They are watching

In addition to her weekly homework, Ava has monthly homework of things she needs to complete during the month. For January, one of the things she needs to do is draw a picture of each member of the family, and then write a sentence about them. She was pretty accurate in describing us!

Mommy: Mommy goes to the store.

Daddy: Daddy does lots of projects.

Norah: She plays with me.

Keira: Keira goes everywhere with her blanket.

Ava wanted to be completely accurate that she even illustrated us in what we were wearing that day. And she chased Keira around to make sure she got her eyecolor correct, lol.

Maybe she will turn out to be an artist....

Christmas 2010

We had a great Christmas at home this year. We attended the Night in Bethlehem again, sponsered by the First Baptist Church in Santa Clara. It's all live and in costume, complete with camels, sheep, a donkey, gypsy dancers and Roman soldiers. (And of course Mary and Joseph, lol). There are booths to show what life was like during the time of Christ's birth, including brick-making, a wine-press, unleavened bread, and jewerly.

We didn't make it to San Francisco this year, but we decorated cookies, made snowflake ornaments, and other Christmas crafts.

Christmas morning was quite the feat! I heard Ava and Norah playing in their room, quite loudly I might add, at 4:30 am. I told them they needed to go back to sleep, but Ava said that it was hard. She then also told me she had peeked at the toys Santa had left! Luckily though they went back to sleep until 8:30 am.

Around 9 am we opened presents, then had a breakfast of homemade cinnamon rolls. Overall it was a great holiday season for us.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

They really do listen!

Every Wednesday in Ava's class they have computer time, which involves three things - drawing a picture using a kid-friendly drawing program, drawing 8 items that begin with the letter of the week, and listening to a story, then drawing a picture of their favorite part of the story along with a sentence describing why it's their favorite. Then a paper is sent home (along with the illustration of the favorite part of the story with sentence) which tells the parent how their student is doing in each area. Each task is rated with one star, two stars, three starts, or four stars - one being the lowest, and four being the highest.

Ava's been really good at the first two tasks, but not so much on the third. Which was odd to me, since she loves drawing pictures! She wouldn't draw a picture, and only write half a sentence. I finally had a talk with her about it last week, about how important it is to listen to the teacher and complete classwork.

Yesterday when I picked her up from class, she was bursting at the seams to get something out of her backpack and show it to me. She presented me with her weekly computer center paper, only this time she had FINALLY completed the third task! Illustration AND complete sentence! She was really proud of it, and I was happy that she finally did it during class.

So kids really DO listen when you talk to them about things!

Star of the Week

Every week in Ava's class, a student is chosen to be Star of the Week. This was Ava's week! She filled out a poster with pictures of her family, and all her favorite things - like her favorite food (carrots - which I wouldn't have guessed!), her favorite animal (a unicorn - definitely my child!), and what she wants to be when she grows up (a car driver - she must get that from Mason). In addition, the chosen Star of the Week takes home the class bear over the weekend, Beebear, and writes in a journal what they did with him over the weekend. Since we had Beebear last weekend, we had all sorts of Halloween fun with him.

Today she presented her poster and her Beebear journal entries. Such a fun weekly activity to do with the students!

PSA

Just in case you didn't know, we are expecting baby #4 in April.

I'm currently 16 weeks, and we find out in 3 if it's a boy or a girl.

Whoo hoo!!

Lovely Language

Today Norah surprised me with the phrase:

"I burped out of my butt!!"

*facepalm*

Faith in the future

Today at church we had fast and testimony meeting. I was really impressed by the testimony of one of our youth. She mentioned that for a recent school project, she and her classmates were assigned to do a "Me Board," where they share different aspects of themselves. One part of it was to include who they would like to emulate in the future. She said that many of her classmates spoke about wanting to be like celebrities or business moguls. But she didn't feel like she could do that. She wanted to put on her board that she wanted to be like Christ and Heavenly Father, but part of her was afraid of sharing her testimony.

But when it was her turn to present her board, she had a picture of the temple and Christ on it. She talked about how she wanted to emulate Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, because she had felt their unconditional love in her life. She felt the Spirit present, and was so glad that she followed its promptings.

After hearing that, it gave me renewed faith in the future. I'm amazed at the strength of our youth, and the courage they display in sharing their testimonies and standing for what is right. Sometimes I get bogged down in the doldrums of life, and get a bit pessimistic. But then I hear testimonies like these, and I know that if we keep the faith, hold to the rod, and endure to the end, everything will be alright.