Christmas Eve 2010

This was a great Christmas! We took almost the whole month off from homeschooling and while things weren't exactly as idyllic as I had hoped for, we've had a fun Christmas. We especially love the things we get to do Christmas Eve.

Santa comes through our neighborhood riding on the back of a John Deere tractor!

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We add luminaries to our fun arches:



And this year we were invited to participate in the acting out of the nativity



Braden was Herod the King, Andrew was Nephi, Delainey was an angel, and Chase was one of the three kings!! Our hosts have wonderful costumes for the actors and it's a fun time!

What a great way to end the year!

Homeschool happenings

After months of computer issues and trying a bit of this and a bit of that unsuccessfully, a refinance of our home allowed us to use that "skipped" mortgage payment to get a new computer!! So with a new computer and a nifty little kodak sharing device that will hopefully allow me to upload pictures easily, we rejoin the photo portion of blogging!! Since I haven't posted any pictures of our homeschool adventures I thought I would share a quick overview...

Art with dad



Moon rocks at the Kennedy Space Center



Pyramids for Ancient Egypt



Recycled creations



Sorting the animal kingdom



This is definitely a new adventure and we're learning different things every day, but overall I think we're happy and will keep on keeping on!

Proud Mom

Andrew is playing JV basketball and has been getting some good playing time and playing well. Recently football season ended and 4 guys from the football team were added to the team. That always adds some awkward time while the team readjusts and often the football players take a few starting spots and take up playing time opportunities.

At the game on Monday, Andrew had a tough game. Basically just lost the mental game and was very frustrated. After the game he commented "it's too bad I'm going to miss the game on Friday." News to me. "Why are you going to miss the game on Friday?" "Temple Mom!" The youth have a temple trip on Friday. I had just assumed that he wasn't going because of the game since it is fairly common for mutual and things like that to be taken over by the basketball season. I related my surprise and told him what I had thought and he said, "Yeah, but mom, it's the temple."

Very proud of my young man making the best choice. Basketball is very important to Andrew so giving up playing time is a pretty big thing. I'm so glad he is choosing to place the Lord first.