January happenings

Big A received a science kit for Christmas. She has been trying it out this month.

 It came with an instruction booklet and some various substances to be mixed together to make different things.

 Here are some gummy crystals she made. She was very proud of them.

She made volcanoes, sunset crystals, and other things. She has really enjoyed it.

I was released as Primary President back in December. It has been an adjustment not having to run around on a Sunday, but I am liking it more and more. I was feeling pretty unproductive at church though, so I was happy when the new Primary president asked me to substitute a class where the teacher had just had a new baby. I have had fun just being a teacher. I have to give a shout out to a website that I have used many times in the past. It is called sugardoodle.net. I got this handout idea for the scriptures on there. I love it that we have this technology where people can share their ideas with others. I thought the scriptures were cute.

The girls had a few days off of school this month. We went to the zoo for one of the days. The weather wasn't too bad and the rain held off until we were gone which was nice.

It is winter, so some of the animals were not out. We missed seeing the giraffes and elephants. They were not outside that day. But it was nice to go otherwise.

Really? A missing piece?

I bet your wondering if the puzzle ever got finished from the last post. Well it did-all but one piece at the bottom edge of Texas! We have yet to find the missing piece either. Oh well.

New Year's Traditions Going Strong

The first New Year's we had here I wanted to start some traditions. The New Year's before were not that eventful as kids were too young and they would go to sleep before midnight and KP and I would ring in the New year with movie marathons or whatever. Now that the kids are older and stay up until midnight I thought I would make it more eventful for them. So now we put together a puzzle every New Year's eve. Okay you can totally mock me now- insert "yawn" here! But really what other time to you have to put together a puzzle anyway? So this is what our challenge for this year was-

The puzzle looked like fun and I thought the girls might learn something about each state.

When we spread it all out before we started I thought-hmmm, maybe we have bit off more then we could chew this year. The goal was to get it all finished by midnight- we started at 6:00 PM, we should have started at noon.

We pretty much failed!! But to our defense, the movies and wii games were calling our names. We at least got all the state names put together.- The next goal is to get it all done before I have someone wanting to come look at our house.

Another tradition that I started was that I blow up a lot of balloons and in 3 of the balloons I have pieces of paper that say Prize 1, Prize 2 and Prize 3. The kids go popping all the balloons until they find a piece of paper for a prize. They had sharp objects to pop them this year- I might make them sit on them next year. Hee hee.

We always do a little "cheers" to each other as well. Our kind of bubbly - MMmm, rasberry soda this year.

We also threw around confetti- I almost skipped this part because I thought of how much I would have to clean afterwards- but I do have a fun side, so I let them do it. Little C liked it so much that she kept trying to scoop it up off the floor and throw it again over and over. I love family traditions. See you again next year!