December 2008

The month flew right on by and, while it seems to have gone so fast, thinking back one month now seems like ages ago.

week one

At some point in November my computer stopped connecting to the Internet, so I was limping along without it for a while, and trying to back up my data before anything worse happened. At some point during this week it finally gave out.

We also had four Christmas parties this week, but only made it to three of them. Still made for a very busy week.

week two

We had some snow, and this was the week of helping out at school.

I helped the kids in Jemma's class with their reading. I'm so glad we've moved on from, "See Dick run. See Jane run," to more interesting and humorous books for beginning readers. The series they're starting with is great - the words are simple, but they tell an entertaining little story that the kids enjoy. Like in "Tin Man Fix-It," a tin man is helping someone else dig when Sid, a big kid, rides into him on his skateboard and breaks him. Tim ends up fixing him with six pins.

As a new parent, I have to admit, that I somewhat dreaded the stage of development when kids are learning to read. But I loved it when Jordan was at that point (he picked it up very quickly) and I'm enjoying it with Jemma too. It's not trying my patience like I thought it would.

I also got to join some other parents in the kindergarten classroom doing various learning centers about winter holidays. I was in charge of Hanukkah. I borrowed a menorah, which really intrigued the kids, and brought a dreidel with some shiny pennies for them to play with. It was too loud in the classroom - with three other centers going on at the same time - to really teach them about Hanukkah and why it's celebrated, but the visuals were good and they loved the dreidel game - especially since we made sure they all left with the same amount of pennies.

I was going to help out in one of Jordan's classes this week too, but they ended up not needing me. I don't know what the protocol is for volunteering in the classroom for Junior High, but I'd like to. It's a good thing teachers are willing to communicate by email anyway, I can sort of stay in the loop with them.

week three

Finally got my computer up and running again. It was a pretty easy fix (restoring Windows), but not something I want to repeat. This was a week of work, work, work. It felt like it anyway. Normally I only work three days a week, but this week I ended up working four.

On Friday there was a huge snow storm. Jordan went to hang out with friends after a half day of school and we all braved the weather to go to Jemma's school Christmas concert.



I got ambitious (considering...) and started making some chocolate covered pecans, with caramel filling - otherwise known as turtles. They were being consumed almost as fast as I could make them, but I did manage to package some up for a few neighbors.



The big news of this week was Greg getting his mission call on Thursday. For as many people as I've known (brothers, sister-in-law, etc.) who have served missions, this was the first time I'd been there when a call was opened. I wasn't even around when my own call was opened - and Chris didn't open his own either - but those are stories for another time. Greg's going to Colorado Springs in February!


week four

By this time I really hadn't done much in the way of shopping for gifts. Luckily, a lot of cousins had come to town (American Fork) from St. George so Jordan and Jemma had a sleepover Sunday night and spent the day there on Monday. It was great to have some time to run errands and wrap gifts without the inquisitive kids around. Later that night we went down to say Happy Birthday to Greg and brought Jemma and Brielle back for a sleepover here.

Tuesday I worked and Wednesday, of course, was Christmas Eve.