Winter Formal, Avery's First Orchestra Concert, Christmas Break

Since the last post, we celebrated Thanksgiving, started the second trimester of the school year, had all the December festivities including the Winter formal for the boys and Avery's orchestra concert, and then we had Christmas! Gabe also got his wisdom teeth out at the start of Christmas break! Josh went to New Orleans for a work training for about 4 days. Now it is New Year's Eve tomorrow and we will be back to school before we know it! :( Here are some details!

Thanksgiving

I don't even have any pictures of Thanksgiving. We basically went to Janell's house and had lunch there with all of Josh's family. We played some car games and ate a lot of food, but we were back home by about 4:00. While we were over there, I had a turkey cooking in our oven at home, so when we got home we were able to have a second Thanksgiving meal. I felt like it was pretty convenient having it at Janell's house. I vote we do that every year. It's a lot better than everyone driving out to Brad and Diane's house. It's kind of funny that they built this new house with a big basement and everything, but we don't really go there for holiday get-togethers anymore. Honestly, Josh's family is just getting so big that I wonder how much longer we will even all get together with the whole extended family. All the girls that were the oldest grandkids are starting to get married and have kids of their own, so it's just going to keep getting bigger and bigger over the next few years. Eventually, it will have to get to the point where we say, "Okay... everyone is just doing their own family holidays," and grandma and grandpa can make the rounds to whichever house they want to go to. Anyways! So Thanksgiving was fine and the I did some online shopping. We did go to Idaho Falls on Black Friday but only for a couple hours from about 10am - 2pm. Caleb was on this Funk-o-pop kick this year. He wanted to go to a game shop in the mall and look at their sales. He ended up getting quite a few of those for Christmas too. They were all less than $10 a piece and some were even less, so it was a fun, cheap thing for him to get.

Second Trimester

We started the second trimester of school right after Thanksgiving break. I have to say, this was probably the saddest I've ever been to switch to a new group of students for second trimester. I really liked the majority of my first-trimester students. My fifth hour was a little crazy, but that was it. Now I have all new classes for second tri, with about 50 percent of the original students remaining, but they are all shuffled around among different class periods. It's just a weird adjustment. Some kids that were really quiet in their first tri classes are now super loud in their new classes. It all depends on which friends are in the same class as them. It's like, you never know what you're going to get when you start a new tri. I still daydream every day about not working next year. :) We will see if I can actually make that happen.

Winter Formal

Both of the boys actually asked girls to the winter formal! This was the first dance that they both went to. Gabe asked his "friend" Evelyn. (We really don't know what's going on there, but he insists that are just friends.) Caleb asked this girl named Brielle, who actually really is just his friend. I think she wants to be more than his friend, but he doesn't. Caleb ended up going in a group with Colter Summers and his date, Josie Riley. It was just the four of them. They had my friend Claire take their pictures at about 2:00, and then they made gingerbread houses at our house, went to Fat Cats, went to Da Pineapple Grill for dinner, and then went to the dance. Gabe's group was a lot bigger. I think there ended up being about 6 couples. They went ice skating in Idaho Falls, went to Fuji for dinner came back and split up while everyone got ready, and then had pictures in the clubhouse with Claire and went to the dance. I think they all had a really fun time. I was glad that Gabe went with Evelyn and all his best friends (except Amos, who didn't go) and they all seemed to have a good time. 

Avery's First Viola Concert

Avery just started playing the viola this year and it's been really good for her. She still is pretty new at it and doesn't always know every note, but she's grown a lot and is getting better every day. She had her first concert on December 7th. Her teacher, Mrs. Loveland, also teaches the 5th graders, 6th graders (Avery's grade), and the 7th graders, so the concert had 3 separate groups. Avery's group went second and each group did about 4 songs. The high school auditorium was PACKED. It was the most full I've ever seen it. Madison has a really strong orchestra program, and Mrs. Loveland is the reason. She's so good with the kids. Avery loves her! I don't know if Avery is super excited about the viola, but she loves Mrs. Loveland and the class is fun with all her friends, so she will probably stick with it at least through the end of this year. We will see about next year! She did great at the concert though and I think she was excited to be on stage and perform with everyone. Josh was gone to New Orleans for work during that week, so it was just me, Gabe, and Caleb. 

Christmas Festivities

The two weeks before Christmas are always pretty fun at school. I had to participate in the junior high Wish Assembly this year just for a brief moment. A student had submitted a wish for me to "hit the griddy", so I went up and made these three boys come up and do it too. It was 3 ninth graders I had last year, Daxx Edstrom, Payton Kostial, and Brennen Dredge. They were quite the characters. I even let Avery skip school that day and come to the junior high with me so she could watch Mrs. Loveland compete in the Hope Squad teacher games. (I was very happy to have a break from that this year.) Avery liked being in my classroom all day and playing little games. Classes were only 20 minutes and then the assembly was from 10:45 - 11:45, so it was a fun day! She keeps telling me, "You better not quit next year!" But we will see... The ideal would be if I could find a part-time job at the junior high that still paid decent, but who knows. Those seem impossible to come by. 

Gabe's Wisdom Teeth

Maybe we were a little dumb when we scheduled it, but Gabe never wants to miss any school, so we scheduled for him to get his wisdom teeth out on Friday, December 22. He needed to have this done before he could get his mission paperwork ready (which is crazy that we are already to that point in life) so we decided to do it over the Christmas break. He ended up not really being able to eat anything good for the next week, which was kind of a bummer for Christmas. He didn't have any big problems with his teeth though, so that was good. He ate smoothies and yogurt and then Ramen noodle soup a lot. Now it's been just over a week and he's finally starting to eat normal food again. He didn't act crazy when he was coming off the drugs, which was a major disappointment to everyone. I was hoping to get some entertaining videos, but it didn't happen. He swelled up a little bit on the second and third day, so he didn't want us taking any family pictures for Christmas. I kind of regret not taking any. I did take one of the kids in front of the tree the day after Christmas, but none of us dressed up on Christmas Eve Sunday! Gabe didn't even go to church that day, so it felt weird taking a family picture without Gabe!

Christmas

On Christmas Eve, we had church from 1:30-2:30. Avery sang with the primary for the last time ever! Then, we stayed home and had our Christmas dinner of ham, rolls, orange jello, mashed potatoes, and more. Gabe couldn't eat the ham, so he was sad about that. Then we made gingerbread houses and watched the movie "Noelle." On Christmas morning, Caleb and Avery woke us up at exactly 8:01am (we had told them not before 8:00) and we woke up Gabe and then went downstairs and opened presents. This was the first Christmas in our new house and it was the first Christmas where none of our children believed in Santa Claus anymore. :( It was a little different and a little less exciting, but I guess that's getting old for you! Next year, Gabe will most likely be on his mission, and I think I might try to sell Avery and Caleb on going on a trip. I always think the perfect Christmas would be getting on plane and going to Hawaii or someplace warm. We will see! For gifts, Avery got lots of L.O.L. stuff again and some little art projects. She also got lots of clothes (and then I returned half of them the next day). She is 11, but I think we need to start shopping in the juniors department because I bought her some size 16 dresses and we had to return them because they were too small. Caleb got lots of Funk-o-pops, some new Nikes, clothes, and some gift cards to Fat Cats, McDonald's, and Wendy's. Gabe got gift cards too, some clothes, a set of two suitcases for his mission next year (exciting!), a new Play Station remote, and some other stuff. He's so hard to shop for. Santa just wrapped up a $100 bill in a box! ;) At 2:00 on Christmas afternoon, we went to see the movie "The Boys in the Boat." We have been reading that book in my class and I was pretty bummed that the movie didn't follow the book as closely as I hoped it would. Josh thought it was really good (but he hasn't read the book)! We have spent the rest of this week off school just relaxing, taking down the 3 Christmas trees and decorations, returning things, and hanging out at home. Today, we finally made it down to Idaho Falls and went ice skating as a family, which has kind of become one of our yearly Christmas break traditions. Gabe made the observation that, "We as a family are pretty naturally talented at ice skating. We are way better than the majority of the other people here." 

Anyways, I need to wrap this up because Avery is yelling at me to come finish watching the movie "Ice Princess." Caleb and all his friends are currently upstairs playing the Play Station and Gabe and all of them are getting ready to go to the multi-stake New Year's Dance tonight at the Hart building. New Years is actually tomorrow, but they can't do the dance on a Sunday! ;) So, that's all for now!