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.