The Week in Pictures

Here are just a few things we were up to the week and a half before Christmas:

Jesikah made these adorable cupcake/candy jars for all her school friends. We found the idea on Pinterest. The cream is actually caulk.  The caulk part is a lot harder to do than it looks! :)

Each friend got their favorite candy

The girls had their Christmas band concert! Tessa started playing the flute this year, and Jesikah is still playing the clarinet! This was Tessa's first concert. She is doing very well on her progression and the concert was good considering they all started playing at the beginning of the school year. After the sixth grade band played, the Symphonic Band played. Jesikah is in the Symphonic Band. It is the honor band in middle school and you have to be invited to be part of it. This is Jesikah's second year in Symphonic Band, and she is doing well. The difference in the two bands was significant. The Symphonic band was incredible! Jesikah also played in her 8th grade band concert a few days earlier.

Tessa with her flute getting ready to start

Jesikah is 3rd in the first row we can see

There are only 5 clarinets and Jesikah had some songs that she played solo on her part

On December 14th, our ward held its annual ward Christmas party. Since Eric is bishop now, he was in charge of a lot of the planning and carrying out of the dinner.  The Christmas dinner has had good and bad years since we have been in the ward, and one in particular was quite bad, so he wanted to do it right.  He put a lot of work into it and I thought it went incredibly well.  Unfortunately, he was on-call the night of the dinner and ended up having to stay at work late.  He did make it to about half of the dinner/activity though.  For my part, I cooked 15 pounds of mashed potatoes (below is the pot I filled), cooked 2 hams, and made a crockpot full of corn.  We had a very good turnout, but somehow our things ended up being the last served, so we went home with almost two hams, most of our potatoes, and most of the corn.  We had variations of ham, potatoes, and corn everyday for leftovers the next week until we had all finally had ENOUGH!!  We were going to have that meal for Christmas dinner, but since we were all so sick of it by then, we strayed from tradition, and made lasagna and garlic bread.

Pot of potatoes



This North Face jacket was to be Alex's big gift on Christmas.  When it came in the mail about a week before Christmas, I knew it was not going to work out.  First, it was the wrong size, and second the colors looked nothing like they did online.  I thought the top color was gray, not forest green!!  Anyway, I called REI to see what I could do.  They thought I could order another and it might arrive by Christmas, but I would lose my discounts, etc.  Anyway, I ended up calling the REI in the Nashville area and they had one more of these in a black medium.  I had them save it for me and Tessa and I took a little Saturday drive and made the exchange.  I was very happy with the end result.



The Young Women in our ward went ice skating together on December 22nd.  I didn't venture out to skate (being in my pregnant condition would have been a real hazard with my lack of skating skills), but I had fun watching the girls.  Jesikah had a lot of fun.  She is in the middle (4th from both sides).