One of Andrew's elective classes this year is band. His band teacher reminds me a lot of my old band teacher when I first started playing the flute in 4th grade. Andrew's band teacher, Phil Stonebarger, spent the first two weeks of school talking to the students about all of the instruments and then having them try the different mouth pieces so they could find not only what they liked but what they would be good at. Apparently Andrew has a great trumpet sound so Andrew choose to play the trombone. At first we thought to ourselves, "How is this kid going to take that big instrument back and forth between home and school?" Somehow it didn't seem to bother him and after starting to learn how to play the instrument we realized that he truly had a gift for playing this brass instrument. Today was Andrew's first band concert and it was so much fun to see how he and all the other beginning players picked up playing their instruments in only 2 months.
December 6, 2012
Dr. Shupe, who is one of the Orthopedic Surgeons at the hospital and a good friend, went to Peter's classroom to do a cast demonstration. Peter got to be the one to get the cast put on his arm. He was so excited about it and was proud of his fake cast for most of the day. Eventually it started to itch and he realized it wasn't that great afterall. Nevertheless, he was a good sport about it and slept with it one night before getting it taken off.
December 6, 2012
Since most of the Christmas gifts were already purchased by the beginning of December I wanted to try something new that would encourage family togetherness during the entire month. So, a new tradition was born with the 24 Days of Gifts in a Bucket. Of course this was not my idea and I am pretty sure I found it off of Pinterest but I did come up with my own list of items for the gifts. We ended up starting a week late because I wasn't quite ready by the first of December and some of the items had to be rearranged but here is my list:
6. Christmas movie -
Kung Fu Panda Holiday DVD (new)
7. Pick names for family gift exchange
8. Christmas book - new one
9. New board game
10. Hot chocolate and toast before bed
11. Christmas book - old one
12. Christmas movie - Home Alone
13. Board game
14. Make gingerbread houses
15. Playdoh
16. Christmas movie and popcorn - The Santa clause
17. Make yummy holiday rice Krispy treat balls for FHE
18. Hot chocolate and toast before bed
19. Christmas movie and popcorn - Miracle on 34th street
20. Christmas book
21. Family ice skating
22. Missionary lunch with Murata family and Hiroko
23. Sing Christmas hymns and watch movie - It's a wonderful
life
24. Decorate sugar cookies and Nativity program
December 8, 2012
This year we attended the Festival of Trees to see the tree that our church put together. Most of the trees were from the different military units on base so to have a tree from a religious organization was pretty spectacular. We were so happy that we got approved to put up a tree. Our tree's theme was, "Christmas is Family." The Relief Society got pictures of each of the families and put them into frames to hang on the tree. They also put together paper ornaments with written Christmas traditions from several of the families in our ward. It was pretty awesome.
December 17, 2012
One of our gifts in the bucket had ingredients for decorating gingerbread houses. This year I used graham crackers to create the houses hoping that it would be easier than baking gingerbread. It was a huge time saver but trying to cut out the peaked sides of the house proved to be challenging. Let's just say that I went through many crackers and the ones that did end up working weren't perfect. The kids still had fun decorating their not so perfect houses and eating some of the candy along the way.
December 18, 2012
Andrew achieved his first rank of Tenderfoot in Boy Scouts as well as his Family Life merit badge. We are so proud of all that he has accomplished as a first year Boy Scout. It has been fun to see Mike and Andrew working together in Scouts this year.
December 31, 2012
Just after Christmas we all got a new surprise... the new WiiU. Mike had wanted to get it for Christmas for everyone but the NEX was out so he waited until they had more after Christmas. It was a huge hit as 5 people could play at one time in all new and fun Wii games.
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