Wednesday, December 14th
My grandma came up to visit for a few hours. It was nice to see her, but I wish the visit could have lasted longer. We went out for lunch. This is a picture of us at the restaurant. The waitress was kind enough to take it for us. It is a 4 generation line up. My little guy David, me, my mom and my grandma. Back at home, she left Christmas gifts for us and I gave her a Christmas gift as well. It was the DIY gift that I wrote about in my last post. She liked it a lot.
That evening, I had a primary presidency meeting and Ashley had activity days. At our meeting we prepared all the lesson manuals for 2017.
Friday, December 16th
Before school, we gave Emily’s teachers their Christmas gifts, plus a gift for Emily’s little friend. I enjoy teaching our kids the love of giving gifts to others and the thoughtfulness that can be put into gift giving.
That morning, I was originally going to drop Emily and Christian off at school first and then bring Ashley, but I had a feeling that I should do it the other way around….and I’m glad I did! When I was coming out of the school and walking down the path to the parking lot, a little boy was running across the play ground toward the parking lot. Some of the other parents looked, but did not do anything. As I walked past a dad and his daughter, I told him to go into the office and tell them that they have a runner. I started running after the boy with my 2 year in tow! We ran through the drop-off parking lot and out to the side-walk, where I caught the boy about 6 ft. away from the main intersection. He had been crying for his mom. I gave him a hug and told him we would go into the school and they could call his mom for him. Glad I was in the right place at the right time.
Emily’s school had their Christmas sing-a-long this morning . I was glad I was able to go to it. The song that Emily’s class sang was, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” She was happy to see me, and I was glad to see her too.
I had some spare time in between Emily’s sing-a-long and Ashley’s sing-a-long, so I went to the store to pick up a few things and then I headed over to the school that I used to work at. It is in the next town over. I worked there for 2 years, right up until the month before David was born. I didn’t have a whole lot of time, but I was able to visit with a couple of old co-workers and one of my old students. While I was in the office talking with one of the secretaries, a parent who was waiting for their child overhead me talking about Ashley’s school’s sing-a-long that I was about to go to. The parent questioned me about it, and it turns out he has a son in the same grade at the same school. He had not known about the sing-a-long and he said he would head right over to the school. 
Then it was on to Ashley’s school sing-a-long. I saw that dad there singing with his son, and I’m glad he was able to make it to the sing-a-long. Ashley had fun. She said it was kind of funny to hear all the kids in the school singing at the same time. This was more of an actual sing-a-long, where the entire student body as well as the staff and parents all sang at the same time. Both the girls dressed up for their sing-a-longs.
That evening was our church’s Christmas party. The boys had a basketball game, so my husband went with them to watch the game. The primary children did a short Christmas play, while the story of Christ’s birth was read from the scriptures. Here are Sharon and Emily, two of the angels. You can tell that Emily was nervous. I was proud of her for doing this. It was definitely out of her comfort zone.
Here is Ashley with her one of her best friends, Tayli. Ashley was one of the narrators and Tayli was a shepherd. Ashley was going to be an angel (which I think Emily would have preferred to have her big sister with her). But one of the 5th grade girls was too shy to narrate, so last Sunday at church, Ashley volunteered to do it.
I had a friend in the audience taking pictures for me…and she caught me in one! Most of the time, I was behind the girls just in case they needed help. I was very proud of Ashley. She ended up narrating pretty much the whole Christmas play and she is only in 3rd grade. The other girl who was narrating (bless her heart), lost her place for just a few seconds. After that, she did not want to go back on stage. I gave her a hug and told her that no one probably noticed, but she still didn’t want to go back up.Thanks Ashley for taking over and narrating the rest of the play!
Here are the angels. Emily is the small angel over here on the far right. She is my shy girl…..at least in situations like these anyway! I’m glad that she went on stage. ? It was good experience for her.
After the play, they showed Mr. Krueger’s Christmas. I’ve never seen it before. I think I will have us watch it as a family sometime. After the movie when the lights were turned on, there were 3 men dressed as wisemen sitting in different parts of the audience. Everyone followed them out the chapel into the gym where they had an area set up to give gifts to the kids. Instead of giving out gold, frankincense and myrrh, these wisemen gave out stuffed animals, scripture coloring books and candy canes. My kids thought it was pretty cool, because as part of their Mexican heritage, we celebrate Día de los Santos Reyes.
Can you tell they had a good time?! What a fun little bunch to spend the evening with!