December Festivites

Our December was full of fun times and wonderful memories!

Nathan decorated...







The three younger boys and I drove to Nampa to go on a hike with the cubscouts at the Deer Flat Refugee.



We spent one evening at The Discovery Center exploring the exhibits and we also got to visit with Santa.



At first Levi wasn't sure about Santa but with a little bit of time and visiting they ended up being good friends.



We made a gingerbread village one evening for our Advent.







Andrew finished up his wrestling season. He did great! In the regular season out of the 12 matches he only lost 3. At District he won his first match but then lost the last two. He's glad that he tried it, but I think it will be the one and only time he does wrestling.





The youngest three boys and I went to the neighborhood Christmas party.





One of the responsibilities of Nathan's new calling as a High Counselor is that he's in charge of the dessert after the adult session of Stake Conference. Here's a picture of the tasty treat he served.



For the second year, our ward presented a live nativity for our community. Sarah was Mary, again and the three oldest boys were all shepards. It was raining for most of the evening until the end when it snowed. It was a very cold but beautiful evening.





We got lots of snow which made for shoveling, sledding and playing in it.













Sarah, Nathan and I went to their work Christmas party. They had delicious food and a casino set up for the evening. We learned how to play Craps and then gave all our chips to someone else.



Benjamin and Levi performed in the school's Christmas music program.





Levi's class had a pajama Christmas party and he loved it!







We went to Build-A-Bear and came home with some fun, fuzzy new friends.

November

The month of November began with the three oldest boys performing in a piano recital.

Benjamin



Spencer



Andrew (coming soon)

Benjamin had a basketball game every Saturday. He has had a great season of learning and progressing!





I can't believe I got this video of Benjamin making a swish!



Andrew had several wrestling matches. Out of the eight matches he had, he pinned seven of them. (The other match, we're not convinced that the boy was actually on JV as he was really good.) Not bad for his first EVER experience in wrestling. I'm sad that I don't have any pictures as I'm either videoing his matches or Facetiming with my mom so she can watch Andrew.



Sarah finished quilting her quilt.




A seriously dangerous ninja almost attacked me.




The three younger boys and I went to Home Depot and made some pretty cool jets.







Levi had a Thanksgiving Feast in his classroom. They first played some Native America games (he's playing "Spear it" in the picture) and then enjoyed a grand feast.





The three younger boys and I went to the Boise Holiday parade while Andrew and Nathan finished Andrew's quilt.





Andrew finishing the longarm part of his quilt.



On the Monday of Thanksgiving break, we went to the Discovery Center and had a really great time exploring their new exhibits.















Our plan was to drive to my mom's for Thanksgiving. We watched the weather forecast closely and knew a big storm was expected, so we left early Tuesday morning of Thanksgiving week for Bend. We're so glad we left early as only the last 70 miles of our drive looked like this...



and after arriving to my mom's safely, the storm continued to dump snow for the rest of the day resulting in 15 inches of snow. The boys LOVED it and went out in it several times just long enough to get really wet and cold.





This is Levi shoveling my mom's front yard. He cracks me up!!




My mom was taking care of her neighbor's dogs and chickens and with Nathan's, Andrew's and Spencer's help they made sure everyone was safe and warm. There was SO much snow that the chicken's couldn't get out of their coop. It was SO cold I'm not sure they wanted to venture out.





We loved on Delilah a lot!! Delilah was Jayna's dog and when they moved to Pennsylvania, Delilah was adopted by my mom's neighbors.



We did watch a lot of TV but we did play board games and Life with Sophie.





It was absolutely beautiful and magical to get that much snow and not to have to go anywhere but stay snug inside watching Nonnie's cable!!



We had a fabulous Thanksgiving with my mom. She had invited the sister missionaries over and Mark and Sophie were there, of course! (Angie was sick - big bummer!) We forgot to take a picture of the amazing spread we enjoyed. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, veggies, rolls, sweet potato crunch and olives. Afterwards, we enjoyed pumpkin, pecan, marionberry, apple and chocolate Snicker's pies. Everything was so delicious and we had leftovers for several days afterwards - my favorite part of Thanksgiving!



The day after Thanksgiving, we went down to the Mill District to walk around and we watched The Peanuts Movie.



Also, while we were in Bend, we went and made a fun Christmas toy at Home Depot.



We were feeling brave and drove to Sisters for the Holiday Parade. It was 18 degrees at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Good thing we brought our quilts and that it only lasted about 30 minutes.









These dogs were the highlight of the parade!



We had all loved seeing the huge icicles around town. Andrew found the KING of icicles after church on Sunday.



We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and had the best time with Nonnie! November was a blessed month!!