December in a Nutshell

December was a bit of a blur for me this year. Am I the only one who thinks it JUST WHIZZED RIGHT BY? I still can't believe Christmas has come and gone. We spent the majority of the month preparing for the Christmas break. I put together countless projects for my students in assembly line fashion. A packet of fun activities for those kiddos to work on over the break with a CD to go with it, parent gifts from the kids, gifts to the kids from their teacher, gifts from the principal to the entire faculty, decorations for the Christmas program, etc. Not to mention the extra curricular work that over took me. . choosing, buying and wrapping gifts for the Sub for Santa program, purchasing books for the school teachers to give their students as gifts. . .etc. etc. BUSY, BUSY! I could not WAIT for school to be over so I could start focusing on all of our family fun! Needless to say, it didn't slow down much once the Christmas break began. Like I said, it literally FLEW by! But, we did manage to make a few memories along the way. Most of them, I did not have a camera for (I have been so DISORGANIZED lately). But, I thought I would jot them down so as not to forget them entirely. Here's what I recall from the month of DECEMBER!

December 1st- Family Home Evening with the Van Fleets (went to the temple grounds to see the lights and nativity, back to the VanFleets for hot chocolate and donuts). We did take a picture of the kids on the steps of the temple, but we used James' phone camera, so I probably will never see the pic again unless I ask him to send it to us. It was a fun night though, not too cold or crowded and the company was excellent. We are so glad the VanFleets are in our lives!

December 6th- Lewis had his first Basketball game. He is loving basketball. Still a little unsure of himself out on the court, but he actually fouled someone at the last game-so he is getting more aggressive! Also, we spent the day decking the halls. After this day, I finally felt ready to take on the holidays!

December 7th- Watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional with the Adams'. The boys didn't pay much attention to it (they were having too much fun reliving Halloween) but the adults (and baby Amy on occasion) really enjoyed the inspirational messages shared and it really helped set the tone for the coming weeks and got me on the right track for the holidays.

December 13th- Twelve Days of Christmas began! The kids woke up to discover the first day of Christmas goods in their stockings! This year, here is what they scored:


Day One- 1 new book to read!
Day Two- 2 new gloves (Conner immediately lost his within the day):)
Day Three- 3 awesome pencils (the mechanical kind) this was kind of a joke (Conner was WAYYY bugged. I think he said, "that's ALL we get?"). The boys do their homework in the car on our way home from school (we have a thirty minute commute both ways). It seems we NEVER have a pencil in the car-only pens. So, these pencils are to stay IN the car (hopefully)! P.S. After our sweet (easy to please) Lewis went ON and ON about how great his new pencils were, Conner finally came around. They have such DIFFERENT personalities!
Day Four- 4 chocolate bells (Conner made a suggestion after opening this gift. He said, "Mom, maybe for the FIFTH day of Christmas, we should get FIVE packs of Pokemon Cards!" We ended up having to remind Conner of the reason for the Twelve Days-to count down the days until Christmas-not celebrate Christmas in advance!)
Day Five- 5 Golden Spoons! (We have yet to go out for our ice cream date as I type this! We better get on that-the break is almost over!)
Day Six- 6 shiny quarters
Day Seven- 7 Kisses (Lewis immediately came looking for me for the real ones, even though he also got chocolate ones. He is soooo great! Conner begrudgingly took some kisses from me. I sure miss my little Conner who used to LOVE snuggling and kissing):(
Day Eight- 8 pack of crayons
Day Nine- 9 candy canes (some to make into candy cane reindeer and share with friends)
Day Ten- 10 ten places to put your fingers to keep them warm from the snow (Steve bought the boys REAL snow gloves since we actually had snow on our lawn to play in)!
Day Eleven- 11 dollars to buys a gift for your brother
Day Twelve- 12 ingredients to make Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies for Santa (save some oatmeal for the reindeer):)

December 16th- Faculty Christmas Party. It included a HUGE white elephant exchange (over 60 people!) that carried on throughout the evening as everyone ate and chatted. The food was endless and I ate WAAAY too much. I paid for this dearly throughout the night and into the next day. :( The boys were well cared for by Miss Maria, one of the most AMAZING ladies ever! She is one of the reading aides at our school and has a grandson the same age as Lewis. She invited the boys to eat at Quiznos and go shopping and then hang out at her house until the party was over. The boys had such a blast, she of course, spoiled them rotten! I really need to get a picture of her with the boys. She has been so good to our "commuting" family.

December 17th- My Christmas get together gets snowed out! About every other month or so, my old teaching girlfriends from my "Red Mountain" days get together at Applebees for dessert. I haven't been able to make it to the past few (Steve is usually out of town or at a meeting or something, plus I have my "morning sickness" at night). We don't meet until 9:00 at night, so getting a sitter on a school night is out of the question. Well, this time, I decided to move the party to my house (Steve was on his way to catch a flight to Cali). Crazy as it seems, our neck of the woods actually saw a good amount of snow on this night! One of the girls lives in Winchester Hills (up and away from the city) and was completely snowed in! We decided to cancel our plans and reschedule. Bummer. One great bonus: Steve's flight got canceled so he was HOME for the weekend! Looking back, how would I have survived those last few days of school without him? The snow ended up being a BLESSING in disguise!

December 18th- St. George sees it's first SNOW DAY in a really long time (I don't remember what the news said the time span really was). Anyway, OUR school did NOT get a snow day. We just got a LOT of rain! As we were driving in the early morning on our way to Arizona, the boys were in awe of all the white stuff everywhere. They were VERY concerned it was not going to be here when we got back (I think Lewis even got a little teary as we drove further into the gorge and the snow started turning into rain). Needless to say, the snow DID STICK to our lawn and there was just enough to make snow angels and build a jolly snow man (good thing Steve was home to do this with the boys)!

December 19th- Beaver Dam Elementary Christmas Program. I must admit, I was a bit of a scrooge about this program this year. We had to hike up to the high school (just up a hill from our elementary) to practice twice (two weeks prior) and then, go up again for the actual performance. I wasn't thrilled about the time away from "instruction" that my kids were going to be missing. I know, I am sooooo lame! The program ended up being pretty cute, however, I felt like the Kindergarten kids could have sung MUCH louder. They sounded so cute at practice, they must've had a little stage fright! Conner's first grade class sang a song called "Holiday Hoedown" and it was really cute. Of course, my son and a couple of his little "followers" decided they were "too cool" to wear the cowboy hats like everyone else (why is he such a rebel lately?) but it will be a funny memory to look back on. His little bare head amongst all the cowboy hats. He did sing really loud though! He's got a great voice! Lewis' third grade class also did a cute number. It was called the "Penguin Polka." His song invloved some more complex dance moves! He was a RIOT! I will never forget his excitement and energy as he performed the song. NOT embarrassed at ALL!
THIS WAS ALSO THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL FOR 2008!!!!!!!!! HALLELUIAH!!!

I tried to do the panoramic setting on this picture, but I guess I still need some practice! At least I got the general idea! I thought that the reason the pictures below weren't so great is because I had given the camera to someone else, but this is proof that I can't work my camera very well either!

December 20th- Christmas Party at Laura's. This group is my Canasta group. We usually play cards once a month, but when there is a holiday, we try to have a party with the husbands. Steve really has fun with this group of guys. This night was no exception. We laughed and laughed. Plus, this was like the first thing I have made and appearance to since my belly started poking out. Not very many knew that we have a bun in the oven. I am sure they all just thought I was getting really fat! We ate appetizers and soup in bread bowls and played pictionary (Christmas carol style) as well as had the white elephant exchange. Steve scored this sweet life size George W. Bush replica for us, but it was quickly stolen away (I can't say I wasn't a little relieved):)


December 21st- Primary craziness! I was in charge of the Christmas lesson so luckily Carolyn, my trusty sidekick and next door neighbor who teaches the CTR 6 class with me, did all the EXTRAS! I had absolutely no energy left to put together yet another parent gift! She took the lead and made a handprint towel with our kids for the parents. She pulled each kid into the hallway during opening exercises and got them started so they would have time to dry. She wrapped them up real cute and later, during class, I helped the kids make cards to put with them. This year, during sharing time, Conner was chosen to play Joseph in the nativity. He looked soooo dang awesome! One of the other teachers snapped a picture of everyone with his phone camera (dang it, I didn't have mine with me AGAIN). Hopefully I will get to see that someday. It was precious!

December 22nd- Christmas Cards and Neighbor Gifts- I must say, working on the Christmas cards this year was very theraputic for me. It has been AGES since I have hauled out my scrapping supplies and worked on a fun project like this. These cards were super easy to put together and took very little planning and preparing. I didn't want to have to take family pictures or anything like that, so that is how the photo collage idea came about. All I had to do was pick three old pictures and put them together. I also didn't want to have to buy any new materials to make the cards, I tried to just use what I had on hand. This ended up working out at first, but I didn't have enough of any one thing, so I still had to make a trip or two to the craft store, but it was fun. The actual assembly line for putting the cards together sat around our house for a few days. I just worked on them whenever I had a spare second (usually while our family watched a fun Christmas movie together). This did not allow for all the cards to get out the door on time though. I am sure a LOT of people did not get them until Christmas was over, but I tried my best! I gotta say though, making the cards was the best! I felt so content to just be tucked safely inside my cozy little house with my family, working on something enjoyable! It was so relaxing and fun. My favorite ones ended up being the big red flower with the large antique bronze center (the one kind of cut off on the bottom of the picture). I wish I would have had enough of those items to make all 70 of them look like that one, but I didn't. I think all the people who ended up with that particular card are the luckiest!

Neighbor gifts were another story. I don't know if it's just a Utah thing to have to have a "catchy" play on words type of neighbor gift or what? But I was at a loss this year. We finally decided to give out Scone mixes (since we had bought so many for our food storage) and once we thought of our "catch phrase" Steve was actually a little embarrased to take them around! We laughed so hard when we were trying to think of something "clever" to say with our mixes. We ended up going with:

If you want to be happy in a million ways, for the holidays you can't beat SCONES SWEET SCONES!

I know! We are such dorks. I was just glad to get them out the door though. We did enjoy giving a special neighbor award to Carolyn though! She and her sister deserve double brownie points for all they do for us. A while back, Conner got the MVP award for his football team one day. It happened to be on a night when Carolyn had to take Conner for us and Steve and I felt like total loser parents because we missed the MVP action that got Conner the award (it was parent teacher conference night at school). We ended up discussing the fact that Conner would have completely MISSED the game had it not been for Carolyn stepping in and volunteering to run Conner there. Lewis said, "She needs an M.V.N. award!" (Most Valuable Neighbor). We all laughed and thought that was so funny! We joked about going around to all our neighbors and declaring the nominees for the award but that probably Carolyn would win for sure! Anyway, it's been a standing joke since that day in November, so we decided to present Carolyn with the REAL M.V.N. trophy this Christmas. We gave her sister Nancy the B.S.N. award too (Best Supporting Neighbor) since she is always helping us out too. It was funny to see the whole thing come full circle. We tried to make the awards as flashy, glitzy and funny as possible! Way to go Carolyn and Nancy! You are tough competition!




After this day was over, I felt like we could FINALLY relax a little. Then, I remembered, I still hadn't wrapped ONE thing FOR ANYONE by this day! UGHHHH. So. . .still a little more work for the elves to do-tomorrow perhaps!

December 23rd- Trip in to the specialist with the WHOLE family to see the baby on ultra sound! This was my fiftth time seeing the baby (and that wonderful little heartbeat) but neither Steve nor the boys had seen an ultrasound of this baby until today! He was very active and seeings how he had both legs up by his face at one point, it was VERY easy for the nurse to get a good view of this baby's anatomy. Definitely ALL boy! Of course! He looked very healthy and everything else looks great too. We are stoked!

December 24th- Christmas Eve was very relaxing and laid back. We made cookies for Santa in the afternoon and headed to Steve's parent's for the Christmas Eve dinner and program. We had a buffet style dinner and then gathered in the living room for the reading of Luke 2 with the kids dressing up for the nativity. Steve and I were Mary and Joseph last time, so Quincy and Sunnie took their turn this year. They sure made a cute Mary and Joseph. All the little boys wanted to be kings (wise men). Nobody wanted to be a shephard for some reason?! We tried to get little Amy to be the angel but she was pretty feisty about it. The highlight for me was Lewis playing two of the songs on the piano. He did a great job accompaning our off key voices! He was so excited to play and was so grown up about it. It has been fun to see him take to the piano.





After we left the Peterson's, we drove around Bloomington a bit to see some of the lights on the houses. It seems like the lights were pretty sparce this year so we got extra excited when we saw some houses that were REALLY decked out!




Before bed, we sprinkled the reindeer dust(oatmeal and glitter) on the lawn and set out the cookies. I also stayed up a little late after the kids were in bed to get some last minute cleaning done. This was the first year that I put my head to the pillow WITHOUT every square inch of the house being clean, all laundry put away etc. I just have NOT had the energy to keep up this year. I have tried not to let it bother me or distract me from having fun though!


December 25th- Christmas Morning- The boys did not follow orders to come directly to our bedroom FIRST before they went into the living room to see the goods. They snuck a quick peek and THEN came in to get us! I threw on a sweatshirt and went in to turn on the tree lights. Steve got the video camera ready and then the fun began! Of course, we saved our BEST present for last. The anticipation was thrilling and killing us! The boys let ME do the honors. Of course, I wasn't too shocked to see those words: "I'm a BOY!" We are SOOOO thrilled to finally know what it is! I really can't believe people have enough will power to go the full 9 months not knowing! Two days was enough anticipation for me!

At around 9:00, we piled in the car to go to my mom's house for the annual Christmas breakfast that she does for us. She makes crepes with strawberries and whipped cream and endless sausage and bacon. It is one of my favorite parts of Christmas morning! We opened more gifts and played all morning with cousins and nephews. Then we headed back to our house.

Christmas Afternoon- After cleaning up the general debri of the morning, I actually got to squeeze in a NAP! Then, Grandma and Grandpa Peterson came over to visit for awhile. It was rainy and yucky most of the day so we didn't get to try out the new skateboards much, but we did have a very peaceful and relaxing day playing with all our new stuff and being thankful for all we'd been given.

Christmas Evening- Back over to my parent's house for Christmas Dinner. Ham, shrimp salad, rolls, potatoes, salad, pistachio dessert etc. Yummy! We played some of our new games before heading home. Such a fun, fulfilling day!

December 26th- The morning was soooo great! We actually sat around in our jammies and played Star Wars Monopoly with the boys for five straight hours! We had NO agenda and nothing pressing! We couldn't believe how lucky we were! Steve can't remember the last time he's had such a relaxing Christmas. I am sooo glad he hasn't had work to do and this is one time of year where being an educator really pays off (since it usually doesn't monetarily)! The time we have together is PRICELESS!


That night, the boys had their annual cousin sleepover at Grandma Peterson's house. A few of Steve's sister's were able to come down from up north to join in the fun festivities. The youngest grandkids went to McDonalds with G&G Peterson and then back to their house for the sleepover party. The adults and older cousins went to Pizza Factory and then went over to Sunnie and Quincy's for games. Of course, it was fun, fun, fun!

December 27th- Steve woke up early to go rabbit hunting with the die hard hunters of the family. They hiked through waist deep snow but still managed to have smiles on their faces at the end of the day (I for the life of me don't know how?). I spent the day relaxing (trying to clean or be motivated to do ANYTHING really) but I basically layed around and watched movies all by myself. I thought I would ENJOY the time alone, but really, I was sad without my boys (who were still engulfed in cousin FUN all day at Grandma's). They came home (from SWIMMING-in an outdoor pool in the middle of DECEMBER) just in time to get ready for the Peterson Family Dinner Party at Sunnie and Quincy's. We had Honey Baked Ham, baked potatoes, salads and rolls. All delicious. Later that night, some of us (Three of Steve's sisters, six of their older kids and me) went to the $2, 8:30 showing of High School Musical 3. I had not seen it yet and I was blown away with pure excitement! Disney sure knows how to pull off a grande finale to a great series of musicals! This was the best, most cheesiest, most amazing one of them all! I loved it!

While I was at the movie, Steve took the boys and their cousin Adam to our house for a sleepover. They watched Kung Fu Panda and were still awake at 10:30 when I got home!

December 28th- This was my last Sunday to teach my own little Conner in my primary class. He is moving up to the 7 year old group next week. I will miss being his teacher. Today, Steve asked him who his favorite teacher has been (he has had some AMAZING ones) and he said ME! I really thought he'd pick the over the top, unbeleivable Johansen's who spoiled him rotten last year in the CTR 5 class (and who still call us on our birthdays)! I really didn't think I had a chance up against them! I am so glad Conner DOES love me:)


December 29th-Present- Right now, we are busily trying to get things done (um refinance our home-what? That is allllll Steve) including organize all of our new stuff into our lives, prepare for the upcoming year, get caught up with reading and piano practicing etc. etc. while still trying to maintain the balance of enjoying the laid back Christmas season. We have had a fabulous and QUICK paced December! Hope yours was just as packed with memorable events, people and blessings! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!