Christmas!

 Santa's Little Elves!

 Lighting the Luminarias.

 Feliz Navidad!

 Papa Felipe's.  Yum!

 Away in a sort of exotic manger.

 Oh, my gosh!  Aaron got Air Hockey!

 Chad is ready to hit the slopes.

It's finally time for Amber to open presents (after asking every 5 minutes for the last two days).

Nutcracker!

After taking Bethany and Miranda to see "The Secret Garden" last December, we decided that taking the girls to a show each Christmas should be a new holiday tradition.  So, here we are at "Nutcracker".  The theatre was just lovely but I think it was built in a time when people were much shorter.  I couldn't even sit straight without bruising my knees on the seat in front of me.  Maybe next year we'll go to Pope Joy Hall.  The girls had a great time though and they even had an accidental encounter with their friend Jocelyn who was sitting just across the stairs from us.  Good times!

Amber Quote of the Day

Amber - "Daddy, I think you're Santa Clause."
Sam - "No, I'm definitely not Santa Clause."
Amber-"Okay, Daddy.  I guess you're actually Mrs. Clause."
Sam-"Now there you might be right."

Last Day of School before Christmas Break!

T'was the day before Winter Break and All through the house, not a creature was frowning except for Aaron who had to perform in a band assembly, Chad who had a geometry final, and Amber, who thought she has frostbite. (At least Amber let me take a picture.)  The above picture is actually from a couple of days ago when Amber and I dropped Chad off late at La Cueva.  There is a teddy bear tree in the front office and Amber fit right in. 

We got a couple of inches of snow last night and that is almost always enough to put APS schools on a two hour delay.  So, here is Bethany building a fort during her unexpected leisure time. 

Building a fort was fun for a while, but Amber's hands just got too cold!

 Miranda wasn't thrilled about the delay.  She made presents for her nearest and dearest friends and she is ready to deliver them.

Here is a sampling of our teacher / friends gifts.  The bear, snowman, and reindeer in the back are jars filled with cookie mix.  Are they the cutest things ever or what?  This year, we made ten different cookies and candies for our goody plates.  Yum!

The Trouble with "Smith"

I knew when I got married that my life would change in many ways, but what I didn't consider were the mistaken identity problems that would follow me for the rest of my life thanks to my now very common name.  When we lived in Washington, there was a woman with my same name and birthdate and it confused the voter registration people to no end.  Every other election, I would have to talk to the people in charge who would tell me that I had already voted or that my materials were sent to a different address or voting location per "my" request.  I would get that straightened out and I assume the other Julie Smith would have the same problems during the next election.  You'd think they could use our social security numbers, but apparently that would be too easy.  I'm not sure if it was the same Julie Smith, but someone was always racking up library fines for me and tarnishing my credit report.  It was a mess.  Since we moved here, I've had much less trouble.  But now, we have the issues of double (or maybe more, who knows?) Aaron & Bethany Smiths in the school system.  A few weeks ago, I arrived home and answered a call from Desert Ridge asking me to please disregard the SBA testing results that they sent home with Aaron that day at school and to send them back to the counselling office.  I was confused because Aaron had gotten his test results several weeks before and he hadn't given me any new ones.  So, I asked him about it and sure enough, he pulled out test results for an Aaron Smith from another middle school.  I was feeling kind of smug because my Aaron's test results were much better than the other Aaron's test results.  I happily sent them back and didn't think any more of it.  Move forward in time to a couple of weeks ago at parent-teacher conferences, when I asked Bethany's teacher why I hadn't gotten her SBA test results yet.  She was surprised and said she had sent them home a long time ago.  I told her we hadn't gotten them and she said she'd make a copy and send them home again.  So, last week, Bethany brought home her SBA results.  When I saw them, I almost screamed with joy.  She did so great - better than Chad or Aaron.  I smiled nonstop for an hour, again smugly thinking about my fabulously brilliant children.  Everything was great, until Miranda came up and asked me, "Mom, is Bethany's middle initial 'M'?"  Umm...no.  Tragically, these test results belonged to a different Bethany Smith who goes to another elementary school (probably the other Aaron Smith's sister :)).  Bummer.  So, it turns out that kharma is indeed a naughty word that I can't say, but that you can probably guess.  We still don't know how our Bethany's SBA test results came out, but I'm guessing not as well.  It's not that she isn't bright.  She is.  It's just that she has a theory about reading comprehension and it is that if  a story is not interesting enough to read carefully the first time, it's certainly not interesting enough to go back and peruse after you're done in order to find answers to useless questions about its contents.  As for me, I'm wondering if it's too late to start using my maiden name again.

Turkey Week!

Thanksgiving Dinner #1.  We were lucky to be able to go to Monticello for an extended family dinner the weekend before Thanksgiving.  Aunt Elizabeth made a fabulous meal, as always, and the kids enjoyed a day of uninterrupted cousin time.  The girls look forward to this dinner every year.  They have second cousins coming out of their ears and they always write and perform a musical play together for the adults after we eat.

Journey and Bethany are best buds.  We got to see Journey's basketball game before the party.  She is a beast.  I think she made 20 out of 32 points for the game.  Later that night, they had a sleepover and I could hardly get Bethany to get in the car to come home the next day.

 Here are the girls with all nine pies right before driving to Grandma's for Thanksgving dinner #2.  The girls each got to choose a pie that they wanted to make with me.  Bethany chose chocolate mint cream.  Amber chose peach.  And Miranda chose lemon meringue.  They were all sinfully good.

And here is the dessert table at Grandma's.  Oh yes!  We take our Thanksgiving desserts quite seriously.

Chad at his third Thanksgiving meal (actually a basketball dinner).  The La Cueva Freshmen have team "bonding" dinners almost every weekend until the end of the season.  Let's hope they get very "bonded" and that the familiarity will translate into great teamwork on the court. :)  We all were pretty excited that Chad made the team.  All of us, that is, except for the girls who are mad that Chad doesn't get to go to preseason baseball training anymore (some weird NM high school sports rule - whatever!) when they had been having a great time hanging out with the Calvert twins when we went to watch.  Oh well!  Basketball season is only 3 1/2 months, ladies.  Hang tight!

Chad's New Suit

Boy, I hope this doesn't have to be dry-cleaned.

This is what happens when your kids get bored on Sunday afternoon part 2!

Oh Boy!

This is what happens when your kids get bored on Sunday afternoon!

The first words I uttered once I regained the power of speech were, "That had better not be in Sharpie!"  It's not.

All Spooked Out!

Everybody knows I love Halloween.  I love ding-dong ditching treats and being ding-dong ditched.  I love making marshmallow eyeballs, mummy dogs and graveyard cakes. I love the costumes, the parades and the carnivals.  I love trick-or-treating.  And Goodness knows I love the candy!  But, I have to say that I am pooped, People.  We celebrated all weekend long.  We had school parties on Friday and we had trunk-or-treats/carnivals on Friday and Saturday night.  And that doesn't even take into account the actual trick-or-treating.  And now I am ready to put away the candy, throw away the jack-o-lanterns and take down the spider webs until next year.  I think I'd like to sleep until it's time to make Thanksgiving pies.   Above is Miranda at her class party with the coolest cupcakes ever.

Here are Morticia Adams, the big bad wolf,  the vampiress and Colin the dragon trick-or-treating at Great Grandma Woods's house.  We colored Miranda's and Bethany's hair black for one night but quickly decided it wasn't worth the mess.

Three of the cutest Halloween goblins in town ready to head to party #3 on Saturday night.  Aunt Emily did their makeup and they were quite dazzling.  Sadly, I have no pictures of the party poopers, I mean boys, in their costumes, because of course they refused to wear any.

And now that the week of fright is at last over, it's time to move onto a week that is truly scary, haunted by election results and La Cueva Basketball tryouts.  Spooky!

Amber & Chadisms

Amber - Saturday afternoon we were talking about the upcoming election because I was planning on early voting between a Costco run and a party we were attending in the evening.  One of the congressional candidates is named Jon Barela and we've talked about him quite a bit because Chad is friends with his son JD. As I was finishing up the graveyard cakes below, Amber was running around with nothing on but a trash bag cape and underwear saying, "Mom, you can't vote for Jon Barela because he doesn't believe I'm a super-hero.  (Come to think of it, I probably should have gotten a picture of Amber in the cape. :))

Chad - This morning, Chad came downstairs and asked, "Mom, have you seen my other shoe?  I can't find it and I've looked everywhere.  Who could have taken it?"  I asked him, "Did you throw it at one of your siblings?"  He looked apalled and replied, "Of course not.  Oh, wait...!"  Then he ran upstairs only to return a moment later with the missing shoe.  "Mom, you are a genius!"  Oh boy!

Jack-O-Lanterns!

It's that time again - when spooky ghosts and goblins roam the streets and creepy looking pumpkins line the walkway to our front door.  The kids wanted to make their jack-o-lanterns this week even though they will be totally gross and moldy by Halloween. 

Bethany carved her very own pumpkin this year without any help.  Can you tell that it is a Halloween Cat?  I think it's cute.

Chad & Aaron worked as a team this year.  Chad carved their pumpkin and Aaron was the pyrotechnic specialist.  Here he is perfecting his craft.

Since Amber is too young to cut the pumpkin herself, she made a pumpkin face with gumdrops.  She thought jack-o-lantern night was a pretty good time.

Insanity is Inherited - And not just because you get it from your kids!

This is a picture of my grandmother when she was a young woman, probably about the time she went on her mission.  By all accounts, she was a wonderful person.  She was vivacious, hard-working, hilarious and totally devoted to living the gospel.  Grandma grew up in rural Mississippi and like pretty much everyone in her family, she was a great story-teller and had a personality that filled up any room she was in.  She canned, quilted, baked bread, gardened, wrote letters,  sewed clothes for her doll collection, prepared meals for every social function you can imagine, accepted every church calling she was ever given and raised five children who are the funnest, kindest and warmest dad, uncle and aunts that any girl could ever dream of having.  But...she was also totally crazy.  Since my grandma died when she was only 59 and I was just 8, I have always felt like I was jipped in the getting to know her department.  Luckily, she kept a journal for the last several years of her life and I have a copy that I treasure.  While I love to read about her day to day activities and thoughts during this time, it also makes me sad because it is a well known fact that my grandmother literally worried herself to death over her children.  Some of them went through a phase where they weren't living the gospel as she wished they were.  Some of them didn't get the kind of grades she would have wanted them to get.  Some of them chose spouses of whom she did not approve.  Some of them had serious health problems.  Most parents have these troubles at some point in their lives, I suspect, but she just could let any of her worries go.  And here is where I come in.  I can totally see the same issues that my grandmother had with anxiety and parental control in my own life.  I cannot watch a sporting event that my children participate in without becoming so anxious that I cannot feel my fingertips by the end.  I have to take a deep breath each of the three times a day that I check Chad's Snap Grades Account to summon the courage to discover what I might discover about his grades.  I feel an ulcer coming on when I get the email informing me that Aaron's progress report will be coming home from school that day.  I find myself nagging them constantly about homework, practicing piano, filling out Eagle applications, lifting weights (don't ask), wearing rubber bands and head gear.  I try to stop.  I really do, but it is nearly impossible.  By this past Sunday, I had stressed myself to distraction about the fact that my freshman does not seem to care nearly as much as I think he should about his scholarly ambitions.  So later that day, when I checked his grades and found that he had received a bad grade on a project that I had begged him to let me check before he turned it in (he assured me that it was absolutely not necessary), I totally lost it.  I will not tell you how much I yelled and stormed around the house but suffice it to say that the low point was when I not so calmly suggested that if Chad wanted to grow up to be a loser, he might as well move out and start now.  Am I proud of this?  No!  Absolutely not.  Did I feel terrible about the things I said?  Of course I did, - just like I always do when I say horrible things to my children (because believe me this was not the first time).  Furthermore, do I want to someday refuse to attend my daughter's wedding because I dislike her choice of a husband?  Or do I want to encourage another daughter to divorce her husband for the same reason?  Or do I want to write a letter to my son in college saying, "If you're too busy to write to your mother, then you're too damned busy!"  (Okay, that one was actually kind of funny.  Love you, Grandma!)  Most importantly, do I want to die young of a heart attack because I 've become too depressed and anxious about perceived disappointments  and hopelessnesses to care about or attend to my own health?  No, no, no and no.  But boy, stopping the crazy  sure is easier said than done.

Bugs!

Don't you just love Biology class?  Feeding mice to snakes, dissecting frogs, examining cow lungs.  Ew!  Chad's latest project is the dreaded insect collection.  Luckily, his teacher wasn't a stickler on pinning the bugs.  So we went with the photograph option.  Let me just say, though, that it is really hard to find 20 different species of insects.  We are still short 4 and the project is due tomorrow.  We'll find a great bug, look it up, and it turns out to be an arachnid or a woodgrub.   It's a nightmare, I tell you.  Here are some of our specimens.

 Does anyone know what this insect is?  I'm sure it's some kind of grasshopper but I don't know what kind.

This picture is actually a shell of a cicada caught in a spider web.  We decided it would have to do, though, because how were going to find a live cicada?

 We found this cricket hanging out on Amber's stroller.  Gross!

 Dragon fly down at the Rio Grande.

You would not believe how hard it was to get this picture.  We have 6 pictures that were supposed to have him in it and do not because he was just too fast.

Amber is loving this whole insect project.  Between looking for bugs and checking out fire hydrants for the eagle project, she has become quite observant.  Whenever we go for walks, she keeps her eyes glued to the ground looking for any creepy crawlies that might be lurking about.  Whenever we pass a fire hydrant, she will either say, "That fire hydrant is pretty!" or, "That fire hydrant is funny lookin' ".  Earlier this week we drove by a hydrant that someone had painted as Smoky the Bear.  Amber started laughing and said, "That fire hydrant reminds me of President Monson."  What?  Funny girl.

Eagle Project

Attention! Attention! Chad is officially an Eagle Scout! Okay, not officially. He still needs to have his board of review, but still - he's just about there. Yahoo! For his Eagle project, Chad chose to paint firehydrants in our area. Our neighbor Charlie gave us the idea. Thanks Charlie! Chad stressed out about this project more than I thought possible. (If only he would stress out this much about school projects!)  But he did a fabulous job. Here are some pictures to document Chad's triumphant journey into the ranks of Eagle.
Chad planning out the routes.  We had eight groups of painters who painted a total of 50 fire hydrants.

Chad cutting out the card board guards that we put around the hydrants to keep paint from dripping on the ground.

Garrett prepping a hydrant for painting.  We had to wash & dry the hydrants and then brush off the rust before painting.
 

Ty and Miguel with one of their finished products.  Doesn't it look shiny and pretty? Ty risked having yellow hair and skin for his homecoming date later that evening.  He is a trooper!

 Aunt Emily, Aunt Becca and mom working hard.  We got so messy.  The paint we used was terribly sticky and got stickier as time went on.  I think the clean up of the cars/skin/clothes was harder than the actual painting. 

Steven & Sue.  What a great mother/son team.
 
Nate, Chris, Aaron & Larry.  True friends and skilled artists. :)

Ryan, John & Chase looking quite official as they tackle one of the more weathered looking hydrants.

And here is the payoff at last.  Chad finally has his long-awaited cell phone.  He claims it is his treasure and vows that he will not lose it, get it confiscated at school, or get it taken away at home because his grades are not up to par.  We'll see.  For now, though, you have never seen a boy so excited with a new toy.  He has probably sent 100 text messages in the day and a half that he has had it.  Thanks everyone for helping with Chad's project.  He has the best and most loyal friends in the world.  We love you guys!

The Birthday Boy on His Faithful Steed

We went to the mountains for breakfast yesterday and Aaron saddled up Rebecca's dog, Linus.  Okay, not really, but they did have a great hike together.  Aaron will be the big 1-3 on Friday and I will sadly be out of town and not with him when he makes the official transition into  teenagerdom.  I tried to talk Sam into letting me take him with me, but alas, he didn't go for the idea of Aaron missing two days of school.  Do not fear, though. We'll have the party of the year when I get home and everyone's invited.  Aaron, we love you.  You are mischievous and a little mouthy, but you are also a big party in a handsome package.  Our family would not be nearly as much fun without you.   Happy Birthday!