December Happenings 2014

A few highlights from the month of December.

1) Throughout the month of November we would take a moment at the dinner table to write down things we were grateful for on these fall stickers and then put them on our back door.  It was a great visual reminder of all the blessings we have in our lives.  However, next year I will keep stickers on paper only as it took me a good hour to rub all the gooey residue off the door when we took them down the first week of December.

2) The Elder's Quorum Turkey Shoot.  The guys competed to see who could shoot the most clay pigeons, each receiving 10 chances each.  The winner (Nate Howard) took home a turkey and the two runner ups won Cornish hens!

3) Daphne has been sounding out words for over a year now, but we hadn't been working on it consistently for months.  One day she said, "Hey Mom, look at my map I drew."  I was shocked to see she had sounded out and spelled the word "map" on her paper!  Since then I feel like she's actively trying to learn to read with me.

4) One of the parks in town got new playground equipment and we had a lovely hour play on the spider web and twisty poles all by ourselves.

5) I put this image on the top of our Ugly Sweater invites for our 6th annual party this year!  We only invite a few families this year since our house is so much smaller and were pleased when we had 4 families confirm thinking that was just about the right amount of people.  However, the day before two of the families backed out due to sick kids and another had double scheduled with her husband and didn't realize it until the day of.  Our new friends, the Gamble family, were the only ones who were able to make it.  I felt so silly being like, "Welcome to our party!  You're the only guests!"  Haha!  It actually turned out fine as we had a chance to visit and get to know them better.  Their 4 boys were so well behaved and I admired Jill and Mike's calm parenting.

6) On December 10 (my birthday!) we had our ward Christmas party.  I somehow ended up on a committee of 4 ladies and spent most of the day getting things ready for the party that night.  Next year I'm going to heavily suggest that they ask a LOT more people to help plan it.  We ended up being a bit late because Darcie was having a hard time eating, so by the time we got there we didn't have time to eat the nice ham dinner and had to get up on the stage for the program.  Burke, Darcie and I were Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in the Nativity.  I sang, "Guard Him Joseph".  I forgot to have someone take pictures, so we ended up with a few phone shots from our friend Alison Fitzgerald.  Darcie looked up at us and cooed the whole time, making it hard not to get emotional as I imagined Mary holding the Savior of the World in her arms on that Christmas eve.  

We finally got home long after the girls bedtime, so we rushed my traditional peppermint birthday cake and presents.  Burke made me a happy happy nerd with all the books he got me!  Can't wait to read them all!

The rest of the month was packed with a trip to Logan for my baby sister's wedding, Christmas holidays, a visit from my parents and more.  More blogs to come as I play catch up yet again.