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.

Relief Society is the BEST!

Some of the Relief Society sisters in our ward pulled together and had a great bridal shower for Michelle.

She's marrying Wes, brother to our friend, Nate. It was sort of a last minute thing, but we had a lot of fun.

I don't know why everyone else didn't get the dark pants and turquoise shirt memo, but we sure did. L-R: me, Michelle, and Megan.

Another fun RS thing is the cute gifts that our presidency made for the sisters in our ward for Christmas gifts. Susannah is such a creative little turkey. She and her presidency made little loaves of bread and some cranberry jelly. Delicious!

They wrapped them up in cellophane and stuck these stickers on them.

The cranberry jelly is actually from a recipe my sister found for cranberry sauce. When they went to the store the day before Thanksgiving to pick up some cranberry sauce, there wasn't any left, so they looked up a recipe and whipped some up. It's super easy and is SO GOOD! We'll never do store bought again. Here's the recipe:
3 cups fresh cranberries
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
Boil until the cranberries pop. Let cool.