Sam's Wedding

Today was Sam and Jason's wedding at the church. I ran and got some flowers and dropped them off first thing. Then we went and it was a nice wedding. Sang a song I'd never heard of before, but the music was very familiar, "Lord of the Dance."
After the wedding there was schloer in the RS room. There were so many people and lots of glass wine flutes. Poor Joseph accidentally knocked a small table covered with glasses and one fell, hit the wood on the floor and it broke. He was mortified. Felt so bad. Then I proceeded to knock over a pitcher of water with the glasses case we were filling to take to our house to wash after and spilled the water all over the envelopes. It was awesome. But amazingly, out of 196 glasses, we returned 195 unbroken. I'll call that a success.
After a quick clean up, we headed out to the Craiglands Hotel  for the dinner and the reception. The kids really loved the dancing there, particularly Lucy. She was so sad to leave the dance floor.

So once we got home, we put on some music and had a little dance party until it was way past bedtime. Lots of fun!

It was nice to see Joseph even join in at home. I tried teaching him the dance Erik and I would do at Stake Dances years ago...I'm forgetting a few beats. So I'll have to work on that one. But Joseph loved what I could remember. Sure do like these kiddos.

"Oh, Kitty Cat"

Lucy really loves cats right now. It's hilarious. Today I went and helped decorate for Sam's wedding at the church. I brought the little girls also, of course, and Lucy colored a picture, then used it as her music in the chapel to sing her "Ode to the kitty cat" and it was so sweet. She's a keeper.

Bridal Shower

Friday I attended my first "Hen Do" for Sam. We went to a yummy Vietnamese Bistro. It was so tasty. Maybe because we hadn't eaten real food for a few days over Christmas break and we had lots of snackage that having some real food was so good, but it was so good.

Then tonight I threw her a bridal shower (also called a Hen Do, i learned). It turned out alright.

Winter Sunrises

There is one wonderful thing about winter here, everyone getting to see the sunrise every morning. They are beautiful.

Pizza Night

Our family loves pizza. But pizza is really pricy to get out here (except at Croughton which has amazing pizza and it's so cheap, no idea why our base pizza is not that good-they even use the same boxes but definitely not the same recipe).  But Fridays have often turned into our pizza nights. Which we love. The kids especially love it when they get to make their own pizzas just how they like them. Tonight was one of those nights! I love this quick 7 minute dough recipe. It makes life really easy on a busy night to get yummy dinner on the table. May not always be the healthiest, but it sure is fun.

Student of the Month

Lexie got a new backpack for Christmas. It was very much needed. Today whilst cleaning up from Christmas and getting presents organized, we cleaned out her old backpack and got her new one all ready for school. At the bottom of her backpack we found this award. She was Student of the Month...in November. Hooray for Lexie. She does have straight A's and 3 A+s, so we'll let it slide that she forgot to tell us about it. She's a keeper! And she LOVES her new backpack-so do I. Hopefully it will last her a few years.

Reading Scriptures

How do you read your scriptures?

Eliza was so sweet reading them to Lucy. Good to start the year out as you mean it to go.

Christmas with the Elders

After our Christmas Carol Service, we had a few hours before the AP Elders came over for dinner and to spend the day with us and skype with their families. It was a lot of fun having them come over. It was fun getting to use what little Spanish I remember with the Trassierra family. Good to know I can somewhat hold my own saying "Merry Christmas" and "You're Welcome" in Spanish. :) Our kids sure like Elders Trassierra, Summers, and Kruse.

Checking out their stockings.

 Lucy loved Elder Summers today, she would snuggle right up to him whilst he was reading her loads of stories.

Wearing our Christmas Cracker crowns. Christmas crackers are always a lot of fun!

Elder Summers, from Idaho, brought instant Idaho snow for us to play with. It worked so well, it snowed this week.

So much fun. Once they left we waited for a bit for the other Elders to come (McKay and Kooijman) but they ended up not being able to come. We'll have them over again in a few days. 

And amazingly, Lexie fell asleep during scriptures and stayed asleep on the floor with all these kids playing with the train set loudly. She was really worn out from getting up so early this morning.

It was a fun, busy, enjoyable Christmas day!

Christmas Card

Andrew made a Christmas card for the Elders. He sure likes them and can't wait to be a missionary.

Cinderella Pantomime

There's nothing like a field trip to the Panto to make you feel like it's Christmas in England. Today I got to help out with the kids' classes. This year we saw Cinderella. It was good, not as good as last years, but it was still fun. The audience participation is hilarious at the panto. All of the "Oh yes I can" "Oh no you can't" and cheers and boos. It's quite humorous. But my ears were also okay with it being over.

Andrew wanted to sit over by his class, so he was across the balcony from us.

Definitely a fun day. Can't wait until next years.

A BIG Mess

So, I got a new calling a few weeks ago. The old RS President is busy with planning a wedding and so today was our first time that we could really "talk" about some of the sisters I didn't know. We were on the phone for a good hour. But I only left the girls really unattended for about 5 minutes whilst they were "brushing their teeth" (well, Lucy was really, Eliza was reading and then I asked her to go find Lucy since I couldn't see her). This is what I found.

Lucy completely drenched, and I mean soaking wet. That tub is dripping water. There is water all over the floor onto the carpet. It's literally everywhere.

But she's clean!

I ran down to grab a few more towels and heard a weird dripping sound. I thought they'd just made a mess on the table also. When I brought all of the towels down to be washed I noticed the dripping sound was still going. I looked up and water was dripping though the electrical in the ceiling. Not fun.

So, yeah, we had a huge mess to clean up. Had to pull out all the lights and let things air out (hopefully). Who knew that water would go through the ceiling like that. Not I. But I do now.

50 States Song

Last week Andrew came home singing some of the 50 States saying he was trying to learn them at school. A day or two later he had them all down. I love to hear him sing it (and he does ALL the time, sometimes I don't think he even realizes he is).