December

 

The girls had their orchestra performance the first week of December! I am so impressed with how much Ali Bytheway teaches these kiddos! Lizzie has orchestra from 8-8:45 every Monday and Wednesday and some Fridays. Alana has advanced orchestra every Tuesday and Thursday morning and some Fridays. Alana also helps with beginning orchestra on Mondays and Wednesdays. 

Ali always makes a cute orchestra slide show with quotes from the kids and cute pictures! 

The girls dressed up so nice in their concert black for the performance. Alana and I went shopping and found this super cute outfit at Target. Lizzie took a black dress Alana had and didn't like haha! 

I got a few pictures during the school performance. 

Lizzie wanted to pose with the balloon arch:

Lizzie was in the front so we could see her better.

We could barely see Alana's eyes!

I love how they decorate their instruments for the performance:

Our Stake has an annual nativity display with live music and a children's room. I volunteered in the children's room and got to see many of the beautiful nativities as well as help and mostly visit in the children's room. My friend and my parents new next door neighbor, Stephanie Simmons made these two pieces in her ceramics class! I was blown away at how beautiful they are! 

I really liked this puzzle one too!

Grandma and Grandpa Z got the kids their annual chocolate countdown calendars and they were kinda a mix of white and milk chocolate this year. The kids enjoyed them =)

We had a piano recital evening with our friend Thea Jones that takes piano from Sean. She comes on Sunday after church and it's a pretty informal service type arrangement. Thea wanted to have a recital so we had the Jones family over and Thea, Brett, and Sean played the piano. Alana played the violin and Lizzie played the viola. Trish joined at the end and we heard her play some beautiful violin as well. It was a really beautiful way to listen to and sing some lovely Christmas music. Lizzie posed after the recital with a mustache and her Christmas color glasses. Here is our cute friend Thea at her choir concert at the school =) 

Lizzie is still in choir that meets every Tuesday morning. She loves it and loves preparing for the concerts. She had her school performance during the day and then she had a parent performance at 6 pm in the evening. Brett had his band performance at 7 on the same evening. We are always grateful the two schools are across the street from each other. They both did awesome in their performances:

For the school day concert, Alana helped with the student council in helping the students come in quietly. It was fun to see Alana leading 200 little kiddos in Simon Says! She is doing incredible things on student council and I am so proud of her! 

My cute students spoiled me for my birthday with lots of cards, dove chocolates, and hugs! My room mom did an awesome job at decorating my door and she brought a cake for me and my students to enjoy! 

Alana and her friends had an after school favorite things party. They exchanged tiny gifts like sour patch watermelons and hair bows and then made sugar cookies.

We tried to document the pile of boxes in our garage as it grew through out the month as we progressively moved more and more of my parents stuff. These posted in reverse order so the first picture shown is of the night when my parents were completely out of the old house and sleeping in our house for a few nights. 

It was a little crazy to be going out to help and bring more and more loads of boxes out every chance we got! 

Sean and I chose to go to The Cheesecake Factory for our Birthday celebration. We don't usually exchange gifts, we mostly just do a fun experience. We also bought Hale Center Theater season tickets for next year and we are so excited about that! The cheesecake factory was delicious and a very nice break from all the moving, packing and cleaning. Here is a picture of Brett's "straw-berry" from his smoothie:

That same day we volunteered to babysit for my coworker Natalie. Her son has been super sick so far this year and spent his first birthday in the ICU! Natalie and her husband had to host their ward Christmas party and didn't want to take their little guy to the party with so many people and germs so we got to play with him. He was so so cute and all five of us had a great time playing with him and watching him. We can't wait to play with baby Seagar again! 

Seagar thought playing fetch with Oreo was so so funny! 

Lizzie really wanted to make "REAL" gingerbread houses this year. So after church one Sunday we got to work. We made the dough and let it cool, then rolled it out and cut it. We baked it and let it cool and then made the frosting and got out all the candy. We had a really fun time making the houses all together. The gingerbread was pretty heavy and so we had to hold the pieces together for a long time to let the frosting dry. The gingerbread was delicious though and we demolished the houses and ate lots of them over the next few days. 

Oreo got cozy on the couch while we decorated. He did help clean the floor when we dropped things.

The kids are very very silly in their decorating and it's hilarious! 

Sean made a gingerbread man named Crispin who was crying because he was having an existential crisis.

Alana's house was pretty normal til you saw the hobo hiding in the bushes on the side.

Lizzie's also looked normal until you saw all the eyes staring you down on the back of the house. 

Brett had an arsonist lighting his house on fire.

We ate a dinner of popcorn, apples, cheese, and summer sausage while we decorated and it was so so fun! 

Lizzie's leader of the month picture:

The final week before Christmas break, my team and I decided to do some fun themed days. On Monday we did a Christmas around the World day. The kids got to rotate through all 6 classes and learn about a different country in each class. I did Mexico and we made little piñatas! The other teachers did Kwanza, Sweden, France, Hanukkah, and Germany. It was so much fun! The next day we did a polar express day where all the kids wore their pajamas and we did the same kind of rotations. They got to do fun crafts in each room. I took Wednesday off to help my parents pack and the kids had fun with Mrs. Lewis. I finished helping my mom in time to do a DI run, grab some final Christmas items, pick up Chick Fil A and pick up Brett from school. I NEVER get to pick him up from school so it was fun to show up with his favorite chicken nuggets.  I had left detailed lesson plans and had all my copies and everything ready which ended up being a big blessing because Tiffany got super sick and the team was able to just copy my lesson plans for her sub. Tiffany was gone on Thursday too and so Natalie and I slapped together some lesson plans for her sub. The internet wasn't working at the beginning of the day so we hand wrote the schedule and made random copies of things we had. It all worked out and Tiffany was back on Friday for the school sing along. 

I loved the way they did the sing along this year. They had each grade level sing, the whole school sing and they had minute to win it teacher games. I participated in a Christmas tree stacking game and I was terrible! Haha. Alana helped with all the preparations as part of student council. I got to see Lizzie play her recorder with the fourth graders to the Nutcracker song! The sixth grade sang rockin around the Christmas Tree and I couldn't see Alana at all. My students sang Jingle Bells.

My students spoiled me with all kinds of treats and gifts. One of my favorite things was how one student put my first name on the gifts she wrapped for me. Another awesome one was some expo marker earrings from a sweet boy. When his mom asked him what I liked, he said I liked writing on the board and I like earrings. So she found these earrings! 

After school I did my lesson planning and cleaned my classroom as quickly as I could. Sean was helping my Dad take down tv's and getting ready for the big move the next day. I left in time to help Brett clean the basement and get ready to host a secret Santa party for his friends and then to get Alana to a Student Council party at Fat Cats. I picked up pizza after dropping Alana off and brought it back to all the teenagers in the basement. Sean and I and Lizzie ate some pizza and then Sean and I cleaned the house in preparation for my parents coming. We decided to have them sleep in our room so they could be most comfortable. We slept in Alana's room and Alana slept in Lizzie's room. 

On Saturday morning we had the Peterson family music recital at Mimi's house. We had music by Xander, Jill, Lizzie, Alana, Brett, Lexi and Rebecca, Kaden, and Mimi and Merrill. It was fantastic! The Dufords were able to be there to hear Xander and Jill and it was so nice to see them again. I got to bring some cookies to share and then we visited and shared Sean's new Silent Night composition. 

After the recital, we dropped the kids off at home and headed to my parent's old house. Their ward had come that morning and loaded up the huge truck with all the furniture. My parents went to get a hamburger and figure out another moving truck. There was still a bunch of stuff including all the outdoor furniture and the huge BBQ and smoker. Sean and I got started with vacuuming and cleaning and getting the van filled as much as possible. Sean went back to Bluffdale to drop off a load of boxes and such and I helped vacuum and clean the bathrooms and mop and such. We worked on getting all the things cleaned out and moved out and then I went with my Dad to get another small moving truck. We drove the small moving truck and two vehicles back to our house. We unloaded all the stuff and then we went back to the old house. My dad took the small truck back to the shop and I dropped Sean off since a friend was coming to pick up a dryer from the house. I went and picked my dad off from the truck rental place and then we came back and finished cleaning and headed back to our house. We were so tired! Nick Ellis called to tell us that Kari had felt prompted to make us soup and rolls! Our kids were playing with their kids anyway, so they fed our kids and then brought us dinner! My friend Trish made the sacrament meeting programs for the next day since she knew I wouldn't have time. So many wonderful people! We took pictures of the house as we left it! So clean and so beautiful! 

We had a wonderful Christmas Sacrament Meeting program. Beautiful music and testimonies were shared! The choir sang a new composition based on Silent Night. Brett played a flute part and Alana and Becky Ford played the violin. We spent the day resting and being together. 

On Monday my parents went to close on the sale of their old home and buying their new one. I met them at their new house in the afternoon and we started cleaning the kitchen cabinets and unpacking just a few things. The Relief Society ladies came at 4 and they cleaned and cleaned all the things! My Dad worked on getting internet stuff and TV mounting stuff ready. Sean put up some outdoor lights on a bush outside their house and brought in a Christmas tree as well=) The sister who organized all the cleaning was Stacy and she and her daughter made these awesome checklists of everything that needed to be cleaned! 

Oreo liked having Winston's poof at our house:

Mom and Winston sitting in the new front room:

On Tuesday, Sean and my Dad both went to work. I took the girls to the orthodontist to get some quotes on treatment plans for them. Brett practiced piano.

Mom and I and Brett took over several loads of boxes and started unpacking more kitchen things. My Dad worked more on setting up the internet and TVs and then about 10 Elders and the whole Ellis family came at 4. They unloaded the entire truck then drove it to our house then loaded it up completely with all the boxes and yard stuff then took it back and unloaded it again! It was incredible and they did it all in 2 hours, 2 days before Christmas! It felt crazy to do all that work right before Christmas, but it was a wonderful opportunity to feel so much love and service from those around us!