Polar Express & Party Day

The last two days of school before Christmas vacation are always a little crazy.

On Thursday, the whole school had Polar Express day. It was cold and rainy, but we still rode the Polar Express. This is my class with Santa just before the ride.

We all fit into 3 cars and I had to take a quick picture of each car.

They were really excited.

I sat in this car and held a giant umbrella since it was raining outside and this one didn't have a roof.

I love this shot of a couple of the kids hanging out the window. Sadly first grade had to go last - the last hour of the day and I must have been asked a million times when we were going to get to ride the train! :)

We had early release on Friday, but also had our party. They made little snowmen out of donut holes. This one made a little guy instead. She wanted me to take a picture of it for her.

Surprise!

I had a great surprise the other evening. I was at the Cypress Stake Center for a fireside for temple workers and I looked up into the choir and saw who I thought looked like my mission president and his wife. When the fireside was over, I waited as the choir came down. I was right!

I was very excited to see President and Sister Bray. I thought it was especially cool that it happened just after my 10 year anniversary from being home from my mission!

Ugly Sweater Party

The weekend before last we had a great party. It was actually 3 parties rolled into one! 1. Ugly (holiday) sweaters. 2. Fondue. 3. White elephant gift exchange.

We had quite the fondue spread. We had two kinds of cheese fondue, two broths, and two chocolate kinds. We had all sorts of stuff to dip in it as well! Yum!

The ugly sweaters were incredible. Here are some of my favorite girls with our ugly sweaters.

Katherine's mom brought her that cool apron, hat and even some holiday socks. She was sporting all sorts of stuff.

She had to switch hats after awhile and this was not the only time it happened. She's got quite the hat collection. She had to give them all some time to be seen.

I had to get one of her sweater. She turned this side to the back since she was wearing her apron. It was definitely . . . interesting.

Nate found this little number at a thrift store, but told me that if he bought it, I had to wear it to school the next week. I did . . . for a little while.

Kim's sweater actually won the prize for the ugliest sweater. Those two rabbits are under the mistletoe and all around the sleeves are little baby bunnies. Interesting!

I just thought I'd get some pictures of what the folks looked like. Here are Jen and Stacie.

Rachael and Mauren.

Katie and Candice.

Jared and Wendy.

Aaron and Julie.

It was also great to have Katherine's family there. Her mom and two sisters joined in on the fun.

Julie and Jared brought a cane with mistletoe attached to it. Here's Julie trying to look innocent, but in reality, she was trying all sorts of tricks to get some kissing going on.

Success! Bryson got Katherine on the cheek.

Julie was trying to Aaron to show some love, but he wasn't having it. It was pretty fun. She tried this with several people.

My ugly cardigan was so big that I made the statement that I bet two people could fit in it. Katherine was kind enough to try it out. It was big enough!

Here's the side view.

This was Julie's white elephant gift. It was in a ceramic cow that said for the winner of that gift to break it afterward. This note was rolled up with a $10 bill. It cracked me up.

After most of the people left, we watched Elf and then, for some reason, decided it would be a good idea to gang up and wrestle Nate.

We could hardly do a darn thing to him, but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed it.

Snow!

For the 3rd time in the 8 1/2 years that I've lived here, we got snow! It started pretty close to 8:00 am. It just quit a few minutes ago, and has been on and off all day.

Since most of the excitement happened while I was at work, I had my kids say it! This is how many I had left before I took them to music. 5 left during that time, so at the end of the day, I was left with 7!

This is what the kids looked like just before I filmed the video above of them. It was really cute to see how excited they were. They did get to play in it this morning. I did make them take their spelling test first, though! :)

Some of my teammates were at least, if not more, excited than my kids were.

After we dismissed the kids (an hour early) our principal had us all come out for a staff snow picture. Janelle and Tim kept throwing snow at everyone. It was hilarious. After the picture, I threw a snowball at Janelle - a little too well. It was heading straight for her face, a little harder than I meant it to be. Luckily, she saw it and deflected it! Whew!

My house looked nice and cozy when I got home.

A couple of the neighbor girls were building a snowman. When they finished, they planned on having a snowball fight.

We got the tomatoes and other garden veggies covered. I put some Christmas lights under there so they hopefully won't freeze tonight!

Look how high the snow got on the fence. This was a pretty wet snow. I wish it would have stuck a little better. No complaints, though. It's nice to see the white stuff once and a while!

Ten Years?!?!?!?

Ten years ago today I was released as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I served in the Tennessee Nashville Mission full time for 18 months.

Well, minus a couple of weeks at the beginning in the MTC in Provo, UT. This is a picture of me with my district there and one of our teachers. That was a fun group of people.

This is the "thing" to do at the MTC. Just about every missionary that goes through that place has to point to their mission on the big map. I will go ahead and warn you now, that as I was looking for pictures to post, I had a really hard time finding any that I liked for 2 main reasons - 1. It was the 90s. 2. Apparently I wasn't very cute in the 90s!

This is me in my "greenie" area (Smyrna, TN). Next to me is my "trainer" Jill Passey, and next to her is the girl who trained her. She was no longer on a mission in this picture, but had come back for a visit. We call this a 3 generation shot since greenies are often referred to as the "children" of their trainers.

I'm not exactly sure why this picture scanned crooked, but we'll go with it. The best part of being a missionary is teaching the gospel to great people. This was one of my favorite families I taught. This was in Hopkinsville, KY.

I found this interesting porch decor in my last area (Tullahoma, TN). I didn't stick any pictures of my 3rd area (Hendersonville, TN), but it was great as well.

I stuck this on here for proof of the date. Man, I feel old! I can't believe I've been home from my mission for 10 years! To learn more about what I taught as a missionary, visit THIS site!

How could I forget?

So, looking through my camera yesterday, I noticed this video that I forgot to post. Even though it's from a little while ago, it's too good not to have it on my blog!

This was at Wendy's birthday party. Julie had the GREAT idea to inhale some Helium and sing her favorite song. How could I not post this?

Jared just tagged this photo of me on Facebook so I didn't have it before. This is on the ferry as we were leaving that Galveston camping trip. I liked it, but didn't want to put it with those pictures, because I figured it wouldn't get seen.

This one also fits in that category. This is from Katherine's camera. I got this one well after I finished the post from her birthday party. I like this one better of me in my costume than the one I had originally posted, but posting this picture was a must because it has a fully body shot of Katherine as Tina Turner. She was hilarious!

Home for Thanksgiving

I had a great Thanksgiving break. I went to San Angelo to visit my parents. It was really different being the only kid at home. Adam stayed in UT and Susannah and her Adam went to Boise to be with the Warrs. I told my parents it reminded me of my first 4 years of life. :)

We had our actual Thanksgiving dinner at the Institute where my dad teaches. Since there were only 3 of us, we decided to celebrate with the Shlags, a missionary couple and several people from Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo. Here is some delicious cranberry sauce Sister Shlag made.

My mom made some great pies! ;) She stamped Texas into the apple pies she made. How festive!

No visit home is complete without games. We played what we call "Mormon Bridge." There were only 3 of us and we played up until all the cards were dealt so we each ended up with 19 cards in our hand. It was super hard to bid on!

We also played this Sudoku game that Susannah and I got my dad last Father's Day. It was actually really fun . . . if you like Sudoku!

My parents also took me to a cool place called the Chicken Farm Art Center. They kept calling it just the chicken farm when they were listing things we should do. Up until we got there, I thought we were really going to a chicken farm and I couldn't imagine why they'd be interested in going since we raised chickens for many years as I was growing up! It turned out to be more like a flea market or famers market with more artsy stuff. I bought some very good homemade jams!

They had a live band that played there. It was a really fun environment.

On the way home from San Angelo, I go through Austin. Some of my friends were there on a day trip so I met up with them for about an hour. We went to this cool look out to watch the sun set.

It was these 3. They had been looking around Austin all day. What great people they are!

Here are all 4 of us just as the sun was going down.

Here's one last shot. I took a whole lot more, but we'll stick with these!