Wii Fun

We, especially Susannah, enjoy playing the Wii.

She tends to get a little obsessed with playing it and "leveling up" or unlocking new things in the games. We got our brother the Wii Music game and we (along with my mother) have had more fun playing it than he has! Here's Susannah doing some clapping.

Here she is on the piano. It really is quite a fun game if anyone is looking for Wii game recommendations.

Joseph City

Joseph City is the best place in the world. It is by no means the most beautiful, but it has the best people in the world. It is my hometown and was my home base for my first 24 years of life. My dad and I took a little road trip down there for a few days right after Christmas.We hit some serious snow in New Mexico and my windshield wiper fluid froze so I had a pretty nasty windshield.

My dad had to get out at a stop and pour some of his water bottle on the windshield so we could see!

After getting settled at Aunt Karen's house, we headed over to Kristal's white elephant gift exchange. Here are a few of the people - well, most of the people at the party.Kristal was the recipient of my gift - I'd been saving it for years: Mr. T soap on a rope. Is that not the coolest? I pity the fool who doesn't think so!I got Trina's gift - a Redneck briefcase. It really was made out of men's underwear.My dad got a reindeer that poops out jelly beans. The funniest thing about this is that Susannah and I had already got it for him and put it in his stocking. It's okay, though. Someone stole that from my dad for part of the game and he got some fancy mustard and ketchup dispensers instead.

After the party, this group of us went to the Denny's and then to the Hunt's house for a game of "what if."

We had to get a class of '95 shot with me, Trina, and Paul.

The next day I went to Flagstaff with the Mulders. There had been a lot of snow there. You can see how high it was in comparison to that trash can. Yikes!

I caught the end of some of Kristal's car dancing. She, Jason, and Susannah are the best car dancers ever. I could watch them all day.

We ate at a place called Oregano's which was really good. I got a shot of their cute family before we went in. Don't ask me why none of them are wearing coats - it was in the 20s!

They did bundle up for some sledding. We dropped these guys off to play in the snow while Kristal, myself and Boston went shopping at the after Christmas sales.

I had to get a quick snow picture of myself before we took off.

The theme of my whole Christmas vacation so far (besides fun and relaxing) has been COLD! It was cold in San Angelo and it was very cold in AZ. Here's the bed I slept in at Aunt Karen's in JC. Look how thick the blankets were. I needed them all too!

I saw tons of my favorite people at church on Sunday, but ran out of time to take pictures of them all. We headed out right after sacrament meeting. I had to sneak this quick picture of my very dirty car. I think a car washing party is in order. Future post alert.

My dad was kind enough to humor me and take this picture at the AZ border. Thanks to my dad for being my travel buddy!

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. For this post I just thought I'd share some of the goings on while we were visiting with our family over the holiday.

One of our favorite traditions is "the Holy City" song about Jerusalem. My mom plays it on the piano while Adam and Dad play it using some sort of instrument. Susannah and I usually butcher the singing part of it since it's a very high song and neither of us are sopranos!
I shot some video for your viewing and listening pleasure.

Quite awhile ago, my dad built a porch cover in my backyard. I've wanted to get the posts bricked in forever now, but we've had issues with getting bricks. The good news is - we now have bricks! Yahoo!

My dad got a new toy for his birthday. The Giant got him a rocket launcher thing-a-ma-jig that we all had fun playing with.

Here's a fantastic "almost" catch by Susannah. She actually had gotten quite a few of them previous to me getting my camera out. Bad luck!

My mom really enjoyed holding our neighbor's baby, Liam, during th e latter part of the rocket launcher play.

My dad was having fun playing with their daughter, Audrey. They'r e fun kids and they love my parents!

Fun neighbors are a great substitute for grandkids, right? S orry, Mom and Dad!

This is a great example of movie watching at our house. Actually, the best example would have been just seconds before I shot this picture. My mom was also asleep. Susannah and my mom both have this problem where they can't stay awake in a movie to save their lives. Adam's in the middle, but he saw me with the camera just before I too k the picture. Dang!

We had a fun treat this holiday season. Megan came out to join us for Christmas even though she'd had a wreck in her car the day before. What a trooper! It was fun to have here.

On Christmas Eve we went to the light show that San Angelo puts on every year. They set up a bunch of cool displays along the river. I forgot my real camera so Megan was nice enough to take a picture with my phone.

I don't have a flash on the phone, but if you stand really close to the lights, it works just about the same!

Megan brought us some Macadamia nut pancake/waffle mix and I got a waffle maker for Christmas so we had some yummy waffles Christmas morning. Look how cute those little waffles are!

We had a bunch of people over for Christmas dinner - including the neighbors again. Liam had the cutest little outfit. There was a picture of a horse on the front and there were two little horses on his feet. We LOVED the tail on the back, though. This has been a fun trip.

Traveling

All 3 Bushman kids traveled to San Angelo for the Christmas break. Adam's trip proved to be more eventful than ours did.

He, Dionna, and another girl from Midland loaded up in Adam's car to head from Provo to west Texas. They had barely started driving when Adam noticed smoke coming out of the steering wheel! He looked closer and saw flame! They pulled over, got out, got all their stuff out, and called 911. The fire department came and put the car out. My cousin, Daylen, came and got the kids (and snapped this picture with his phone). Miraculously, my Uncle Blaine was in the area and heading back to Texas that day so the kids hitched a ride with him and they made it! The car's totalled!

Our trip was very much less eventful. The highlight of our trip was this sunset. It was incredible.
I actually have a shot with a better background, but it was a hideous picture of me, so this one will have to do.Here are both of us and poor Susannah's little burn - yes it's a burn- on her neck. She got a new hair straightener and forgot that it was hot! :)

Holiday Fun at School

I've been posting a lot of school things lately, but we've had a bunch of fun holiday stuff going on.

First of all, we had dress-up days all week last week. I loved Kara's Rudolph day outfit. She was so cute. Most of the kids that dressed up had red noses and antlers, but her mom went all out with the brown clothes and the big white spot on her tummy. Cute!

For our parent gift this year, we made plates that the kids could use for "cookies for Santa." They were Janelle's idea. Kirsten came and helped my class make the plates. She's finished with student teaching and doesn't start her actual teaching job until January. Susannah and I were glad to have her help in both of our classrooms!

Here's a close-up of 3 of the finished plates. I think they turned out so cute!

I wrapped them up along with some of the Christmassy work we've been doing in class. Kirsten helped us with this wrapping paper. I have some fun stamps the kids used on butcher paper. I tied two ornaments on the outside - a foam one and these cute glass ones we made.

Here's a close-up of one of the little ornaments. I painted the kids' fingers with white paint and we stamped them on to make the snowman. I added glitter and puffy paint and . . . voila!

It was Polar Express day on the last day of school before the break. Those of you who have been reading blog for awhile may remember that last year we brought in snow. This year, we brought in a train. Here are my kids waiting to board.

This is another class riding the train then stopping to get their picture with Santa. The train fit perfectly on our track on the playground.

Here are some of my students inside one of the train cars. It was really cute and fun.

Here are my kiddos getting their picture with Santa.

Some of the kids ate lunch with me for good behavior. After they finished eating, they wanted to dance so I turned on some party music. Luke had some moves!

We also watched the Polar Express movie in between all the other stuff going on. I couldn't resist getting a picture with my class again. It was a pajama day - love it!

We had our class parties in the afternoon. There were tons of people there helping out. The kids had a great time.

Friday was Alex's last day at our school. They're moving to Colorado! I'll miss him!

This is just a fun random shot of Abraham in our backyard playing with the airsoft gun we got him for Christmas. We had to have a little tournament and, yes, he won . . . barely. Sadly, I came in 3rd. Both he and Susannah beat me!

Recap

My friend, Richard just sent me a link to this youtube video. I think the Church made it as sort of a reminder of some of the things talked about at General Conference! I love it!

Weekend Fun!

I had a great weekend. Our ward had an activity where we met and then headed down to "Lights in the Heights" near downtown Houston.

This was our little carpool group of fun girls.

Katherine's mom and sisters came. They brought her this cool Santa hat with the beard and all.

This was some of our ward group that came.

The houses along several blocks in "the heights" are all decorated. There are lots of people playing live music on their porches or selling hot chocolate etc. It's a really fun atmosphere. If you look closely in the window of this house, you'll see the leg lamp from a Christmas story. It made me laugh pretty hard.

I shot this quick little video of a band playing some 80s music. They were really good!We also saw an awesome 3 man jazz band. Kirsten had the hots for the base player so Nate talked her into leaving him her number on a little paper. We also snagged a card.

Our staff Christmas party was also this weekend! It was a lot of fun. My teammate, Janelle hosted it at her house. She did a GREAT job. Upstairs she had a kareoke machine. My teammates got a little rowdy on it. Kristie and Amanda were hilarious.I loved this shot of them singing.

Kristie was so into it, that she sang without the music! She actually loves this song and busted out singing it at one of our team meetings.

Snow in Houston!

We had quite the surprise on Wednesday in the Houston area.

I've lived here for almost 8 years. Up until Wednesday, it had snowed only once since I've lived here and it was very brief (in 2004) and didn't stick at all. The weather has been so weird here. Tuesday was so hot and it's really warm again today. That's Houston for you! We had our first grade team party on the snow day. Amanda was so excited! Having grown up in Texas, it's easy to see why!

We had to get a team picture out in the snow . . . in our pajamas. We even had a little snowball fight.

I headed home after that and took a few more pictures. Our next door neighbor always goes all out with the decorating. His yard looked so nice with the snow.

I got a big kick out of seeing snow on the palm trees. Seems a bit ironic.

Our poor garden got covered. I rushed out and picked 10 bell peppers off the plant and our biggest canteloupe.