Happy Multicultural Day!

Happy Multicultural Day!  What? You celebrate Christmas not multicultural day?  That's odd.

Jenna's school does not celebrate Christmas or have a holiday party of any kind. They celebrate multicultural day. 

Really?

Multicultural day can be celebrated any day of the year, Christmas falls on Dec. 25th and a holiday party would just be nice.

Even so, Jenna had a writer's workshop in which she had two speaking parts. She was very excited to have two speaking parts.  She read some of the things she wrote this school year and even gave an introduction to the workshop. She read very quickly. It is something she enjoys doing - surprising me by reading like a 15 year old :).

Jenna's first speaking part: the introduction to the workshop

Jenna reading her individual story

At Sarah's preschool she did have a Christmas program and she sang "Go Tell it on the Mountain" and "Jingle Bells". She had been practicing at home so she would deliver the song with proper tonation. Sarah is on the end in the white dress.  They all wore cute reindeer headbands.

She looks so serious!

On Saturday Joel and Megan came to visit. We had so much fun! We played a lot of games, ate lots of food, went to Starbucks, ate Jenis and Graeters ice cream and went to see the Fantasy of Lights. All in just 1 1/2 days. We had a blast! Jenna also decided to make Joel beautiful (really, is there any hope for this?). You can see from the picture.

Joel with a beautiful headband

Before Joel and Megan came to visit, my friend Jen came by to give me a Christmas present. This Christmas present was the most AWESOME thing ever!  Check out this clock below. It has really improved my time keeping.

Awesome clock of awesomeness!

77 points on Quiddler today!

Cookies and Flour - yum

 Every year we bake lots of Christmas cookies and this year is no exception.  My favorite Christmas tradition is making and decorating cutout cookies. The girls were very helpful this year with the cutouts.  And for some reason they started eating flour and really love it?

They may have eaten more than they actually "cutout"

Decorating cookies with the help of Jenna's friend Paige and our neighbor Anna

 Every year our church has a Christmas smorgasboard with a kids program.  Last year they all dressed up and Sarah danced while dressed as a sheep. This year they didn't dress up as sheep or angels, but they did sing (or somewhat sing as Sarah shows us here).

Kids Christmas program



 Scruffles and Matthew like to hide beneath the tree.  I see you!  Often Matthew is chasing Scruffles around. That poor cat. He can't ever catch a break.

Hiding beneath the tree

 I like to give cookies as gifts to teachers so yesterday I made snickerdoodles, peanut butter cups and brown butter sea salt cookies. Yum!  It was a delicious day.

More Christmas baking!

In other news:

1. Love Wins by Rob Bell is an intriguing book.  I hope what he says in the book is right. Since we really don't know what happens after we die he could be right. Of course he could be wrong too. I'm hoping Erik will read it so I can talk to him about it.
2. The Hunger Games is a book you really can't put down.  I'm glad we are reading it for our book club.
3. Last Saturday I took a First Aid class through the Red Cross.  I learned CPR and got to practice on plastic dummies. While the class was interesting, I really wanted to learn more.  Basically it was a class telling you to call 911 in almost every circumstance.  I already knew to call 911.  I want to know how to do something real (broken bones, emergency surgery, tourniquets, etc).
4. On Tuesday we had our small group Christmas party.  We will break for Christmas and then pick up again in January. We are still studying Heaven by Randy Alcorn. I really love this study however it is making me want to study more eschatology.  Unfortunately I'll be teaching on Tuesday nights next session so I won't be there for the rest of the study.
5. Check out this video of Matthew jamming to Led Zeppelin - he is so adorable!
6. Today was a horrible Quiddler day. I got stuck with a j,u,u. That was a lot of points I lost!

Santa and the new TV

You can probably read the word written here below.  This was not written by Jenna. It was written by Sarah - yes she is only 3 (she'll be 4 soon) but I was pretty impressed!

Can't tell if that's a picture of a unicorn above the word or not?

On Black Friday while everyone was storming the malls, Erik and I bought a TV for our living room (online of course - who wants to actually go shopping?). Our projection TV was 14 years old and was getting fuzzy. Erik couldn't read the scores on the football games (so sad...).  This new TV will be wall mounted and will open up some space in our living room. (maybe so I can buy more things to fill it??)

Matthew and Jenna helping Daddy wall mount the TV.

Last Saturday I took the girls to see Santa Claus at a church near our house. He read them a story and they got to sit on his lap. They also did a lot of Christmasy crafts (the girls LOVE crafts) so they had a fabulous time!

Santa reading to the kids

Jenna and Sarah on Santa's lap

Erik finished mounting the new TV on the wall which you can see in the picture below (he had a lot of help from everyone). 

If you look closely you can see an orange fluffy cat under the tree - he is not a present. Matthew is sitting in our wood rack too. I think Erik has told him not to sit in it approximately 10,000,000 times but Matthew loves it.  And he doesn't listen to us AT ALL. He will be a handful when he hits the terrible twos.

This is the "before" picture of our TV. We are excited to have the new one!

In other news:

1. Our Coo* book club is reading the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I really wanted to read it since I've heard so many good things about it.  There will also be a movie coming out soon, and I want to see it. I was number 220 on the list at the library to get the book but I suggested to/hoped for/coerced our book club to read it next :).
2. I am reading the Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. This book has been on my list for awhile and so far I'm really enjoying it.
3. I just picked up Love Wins by Rob Bell from the library. This book has a lot of controversy surrounding it. I wanted to read it for myself to see what it's all about.
4. I am also still reading the Sword of Shadows series from J.V.Jones. I'm in the third book and love this series!
5. Since we bought the TV, Erik and I decided we wouldn't spend much money on each other. He bought me two books for Christmas and I got him only two things as well (a game and a new pair of shorts). However I'm going to sneak to Half Price books when he is not looking and get him a surprise book (I don't know what yet but it will be a surprise!)
6. 75 points on Quiddler today