Another Awards Ceremony

Just expect that you will see an awards ceremony post about 4 times a year as it seems the girls get such good grades that they are at least on the High Honors (3.5-3.99 GPA, Grade Point Average, only 1 or 2 B's) or, as in Xoe's case this year, the Principal's List (4.0 GPA, or all A's).  Xanthe would have earned a place on this List too but one of her teachers didn't grade an assignment in time that she needed to fix, so by the time he gave it back to her she didn't have time to fix it before the end of the quarter.  (She was up until midnight trying to fix it and in tears... I finally told her to go to bed that it wasn't worth it.)  

So, props to both of them!  I am seriously so proud of them. They are the busiest girls I know and yet they manage to get such good grades in their very difficult classes.  Here are some pictures of the first ceremony of the school year.  I expect to go to another one in a few weeks as we just ended another quarter.

XANTHE

She is so dang pretty, I can't stand it! (Her good friend's Grace is sort of hidden behind her and Marissa to the left of Xanthe in a Coca Cola shirt)

I have to add that another parent and I were so impressed with how many of their 7th Grade class earned a place on either the Honor Roll, High Honors or Principal's List.  One could opine that possibly their studies are too early, but I know the work the girls have had to do and it is difficult. So this really says something about the teachers and the faculty on how great of a job they are doing!

XOE

I didn't get any good pictures of Xoe alone and these ones are kind of blurry.  But this is Xoe, Katie Peters, Christine Arnold and Katryn Brown, all really good friends of the girls, and all with straight A's).

Xanthe Villa, Jazmine Reed, Xoe Villa and Christine Arnold

Great job girls!!!!!

Church Christmas Party

Okay, so I'm totally playing catch up for the time in Germany before we left to the states for Christmas. How am I doin? I'm pretty much rockin, right? :)

So, a few days before we left, our church ward was having their Christmas party. Each auxiliary was in charge of one area.  Because I am in the Primary (the little kids, up to age 12), they put us in charge of the decorations. We were instructed to use very limited funds, make things out of paper and make it look homey.  The overall theme was Christmas Morning.

Lauren and I came up with the idea to have a fireplace, a wreath made out of all the Primary children's hands, and an ornament wall.  We had a ton of other really great ideas, but not enough time.  Suffice it to say, we were pretty proud of ourselves. Check out my rockin fireplace.  Woo!  Xanthe made the fire.  We did a pretty good job, right? :)

And before any of the church members not in our ward freak out that we used the chapel for our party, our ward building is very small and we use every space we can.  Soemthing I didn't get a picture of was the coloring stockings and cups of crayons that were placed on all the tables for the kids (and the adults did it too) to color while they were waiting.  The tables were covered in paper so they could draw on those as well. Then when they were finished, they came up to put their stockings on the ward fireplace.  You'll be able to see the stockings hung up 3 pictures down.  You can also see in this picture the wrapping paper covered hymn books the girls had the idea to do for the Young Women/Men singing. Cute idea.

This was after we finished setting up the night before. The paper links that are hanging on the wall didn't stay taped to the stucco wall (we already knew they wouldn't) so they became part of the table runner down the  middle.

This was the only picture I had of the wreath up above the front.  I also didn't get a picture of the ornament tree, but Lauren had taken pictures of every single kid and then made it into an ornament tree.  I'm bummed I didn't get a picture. It turned out really great.  P.S. that's the back of Lauren's head. :)

We had a little bit of a program after eating breakfast.  A few of the Young Women got up and spoke about their favorite Christmas tradition, Xanthe and Xoe were two of them.   Then the youth got up and sang O Little Town of Bethlehem.

You know how most kids ages 0-4 are deathly afraid of Santa, and you get those pictures of them being forced to sit on Santa's lap? Not Spencer.  He was so enthralled.  He didn't really have an idea of who Santa was so this year I just gave him a brief overview and got him a little excited.  I had no idea how excited he would get.  This picture is of him about ready to wet himself over having to wait even one extra minute to see him.  

A child in heaven. And what do you think was the only thing he asked Santa for?   Trains, obviously.  Oh, and train track.

Loving his treat from Santa.

More shopping antics

Around Christmastime, right before we were to leave, I needed to go to our local "store" (it's like a RiteAid and Walmart mixed together... they have a good selection of certain things but it's definitely no Target. :) ).  Spencer found some fun Christmas decorations at one end that all moved, twinkled lights or dropped snow inside a globe.  And which one do you think Spencer found? Of course, the train one.  And can you please see what he did with it? He meticulously lined up bags of candy, pushing them with the train to line up and not rushing through the steps at all.  He also had it in order from how they were up on the shelves. I hope this "need for order" stays around for a long time.

This next video is of the time we went to see the christmas decorations and instead of pushing it over and over again to hear the repetition, he took it to a new level.