DeTHORTONHAUSEN CHRISTMAS

This is quite possibly one of our most favorite days of the year: the day we celebrate Christmas with our "adopted" family with our "adopted" family name!  We have dinner, gift exchange and visit/play.  It's soooooooooo much fun!  I truly LOVE everyone of these people!  We are family!  And we are spoiled rotten with love and friendship!  I am soooooooooooooo grateful for this crazy crew!

Scott and I always get the kids books for Christmas!

They liked this year's selection....

Scott is a natural with babies!

Raisin is sooooo darn cute!

I love this little Raisin!

Marmalade and Lollipop are great friends!!!!

Spoiled rotten: I can't wait to read the book that Fiddler on the Roof is based on.

And a game about libraries?!  What could be better?!

We've already started asking lots of questions

using Scott's card game "The Art of Conversation...."

The Bettenhausens get to play Bellz! and watch "Cokeville Miracle!"

Amy got chocolate, a mug and I-tunes from the girls....
And these are the books Rachel got from us.

Chris loved his Ohio State booties!

And who doesn't love pizza?

Mad Libs was a huge hit with Hammond!

Key Lime Pie was also spoiled rotten!

She loves her kitchen supplies for when she goes to college...

and I-tunes from "the boys" was a hit too!

Lollipop can't wait to use her new crock-pot!

And she gets to go shopping with a gift card.
Perfect gifts for her from the Bettenhausens and the boys.

Kotten Kandy got books to help with her writing.

She loves them!

And she got pens and journals too!

These families know my daughter well!

Marmalade, Juice, Nuts, Jelly Bean and Apple Pie

were also spoiled by K2 and the boys!

What a fun night for everyone!  I truly feel blessed!

N2

NATIVITIES
(This weekend was the Crestwood Nativity Display.  Key Lime Pie and Kotten Kandy sang with their show choir on Saturday for the display.  The nativities were beautiful!  Lollipop liked seeing them all!)

NETTIE
(Nettie and her parents came to visit!  We love this girl!  She is a role model for my daughters and we miss her so much!  Colorado/BYU are lucky to have this girl as a resident!  We love you, Nettie!)

FA-LA-LA-LA-LA

I LOVE Christmas time!
I LOVE Christmas music!
I LOVE kids who make Christmas music!
And I LOVE "teaching" kids Christmas music!
December seems to be super busy when it comes to music performances and helping children grown, learn and develop their own talents.  I am soooo proud of all these kids!
Thursday night was my music studio recital.  Each student sang/played two Christmas songs.  Each one of them is AWESOME!  And I was super proud of their hard work and efforts. Kotten Kandy closed the program with her rendition of "Snow" from the movie White Christmas and "I'll Be Home of Christmas."  She is too cute!!!!

Here's the pic that will be on my piano this semester!

Here's the silly pic that we all love taking!

I love these kids!

Friday night (and the past two Wednesdays and this evening) the homeschool show choir performed.  Again:  I LOVE these kids!  They have really blossomed!  And their performance skills are definitely growing.  Our program included:  "In the Spirit," "Sing We Now of Christmas," "Do You Hear What I Hear?," "Merry Christmas Bells," "Hip Hop Reindeer," "Christmas Wishes," and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."  They really made my holidays fun and festive for everyone they performed for!

Isn't this a GREAT looking bunch of kids?

Here are the girls mediating before the performance...

They are really focused.

The boys were TRYING to calm down.

They were a bit hyper before the show.

Hilarious fun!  Love these kids too!

I'm kinda done with my performance group EXCEPT for the ward Christmas program on the 20th.  I wrote that program and am conducting the ward choir.  I'm also performing a solo (for the first time in 20 years) on the piano tomorrow for Church.  I'll be playing a really pretty arrangement of "The First Noel."  Yes, I am EXTREMELY nervous.  (I kinda like being behind the scenes: teaching, conducting, accompanying, preluding, etc.)

HANUKKAH AND HEARTS

We have a silly tradition of celebrating Hanukkah by watching The Fiddler on the Roof and eating blue candy canes.  We love this wonderful movie! And it's fun to watch it together every year at this time.

We were also "attacked" by hearts last week.  Don't know who did it... but we feel loved!

WE ARE BLESSED!

Louisville in the background...
Kotten Kandy, Lollipop and Key Lime Pie

What a fun weekend!  What made it fun?  People:  Friends and Family!  We are so blessed!
Friday started the party off.  Scott and I went to a Celestial Companions Date Night Party.  We had a blast!  Scott and I agree that the group was AWESOME!  We really like the four couples that were there.  The Schmids hosted the event.  They are an amazing couple who are tons of fun!  (They are the ones I hope to someday share my grandchildren with because their son is so awesome.  It's cuz his parents are also great!)  The Bettenhausens were also there.  (Anyone who reads my blog knows how much I love Amy and Mark.  They aren't just friends, they are family!)  And the other couple is the Pinas.  I LOVE this couple!  We have recently done a few get-togethers with them and the more we get to know them the more both Scott and I are impressed!  We hope to become even better friends with them as we go!  We did get a picture at the end of the evening... but it was a bit blurry.  Oh well.  Here are our WONDERFUL friends!  We are blessed!

Schmids, Pinas, DeGooyers and Bettenhausens

Saturday we went to another fun Christmas event.  The Foreign Exchange Students Christmas Party.  The food was divine!  The company was great!  We had a good time visiting and eating different kinds of food from all over the world.  I led a short sing along of Christmas carols.  And some of the foreign students shared some of their traditions with us.  (I tried to get pictures, but the venue was really crowded and all I was able to take was pictures of backsides.  Nobody looks good in those kinds of pics, so I'll spare you the shots.)  Of course, Lollipop is the absolute BEST foreign exchange student EVER in the history of foreign exchange students!  We are blessed!

"The cold never bothered me anyway!"

After the Exchange Student Party, our small family of five, decided to visit the Louisville Walking Bridge.  It was a blast!  We walked from Kentucky to Indiana.  The girls were adorable!  The weather was pretty good, a bit cold, but not freezing.  And I got to hold hands with my cute husband.  The only negative was that the pictures are a bit grainy because of the dark.  But I still took lots of pics because all three of my girls were as cute as could be.  We are so blessed!  Check it out:

One foot in Kentucky.
One foot in Indiana.
Both feet over the Ohio.

Indiana side...

Lollipop, Key Lime Pie, Kotten Kandy and Scott

Looking over the Ohio River...

"I'm tired."

Here's the bridge we just walked...

Key Lime Pie doesn't really like heights.

Kotten Kandy, Lollipop and Key Lime Pie =
Quite possibly the cutest, sweetest and most fun girls in the entire world!

NaNoWriMo AWARD CEREMONY

We had a record amount of participants attempt NaNoWriMo this year.  To celebrate a successful month of writing and attempting to write more than we normally do, we had a small award ceremony.  Here are the pictures of the people who wrote and supported those of us who wrote a lot....

Three of us completed our entire goal:  Me, Kotten Kandy and Amy

I wrote 60 poems and the other two wrote over 50,000 words!

Amy got the awards and passed them out - 

it was her idea!  Yeah, Amy!

These two were cute little bits of inspiration... but they didn't write.

I just loved this picture of Apple Pie and Jelly Bean

Lollipop was our cheerleader throughout the month of writing!

Marmalade actually wrote 1000 words - not too shabby for a 9 year old.

Nuts also wrote a bit.

And Juice wrote 13 pages of his story on an old fashioned typewriter.

It was fun to listen to the sounds of the machine as we wrote a few times....

Scott started a fairy tale story.  He was really excited.
But life got busy and he didn't finish.
He'll finish someday.  Glad he had fun with us writing!

Key Lime Pie made a great effort.  Her goal was to write daily.

She didn't quite make it, but she did write a lot!

Chris wrote ONE poem.  And he only wrote it so he could have

some of the NaNoWriMo kick off treats.  It made us all laugh!  He's great!

We all teased Hammond that he was writing a romance novel...

Actually he wrote quite a bit of his Sci-Fi novel.

Mark nearly made the 50K goal writing his memoirs.

He got 40K+!
I can't wait to read about his life!

Kotten Kandy wrote the most words out of EVERYBODY - over 50K!

She's not done with her novel.  She's only about half way done.  She's still writing.

And she loves it!  I am soooo excited to read her novel!

I think her and Amy are the true novelists in the group!

I didn't get pictures of Amy and I getting our "awards."

But we did it!  I'm excited to read her novel too...

My award was for the "Best Non-Novel!"

I'll share an excerpt from Kotten Kandy's book and my poetry tomorrow... or the next day.  It's late.  And I need to get to bed.