Holidays in Hand. She created a type of advent to help create a holiday Scrapbook for your family filled with prompts to get you remembering past Holidays and ideas to make this year more meaningful. I am going to try to put up my pages as I finish them here.

The photos on this page are from putting up the Christmas Tree on November 30th for Family Home Evening. We love putting up the tree because all of the kids have their own box full of ornaments and get to put their own on the tree. Every year we write down some of their favorite things about that Christmas or something special that happened throughout the year. As we put up our ornaments we all read our memories. It is a really special time for our family. Our tree topper is not a star or an angel. It is a bow from the first year Aaron and I were married and we made all our decorations on our tree. It is Aaron's job to put up the bow and we love remembering our first Christmas together and telling the kids about it. Aaron has been really busy with school and we were unsure as to whether he would be able to put up ornaments with us. As we were discussing decorating the tree, Nathan said "We can't decorate the tree without Dad, he has to put the bow on!"

The first day of the advent asked us to think of our earliest Holiday memories here are our answers:

Some of our Earliest Christmas Memories:

Tessa: Getting my goldfish and my doll, Buttercup (last year)
Ryan: When I got sad that I didn’t get an MP3 player and my sisters and brother did. Then dad helped me put together my transformer and I felt better. I still want an MP3 player.
Ada: Every year I love to cuddle up by the tree and look at the lights.
Kielle: One year the girls slept together downstairs. Ada & I couldn’t sleep so Dad brought us down some hot chocolate.
Nathan: When we lived in Provo, I remember making maracas around Christmastime in our Neighborhood Preschool. We made the maracas by folding a paper plate in half and stapling it.
Mom: When I was 5 or 6, I lived in Cary, Illinois. That year Santa hid our presents and we had to search for them. I finally found mine behind the curtains. It was a doll.
Dad: My last Christmas in California, Grandma & Grandpa Popham came from South Carolina to visit. It was a big deal. It was the first time I met them. I was 3 years old. I got a jumbo Tinker Toys set from Santa and a Farm Animals set from Grandma & Grandpa Popham. I spent hours playing with the Tinker Toys . I remember a couple days after Christmas sitting at a bar in the kitchen, making barns and stalls for the farm animals & Grandma Popham teaching me all the sounds the farm animals made.

We also were prompted to think of our Holiday Values and we came up with this list:

Our Christmas Values-
According to the Kids-
Heavenly Father, Jesus, The Holy Ghost
The Joy of Giving and Receiving
Not fighting
According to Mom & Dad-
Remembering the birth of our Saviour
Keeping the magic of Christmas alive
Spending Time as a family
Keeping low stress so we can focus on what’s important.
Making and keeping traditions.

So, what are your holiday values and what are your earliest holiday memories? We'd love to hear what you have to say.

Ryan Performing

I hope you enjoy hearing Ryan playing Blackbird by the Beatles. I love his beaming Smile at the end when everyone is clapping for him. Also I was glad that the emcee gave kudos to Ryan for finger picking because it is so challenging. Rock on Ryan!

Ryan's First Guitar Concert

Last night Ryan had his first Guitar Concert. He has been so excited for this! The minute he found out about it, he wanted to sign up. I was a little uncertain because he has only been playing for 4 months and told him he really needed to be dedicated to practicing his song. We had to remind him to practice to get ready and he had a couple notes added to fix the ending just the day before the concert but he did great. He seems to have no fear about getting up in front of people and doing what he loves. That is so impressive to me. (He told me after the concert that it was kind of scary-but he sure didn't show any signs of being scared or nervous.)

It was kind of a late night, but for the first time that the music school did this, it was awesome! They ended up being 45 minutes behind in schedule, but bumped Ryan up so he could play earlier, which was really nice considering that he played at 8:15 and he would've ended up playing at 9pm or later if they hadn't. We enjoyed Pier 49's delicious Pizza while we listened to some really talented musicians. We are so proud of Ryan! I will put his video in the next post!

Concussion

Thursday at school, Tessa tripped while running in from recess. Turns out she hit her head when she tripped and so we spent the afternoon in the ER where she got a CAT scan. She she missed her school Halloween Carnival, but the hospital gave her this cute little bear that she named "Chocolate Chip" (who also apparently had a concussion according to Tessa) She has taken the bear with her everywhere and even got it dressed up to go to the Trunk or Treat. Aaron pulled her in a wagon so she wouldn't exert herself too much. After a day and a half of resting she was ready to go again, but she's supposed to take it easy for 2 weeks. And if she jostles her head too much she starts to get dizzy again. She's back at school today so here's hoping she remembers to slow down!

Halloween Costumes

Today the kids get to dress up at school for Halloween:

Tessa has been planning on being Wonder Woman ever since she got her Francie Pants last Spring. Her gold accesories are made from an old tablecloth I never use and even though I couldn't find red boots, Target had these black ones on sale which she wanted for every day life any way! (Ada got some too...) Her magic lasso is a braided rope from the headband we used to make her tiara and luckily I had a red cape laying around in the dress-up trunk. So I only had to go buy the leotard and the boots and it still cost me less than the "wonder woman costume" at the store (not to mention, it looks way better.)


Ryan has wanted to be Anakin for a very long time. He wanted to grow his hair long so he could braid it like Anakins but I wouldn't let him and as his hair has grown he decided he would look best as young Ani. We also plan on get his hair cut next week!

Ada has gone through many ideas this year. She was going to be an indian or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, but settled on a witch when she received a witch's hat from school-- I think as a reward for Reflections. I made that dress she is wearing for Kielle to be a witch when she was 3. It is more like a tunic on Ada. She is wearing my footless ice skating tights ( I melted the feet off-did you know they had plastic in them?) and her brand new boots from target. Easy peasy!

Here she is trying to look mean.

Kielle couldn't decide what she wanted to be. So last night she decided she would wrap herself in toilet paper and be a mummy. I had muslin left over from Ryan's bday party and so I ripped strips of fabric and duct-taped them to her clothes! I couldn't find my safety pins! We'll see how well it holds up! But she looks awesome! We put white and black makeup on her face and sprayed her hair and hands with white hairspray.


Nathan wanted to be Boy Scout but didn't want his picture taken. Aaron said he thought he should be a zombie boy scout. This photo would work well in photo shop for that concept don't you think?
Kielle finally got a smile out of him! Yay!

Homemade Ice Cream

very Labor Day, my cousin Shannon and her husband, Jim host a homemade ice cream contest. The first time I went, there were a handful of flavors to try. It has since morphed into a full-blown crazy contest with three tables worth of entries and categories! There is a lot of competition at this contest. My cousin Leif made lots of posters and hung them everywhere as well as cups with "inspirational messages" like "Don't eat Nathan's ice cream" (Not my Nathan--another cousin.) I love watching the friendly rivalry among my cousin's family. It just makes the contest that much more fun.


This year was my first year with an entry. I tried my hand at mint chocolate chip Ice Cream. I used fresh mint from my mom's garden and Dove chocolate. It was pretty good, except fresh mint is VERY powerful and I think I overdid how much I put in. The mint was very strong. I'll have to attempt it again another time (with considerably less mint.) My dream is to recreat Ben & Jerry's Phish Food. Maybe next year....

The ice cream is displayed out on the tables and everyone is given a number-it is all very anonymous.;) Then we all went around tasting the ice cream and got to vote for our favorites. Tessa didn't like any of the fruit flavored ice crams and refused to even give a sympathy vote to any in tht category. What a trip!

The other fun part about the party is of course being able to see our family and spend time with them. The kids were happy to see their cousins there.

Saving the best for last, is that my mom and dad were celebrating their 47th wedding anniversary that day too. Congratulations Mom & Dad.

oesn't this cake look Devoine? It was! Ryan requested an ice cream cake for his birthday this year and since Coldstone is out of the budget for now, I decided to try my hand at my own version. Which was so incredibly easy I think will do it again sometime. He wanted chocolate cake and mint chocolate chip ice cream. At first I thought it was just for our immediate family so it was going to be a 3 layer cake, but then he told me he wanted it for our extended family to share after his baptism. Thus it became a 5 layer creation. To give it more of a gourmet touch I put chocolate ganache between each layer and over the top. Well, actually Aaron took the Ganache job away from me. After I had finished making it he started pouring it on and didn't want to stop. He is such a gourmet. And I that is one of the many reasons for which I love him!

Ryan's Baptism

Ryan was baptized last Saturday (Sept 26). We are so pleased with his decision to be baptized. I was nervous for him because he hates getting his head wet. He won't go under water at all when he's swimming and he hates getting his hair washed because he gets water on his face and in his eyes, so I wasn't sure how he would respond to being fully immersed in water. But he did great! I asked him how he felt about going all the way under water and he told me he didn't mind it. I asked him what was different and he told me that the spirit was there and the water temperature was just right. :) We also talked about how he was prepared beforehand so he knew what to expect. I think that is really important and I am so glad that he felt prepared and ready for baptism. Not just physically but spiritually as well. He has read his scriptures every night since he was baptized and asks me to read them with him. And then we talk about what the verses he just read mean.

It was fun to have our family there and friends from the ward. I wasn't on top of it enough to get a photo of everyone together, but we are so glad that they came to support Ryan. Our kids were asked to sing at the baptism and Ryan chose "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam." They were a little nervous so we invited the other primary children there to sing also--I think they had 2 more voices added to their 5. They did great.

Labor Day Weekend "Camping"

We had big plans to go camping over Labor Day weekend. We've been planning on it most of the summer knowing that all other weekends wouldn't work for us. Then a week ago I realized we hadn't even thought to reserve a camping spot and weren't too excited about just taking our chances on such a big camping weekend. On top of that Aaron just started up fall semester and has a paper due on Tuesday as well as 5 chapters to read. So we decided to fill the weekend with fun activities at home. So the kids went camping in the backyard (while mommy and daddy slept on their bed inside) I think they really enjoyed being able to sleep outside. The first night out I didn't put the fly up and it ended up raining on them at 6am! So we let the tent dry out and put the fly on but did it rain again? nooo. Although it did get chillier so the fly probably did help with keeping them slightly warmer.


I loved watching the glow from the tents as the kids read their books inside them with their flashlights. I think they really loved their backyard camping every night this weekend (even though they would have loved real camping more-but were such good sports about it.)

We also went to the BYU Women's Volleyball game (they won). That was a ton of fun. We should really do it more often. And then we went to a BYU tailgate party and watched the BYU Football game (they won). Also fun.

Aaron got really sick over the weekend so we took it easy and I spent time hanging out with the kids. We had a lot of fun with Legos especially. Kielle and the other kids worked hard on a camping scene.

These guys are roasting marshmallows over a fire.

And this is their tent. We found the "plans" to make these at legofamilytime.com/familyfun. There were all sorts of other cool plans if you want to do fun lego stuff too. Ada made an apple and there were plans for trees and pencil holders-Kielle made that and a tic tac toe board. Nathan is the LEGO expert in out home and didn't need the plans because he just creates this stuff out of his own head. He kept wanting to improve the designs we had.

I wasn't feeling bad about sending everyone to school all day until I heard this:

Tessa to me as we are walking home from school today: "Mom, I like first grade, but I miss spending time with you and cuddling with you. I only get to see you after school and on Saturday and Sunday now."

Back to School!

Well, the summer zipped by incredibly fast. I don't think we did everything we wanted to and here we are back to school again. The kids have GREAT teachers this year. I am hoping they will progress much. The first day of school they were all ready more than an hour before school started so we walked but even then we were there a half hour before school started. Yeaterday was the same thing--everyone up early and ready to go an hour before school. But on day three. Today, Kielle woke up in a bad mood 5 minutes before they would have had to leave if they walked and Tessa woke up saying that she felt too sick to go to school. I think with Tessa, she just isn't used to having to wake up so early every day and with Kielle she just didn't want to walk. she got out of it today but next time she might not be so lucky....

Here are the kids right before we left the house on the first day of school:



As for me, since I am not working right now, I am trying to catch up on housework and get a schedule in place where I can be as productive as possible. So far this week I have been catching up on laundry. I am almost there. I have to do 3 loads a day on a regular basis to stay caught up so right now I have been doing 6 or 7! I find that if I throw in a load 1st thing in the morning I get more done than if I wait til later. Funny how that works.

I am excited to have the whole day to accomplish things. I can even go all the way to SLC if I want to during the school day and still get back in time for school to be out! Crazy!

Ada's New "do"

Ada turned nine in July and for her birthday she really wanted a perm. She had to wait about a week after her birthday to get one so we could get past softball season, but she was patient. And I think her new curls/waves suit her well....

State Champs

I can't lie and say this baseball season was all flowers and roses or rather home runs and hot dogs? Nathan was so eager to play baseball this year. I was a little surprised because this is my child who is more into exercising his mind than his body. I made sure over and over that this was what he really wanted to do before I signed him up and he assured me he would to stick it out. He came home after his first practice thrilled and excited and thinking this was going to be a fun season--but something changed between the first and 2nd practice. I was a few minutes late picking him up, it was overcast and I found him starting to walk home crying. His coach had been really tough on them and it was just not fun anymore. I told him to stick it out. Gave him the best support I could, because they were tough and kind of old school and I didn't think Nathan got to learn as much as he could've perhaps on a different team, but I think Nathan thinks it might've been worth it to stay on since his team came in 1st in the city league and went on to win the "State Championship" (I'm not sure how that really works since they only played teams from our area, but...) I would have liked to see him have more playing time during those playoff games, but I think I was more upset than he was. look at this smile:

And THEN after all the team photos were done I figured out how to take night photos with my new camera...durh!



I don't think Nathan will be playing again next year. He'd really like to go back to fencing (the expensive sport! gah! He might need to get a job first! :)) But I'm glad he tried out baseball and I'm proud of him for sticking with it to the end even though it was a rough season for him. Way to go Nathan!

101 Dalmatians Kids

Ryan has been very busy all summer long rehearsing for his role as an ensemble puppy in Springville Playhouse's children theatre production 101 Dalmatians Kids. And now after 6 weeks of practice they are finally performing. There are some really talented kids involved. They did a fabulous job on opening night which was Monday. He still has 5 more shows to go if anyone is interested...The dates are August 7,8,10,14, & 15 at 7:30pm. Tickets are $6 general admission, $5 students and $30 for a family of 6. They perform in the theatre under the Springville Library and you can buy tickets at the door starting at 7pm. Ryan would love to see any family and friends there.

See? He's begging for you to come!