Old Pictures

First of all, I love pictures. For a nice Sunday activity today we were looking at about a million pictures my mom brought back from her mom's house. The house is in the process of being sold and my Grandma has moved in with my Aunt Norma. Everyone's in the process of kind of going through and dividing up her stuff. Anyway, I just snapped some pictures of some of her pictures that I loved.

This picture is of my Grandpa Evans. He's in the middle. It appears that he and his friend are torturing this lovely young woman. I love this picture!

This is my Grandpa again. He's on the left. I'm not sure who the other guy is. My Grandpa passed away in 1985.

Here's a hilarious picture of my mom when she was little.

Here she is with her mom!

I love this 70s picture of my parents. My dad had A LOT of hair! This was taken on Maui - one of my very favorite places.

I had to include these two "grumpy" kid pictures of myself. I had actually never seen either of these before. I like this one because it shows my cast from when I broke my ankle.

My mom says I had been eating dirt just prior to this picture.

I LOVE this picture of Susannah and myself! It's another Maui favorite.

I had to include this picture of the cutest kid EVER! I don't know how he survived. It seems like he would have been squeezed to death for being as cute as he was! He's not so giant in this picture!

Christmas Antics

Depending on how well you know my parents, you may or may not know that they're both hilarious!

Here's my dad wearing the shirt I got him for his birthday. It's rare to get my dad smiling in a picture. Either he won't look at the camera, will look bored, or will make a face. Some of my current friends possess this same characteristic.
After Christmas dinner, my mom decided not to waste any of the leftover beverages. Don't worry, it's Martinellis!

Perhaps the thing that is currently the most entertaining is watching my parents play the Wii. They're actually really good at it. Here they are playing Excite Truck Racing - a game in which my mom has frequently "leveled up."

They're pretty competitive. Here, my mom is doing a serious turbo jump! We laugh when we watch, but we look just the same. There's video posted below of them playing.

For Christmas someone from San Angelo gave our family some Christmas crackers (not the edible kind). Inside each popper was a prize, a joke, and a beautiful tissue paper crown. Here we model our crowns. Even Ruffian joined in the fun. Don't mind us in our PJs on Christmas morning!

Tandem Bike

My dad was at a yard sale a month or so ago and saw a tandem bike. He was going to buy it, but there was another lady there who also wanted it. He was there first, but, being the nice guy that he is, said he'd do "paper, rock, scissors" for the bike. He lost, so she got it. Susannah then had the fantastic idea to get a tandem bike for our parents for Christmas! She looked on Ebay, won an auction for a brand new bike in Houston that was already packaged. We fit it in her Honda Accord and brought it to the parents' house in San Angelo!

Next, we found a hidden spot in the backyard and instructed the parents they were not allowed outside anymore.
We thought we'd be able to do it all on our own, but were super grateful to our brother, the giant, who helped us a whole lot. Also, thanks to Adam Warr via phone for the tips.

Sus and I tried to take a picture of ourselves with the finished bike on Christmas Eve, but it was already too dark to get the bike in the picture really.

Early Christmas morning - okay, it was 7:00 - while my parents were out taking a walk, we brought the bike in in front of the tree to surprise them. They were pleasantly surprised!

After some adjustments, they took it out for a spin!

They're a couple of pros, I tell you! Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad!

December Farewells

This is sort of an update to my "abandoned" post earlier. I mentioned that Adam and Joe were leaving this month. Adam has already headed to ID, even though he's coming back for a week in January, and Joe leaves this coming Sunday. Here are a few pictures of our "final moments."

Since Adam was done teaching, he came to "help" in our classrooms for a few hours. I found him in my sister's classroom reading a book in her book nook. Pretty funny. She was out at dismissal with her kiddos.

Abraham's not leaving (knock on wood), but this picture was too funny for me not to put in.

This was the night before Adam flew out. We gave he and Abraham their little Christmas presents. This picture is actually the fourth one of its kind. These guys have adopted the annoying habit of making weird faces in just about every picture. I have to be really sneaky to get a fairly normal one. I'm really proud of this one!

Joe came over for a visit. We actually got him some pajama pants for Christmas to remedy the issue of him sleeping in his work clothes. I may get in trouble for posting these pictures, but if so, I claim rights based on the "water bottle" incident.

Joe's a really good sport and will often humor our weird requests . . . like requests for a fashion show with his new pajama pants. He came up with the poses himself.

We also got him some Superman PJs which he was quite fond of.

AWWWWWW!

Here's some video of him coming out in the Superman pants.

Snow in Texas!

We had a school-wide Polar Express day at our school on Thursday. It was a lot of fun for the kids. The teachers were really tired at the end of the day!

We had conductors that punched the kids' tickets. This is a picture of Scott, one of the kindergarten teacher's husbands. He's hilarious and will probably kill me for posting this.

The Polar Express committee went way out to decorate for the festivities. They made a train car at the main entrance of the school.

Perhaps the most over the top thing was that 4 families donated money to have snow brought to our school for the kids to play in. It was a lot of fun. They only got about 10 minutes in it, but it was great anyway. Some of my students had never seen snow since it doesn't really snow down here. It was about 80 degrees outside when this picture was taken!

Twins

We're not actually twins as you can easily see - we may as well be - our lives are just about exactly the same. I'm blessed to have my sister so much a part of my life.

This last week of school before Christmas vacation we had a lot of dress up days. One of them was for you to get a buddy and dress like them. Susannah and I have the same style and end of buying the same clothes sometimes . . . the exact same clothes. We even have matching bracelets and earrings in this picture. Our shoes are even the same! The sad thing is, that this was pretty easy and we could have done this with more than one outfit.

It's funny, every year I have to explain to the kids that no, it's not weird that we're both named "Ms. Bushman." They think our parents are psychotic for naming us the same thing.

Christmas Music

Chad and Jessica

Snowball Fight #2

Had to do one with the friends too!
Non-Crappy Starring You! eCards on JibJab

Snowball Fight

Here's the family in a serious snowball fight!
Non-Crappy Starring You! eCards on JibJab

Abandoned

This post is going to be my complaining for the week. Everyone seems to like to move away from us. Since I've been in Texas, it seems to be a recurring theme. I've decided to list my really good friends who have moved or are moving away. If I forgot anyone, I'm sorry! My list is pretty long.
First, Whitney. He was one of the first friends I made in Houston. He moved to College Station, TX to go to medical school. From there to Temple, TX and then he got married and moved to Pennsylvania.

In the middle is Allison. She was here to go to Physical Therapy school. Once she finished, she headed back to California. This picture was when she met us in Belize!

Brad was next to go. He, Whitney, Allison, and I used to hang out all the time. Brad left to go to law school in San Antonio.

We made friends with Brady. He's actually still in the Houston area, but down south. We don't see him anymore because he's married.

Dan passed the Bar Exam, moved to Bryan, TX to be a lawyer and from there went on to UT.

Jeremy moved, got married, and is living in one of the Carolinas.

Elliott got transfered to the Dallas area for his job. They then transfered him to Louisiana, and he's now back in Utah.

Jessica is one of my first friends in Houston as well. She left to get her MBA at BYU.

Sevy was here during the summers and Christmas breaks when he was off from SVU. He's now married.

Travis headed to Utah for a better job offer. He helped us through one of the biggest Christmas tree fiascoes ever!

Paris decided to go back to school as well. He's at BYU.

We knew Jeff was leaving to go on his mission, but were surprised to hear that his brother Richard was heading back to UT for work and probably to find a wife!

Aah, the Mulders, our Joseph City friends who didn't actually live in the Houston area. They were in Dallas for Jason's chiropractic school. We'd visit them and they'd visit us every so often. They moved back to AZ when he graduated.

Chris went off to school at Baylor.

Joe moved back to California.

And now, we hear that two of our current Houston friends are moving this month! The other Joe is headed to grad school at BYU.

Adam is going to KOREA to teach English! As you can see, I have good reason to complain! No one else better abandon us!

Sumo

We had a big metro activity last weekend that featured inflatable sumo suits. We sure enjoyed ourselves.

Susannah was one of the first. She wrestled Cynthia.

The suits are not so flattering. Susannah warmed up with some serious stretching.

She was kind enough to help me get suited up for my match with Abraham. He killed me.

Here, fierce competitors Jen and Bradford get ready to face off.

Bishop and Sister Chappell even got in on the fun.

Their match was probably more fun than ours were.

Despite the fun, there were several injuries. Ethan and Jeremy suited up and ran at each other at full speed. They hit so hard that their heads knocked together. Jeremy's chin was split open pretty badly. Ethan bit a big hole in his lip.

I either broke or sprained my pinkie toe! Ouch! It got worse that that too. I know, I probably need a pedicure! Another guy at the activity got a concussion from being knocked down so hard. I think his head got whipped down. Overall fun though!