A little snow, a little ice.
We had three snow days the first part of Dec. We got about 4 inches of snow. It was so cold, they only went sledding for about 30 min.
Closer to Christmas we had an ice storm. The nice thing about it was that the roads didn’t get icy.
The ice hung around for at least 3 days.
I’m not sure how much ice we got, but it seemed really thick on Bill’s truck.
Downtown in Dec
During the month of Dec. on Thurs. thru Sunday nights they offer free water taxi rides on the canal in Bricktown. We got a chance to do this right before it turned cold for the second time in Dec. This was Ben’s first time in the downtown OKC area.
After our ride, we walked around Bricktown, showed Ben the landrun statues at the end of the canal and then went into Bass Pro Shop. The weather was unseasonable warm for this time of year, but great for outdoor activities.
A tie problem
The night of the boys Christmas concert, Bill and I had a dinner to go to first. When the boys got home from school, I asked them if they were ready to go. They both said yes.
About 15 min. into our dinner Bill gets a call, the boys don’t know how to ty their ties. He has shown them how to do this several times.
Before Bill can tell them how to ty their ties, Justin decides they can look it up on u-tube.
They figure it out from u-tube. I don’t think u-tube told them how long to make their ties.
Merry Christmas with pics from the Nutcracker.
Jemma was selected by her ballet teacher to perform in her Performance Ensemble this fall. She has been preparing since Sept. to perform her party girl role and Petit BonBon role.
She was able to borrow the costume for the Petit BonBon role.
The Performance Ensemble performed at 5 different schools. She really had a great time doing it.
Ugly sweater winner
Justin won the MRCC Youth Groups Ugly sweater contest. I’ve had that sweater hanging around for at least 17 years. They even gave out prizes. He got a Starbucks gift card.
Dress, Sweets and Service
Jemma has been particpating in the 7th grade cotillion through her school. The dance was Friday night. The dress was supposed to be Sunday dress, but after the boys went through this program I knew that the girls usually wore pretty fancy dresses.
So I made her dress. I’ve had the fabric for a couple of years and invisioned making a Christmas dress out of it for her. The fabric is basically a brocade, with velveteen being the raised part of the fabric. It’s hard to explain the fabric and I didn’t take a picture of it up close. She picked the buttons out for the waist band.
The next morning she read a poem at Sweets and Service at church. My friend Robin over at the WaWaWaugh’s blog asked Jemma to read the poem and she was very excited to do it.
Sweets and Service is where the ladies of our church make small crafts and takes goodie bags to the nursing home. We made door hangers out of card stock and decorated them to say Ho, Ho, Ho or Let it Snow.
Here she is helping hang the door hangers at the nursing home along with another little girl from church. While we were there we also sang some Christmas carols.
We missed this event last year because she was performing in the Nutcracker and she was very upset. I’m so proud of her for wanting to help out and serve others.
2 different Santa’s
I think I promised my kids a couple of years ago that I wouldn’t make them go see Santa. The when I found out Ben had never been to see Santa. I broke that promise. The great part about this is that they don’t seem to remember that promise.
So at Jemma’s Christmas concert the other night they volunteered to get their picture taken with Santa.
Does this Santa look familiar?
Jemma singing at her concert.
Christmas Creations
I got quite a bit of sewing done over Thanksgiving Break. It took my a while to figure out why, I didn’t have Nutcracker costumes to sew this year. So I had time to sew what I wanted to. The scenes on these mini quilts were leftover from a bigger quilt I did, so I decided to sash and quilt them for gifts.
I embroidered Christmas Stockings for a teacher at my school.
I made this mini quilt for Jemma’s ballet teacher, Mrs. Lisa. It has scraps from all the costumes I made or altered for the Nutcracker last year. I’m making a bigger one for myself. I hope to have it done in the next week or so.
Hot Cocoa and candy canes
Ben has never had Hot Chocolate or candy canes. Here he is drinking his first hot chocolate after we took him to the Christmas tree farm to get our tree.
He even cut our tree down. He made himself another cup of hot chocolate as soon as he got home.
The 1st Thanksgiving
I can’t speak to what happened the first Thanksgiving in America that took place in 1629 or something like that. But I can tell you about the first Thanksgiving for Ben in America.
We took Ben to particpate in Thanksgiving Day in the City with MRCC. Our family got promoted this year to turkey prep. We were very excited to have a new job. For the last several years we have prepared the containers to accept the food.
The turkeys were already cooked, we just had to hand pick all the meat off the bones after the turkey breasts had been cut off. Someone told us we made it to the Big Dance when you do turkey prep.
Will didn’t actually pick the meat off the bones. Mickey Banister, one of our elders, taught Will how to run the slicer. I’m happy to report that Will still has all his fingers.
After we were done with turkey prep, we helped fill the food cartons for delivery.
We also helped deliver 65 meals to Edmond Hospital. We did that last year also.
After our delivery we played a game while we were waiting for lunch to be served.