Woe is me....

Allan and I are no longer teaching Sunbeams (the 3 year old class).  He was released from being a primary worker and I am going to be the Jr. Primary Chorister (teaching the 3-7 year old children church songs).  We are so bummed to not be teaching those cute kids anymore but I am excited (and a bit worried) about my new calling.  We told our kids about it, and that they would be moving up to an older class, and they looked at us with their best frownie faces and said "We'll miss you.  We love you guys.  And you'll miss us too."  That's why we love primary so much.  Poor Allan is planning how he can escape the adult classes and sneak back in to primary with the children.  We'll see if he ever succeeds.  We had the children act out the Nativity today in class.  We only have one little girl so she was Mary and she couldn't have been more thrilled.  I have never seen her more reverent than she was today.  We acted it out 3 times and she sat completely still, snuggling our "baby Jesus", through the entire class!   I was on my way to the library after sacrament meeting when one of our little boys saw me.  He got a big smile on his face, pointed at me and said "Dad, my girl!  My girl!"  His dad didn't see me though and was very confused about who his 3 yr old son's "girl" was.

We got our adoption pass-along cards on Monday!  Hooray!  We made and delivered a bunch of cookies with our pass-along cards to start to get the word out that we are hoping to adopt.  Everyone here has been very supportive.  We even gave a few to the Missionaries to hand out (as per their request).  When Allan gave them the cards they told him, "You'll have a baby with in two months."  We hope he's right!

The post office lost Allan's Christmas present.  Ugh.  We both ordered gifts for each other from Barnes and Noble on the same day.  When my gift for Allan didn't come we got a little worried and tracked it online only to find that it had supposedly been delivered by the post office on the 8th.  After talking to the Post Office a few times it was clear that they had received it and it had been put in their delivery truck, but after that they had no idea where it might be.  I had a couple of small gifts for Allan but that was his main Christmas gift (and the most expensive thing we bought) so I was really annoyed.  The delivery man came out and looked around but couldn't find any trace of it and they were thinking they would just have to reimburse us.  However, on the 15th our neighbor brought it over to us.  The key to the locker had been put in their box by mistake. I am so grateful that they brought it when they did because we celebrated Christmas together this weekend.  Thankfully everything worked out, and Allan had more than just a couple polo shirts under the tree.

I told one of our Sunbeams today that Santa already came to our house.  He looked at me with wide eyes, and I could tell he was wondering how he could get Santa to come early to his house too.  We had a good early Christmas. Allan got me a couple of books and a movie that I wanted, and some shirts.  I got him some polos, a laser level, and the game Settlers of Catan (the missing package).  Here we are with our loot.

We had a fun time playing the game later that evening.  We also went to the Temple.  What better way to celebrate Christ's birth than attend the Temple the day we celebrated Christmas.  That doesn't happen very often.  Other than that we delivered cookies to our Sunbeams and a few other families.  It was a really good day.  We hope everyone's Christmas is just as wonderful!

Stop Bugging Me!

For some reason whatever apartment we live in we always have bug problems, and both Allan and I hate bugs!  Usually it's spiders but we did have some problems with squirrels in our first apartment.  When we first moved here we had a problem with scorpions.  That has since been cleared up, but now we are having a problem with wasps.  They are in our bathroom fans.  Every day between 1:00 and 2:00pm I start hearing a loud buzzing coming from one or both of the bathrooms.  It lasts for a couple of hours and ends with the wasp getting stuck in the grill and dieing.  Then Allan comes home and vacuums it out.  It's a rather unfortunate daily routine we are going through right now.  This Wednesday was the worst though.  I was working on some Christmas gifts in the living room when I heard an extremely loud buzzing coming from our guest bathroom.  I went and closed the door to wait for Allan to come home.  This is what we found later:

All of the little yellow spots are parts of wasps, mostly the wings.  Our landlord put a bug bomb in the vent and we think the wasps all flew down to try and get away, only to get stuck in the vent grill.  There is supposed to be someone coming tomorrow to clean it up.  Hopefully it will happen.  I was hoping that would be the last of the wasps but Allan heard some today.  I just hope that when the maintenance man comes and takes off the grill I don't get a swarm of live wasps in my house!

We went to a children's theatrical performance this weekend.  They did 101 Dalmations.  We were very impressed with all of the kids.  They ranged from 4-10 years old and they knew all of their lines and did all of the choreography perfectly.  Afterward we went to the local Frozen Yogurt place.  When we went to sit down we saw one of the little dalmations there.  Allan told her we had just seen her play and she said "I was the one that threw my hat off at the end.  I was cute when I did that huh!"  We got a big kick out of that.  We hadn't noticed her throwing her hat but we sure thought she was cute right then.   

We went to our ward Christmas party this weekend as well.  At the end of the party all of the kids got to go and see Santa.   In church today all of the kids in our class told me about their experiences with Santa - if they sat on his lap, told him what they wanted for Christmas, got a candy cane, etc.  I asked one of the boys if Santa was going to come to his house and give him presents.  He said, "no, I saw him at church."  Apparently that was enough for him.

Allan was too sick to go to church this week so I had the sunbeams all to myself.  I was really worried that all of them would be there - that would have made for a rough day - but only three came today.  I don't think I've every been so happy that someone missed church!  The kids that came were, thankfully, really good for me.  They were very reverent and they listened very quietly to the lesson while I taught it.  The Lord answered my prayers.  When we were doing the talking stick one of the boys said that he needed to tell me one more thing.  So, after the other childs turn I asked him what he'd wanted to tell me and he looked at me and said "I love you!" and gave me a big hug.  What a great day in primary!

Christmas Preparations

This week Allan and I got pictures taken for our adoption pass-along cards!  There is a sister in our ward that is a photographer, and she took the pictures and designed the cards for free.  That was a really great blessing.  The pictures turned out great.  She did a really good job.  We are going over to look at the cards today.  We'll be bringing the final product with us to hand out during Christmas so get ready!  We had a lot of fun taking the pictures, but it felt a lot like we were taking our engagements all over again.  We're hoping that the next time we take pictures we'll have a child - it will be a lot more fun, and interesting, that way.

We also did a lot of shopping this week.  By the end of the week poor Allan was so sick of Walmart that he actually did get sick!  We did most of our shopping online on cyber Monday, and I have to give a shout out to a certain sister-in-law who chatted with me while I shopped.  Thanks for keeping me entertained, I may have gone completely crazy with out you!  We were successful though and got all of our Christmas shopping done in that one day!  Hooray!  Just a few more hand-made gifts to go, and we're done!  We got some really great deals too:).

We set up our Christmas tree and managed to fit all of mine and Allan's ornaments on it.  I have at least two ornaments for every year I've been alive and Allan has a few as well.  Our poor tree is pretty small but so far it's made it every year.




This year some of the lights didn't work so we had to make an emergency stop at Walmart late Friday night (after we'd already been there that day), I think that's the one the got Allan.  He just couldn't take the shopping anymore.

Our little town holds a parade of lights the first Saturday of December every year and, of course, we went.  It was quite chilly (still nothing compared to where we've lived before), and we finally had to break out our winter gear.  It was a lot of fun though, and the people were really creative.  There were several semi trailers decked out in holiday decorations.  My favorite was Candy Land themed; we didn't get a picture though because the batteries died.  There was also a John Deere Tractor decorated as Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer

 

the writing on the window says "Santa's favorite deere", very creative. All of the horses were covered in lights and the fire department from two different towns came.  One was "pulling" their fire truck as reindeer, and the other fire truck was carrying Santa Claus.  Here are a few pictures of the parade:


Me, freezing.


Allan, catching cold.


A good example of what the floats looked like.

We had a blast with the Sunbeams this week.  They were more reverent than they've been in a long time!  I was the first one there this time, and when the first little boy walked in and saw me his eyes lit up, he gave me a huge smile and trotted over to sit next to me and tell me all about his week.  Such a cutie!  It made me feel very loved.  Allan had quite the experience with two of the boys while taking them to the bathroom. This is where I take over for a minute. One of the little boys has a tough time coming to Primary, but is doing better. Last week he had walked over to the door, but I had almost convinced him to stop crying when someone randomly opened the door right as his Dad was walking by. That ended his stay in Primary for awhile. So this week when I left the room with this boy and another boy, I went through the door only to turn and see both of his parents coming our way. All 3 of us froze and stared at each other, but luckily their little boy was still looking the other way. I quickly shoved the 2 little boys into the hallway that led to the ladies' bathroom, hoping that he wouldn't see his parents. As they quickly turned and walked the other way, both little boys looked up and started teaching me all about how we were supposed to be going to the other bathroom, not the girls' bathroom (The other little boy was the one that wanted to go in the girls' bathroom a few weeks ago. He had learned his lesson well, and was now very confused.) All I could think of to say was, "I know, we are going to the boys' bathroom, we just have to stand here for a minute." It's a good thing that four year-olds are so trusting.

Merry Christmas!