Christmas Update

I tried to get out house decorated wit the lights we had, but couldn't figure out how people made their lights stick up perfectly until someone hired me to do their lights and they had these cool clips that hook on the shingles. I am definitely using those next year. 

I have tried to start up the dates again, for this date I saw that the science department at the college was having an experiment night where they explain how things work and they put all kinds of things in the microwave that shouldn't go in there. Hallie is fascinated by how things work and why things are the way that they are. I thought she would like this, but when I told her she was excited to be going on a date, but was not excited that we weren't doing the traditional trip to the craze then get a treat afterwards. As we were walking to the college, she said that she was only going for me. I said I don't need to go I was going for her and that we should just turn around and go back home and she said, no I don't want mom to be mad at me for not going. Annie and I get frustrated with them when they don't try new things. Annie does not want them to be like that because she feels like she didn't try new things when she was little and doesn't want the girls to be like that. Hallie ended up having fun and was fascinated as you can see from her facial expression in the picture. 

This is where they blew up a light bulb in the microwave, they also put foil and soap in there. 

It was pouring rain outside, but we still walked. I love being able to walk everywhere. 

There were definitely your typical science nerds running the show, but that made it even better when you  could feel the passion that they had for everything.

We have decorated the house for Christmas, as we have sold almost all of our things throughout the past years. Our boxes and boxes of Christmas stuff have managed to stay off of Craigslist for now. 

Jacquie sent us an update of what is happening with them and her and my mom sent an elf to include in our Christmas activities. We still haven't named him, but he is present in some of the pictures. 

We have been really blessed this Christmas. I have been worried since September how we were going to pull off Christmas. We moved back at a pretty low hourly wage, but with the knowledge of making more once I became certified as a coder which I finally became last weekend after taking a 6 hour test. In November we put a bunch of stuff on layaway at Walmart with a plan of how to pay for it before Christmas. Three days later they called and said that someone had paid our bill and told us to come pick up our stuff. That was a huge blessing, we are still not sure who it was but have narrowed it down to three possibilities. I hope that I can be that awesome someday and return the favor. We have also had a huge help from family which we are very grateful for. We have been very blessed and our kids will have a wonderful Christmas and not know any different. I feel like I am finally on a good course career wise that will put us in a responsible and secure position in the future. I am grateful for the opportunity to have been able to start life over and live in a place where we have the opportunity to educate ourselves and chase our dreams. 

My favorite thing to set up is the train and our Christmas villages. It looks so magical and would be so fun to walk through a town that looked like that. 

We didn't have room under the tree for the train so we set it up in the playroom for the girls to play with if they can get dad to stop nagging them about what they can and can't do with it. 

This is the nativity set that the girls are allowed to play with, we learned through some broken hands and other pieces from our other one that they are not ready to play with that one. 

Our cool built in hutch worked out perfectly for the villages

Mya had her first ballet recital at the sugar city basketball game half time.  She was scared at first before we left the house, but did a wonderful job and followed her teacher well. These were pictures of her getting ready then our camera died, but we got it on video. 

Last weekend we went to this awesome Jazz Christmas music concert put on by the college. They had a  jazz band  and an awesome vocal group. Annie and I were loving it and the girls were bored after thirty minutes so we left and got frozen yogurt. It was a really cool show. 

We finally got a little bit of snow and the girls were out playing in it. It has not been too bitterly cold here yet. It is snowing pretty hard right now, so hopefully we will have a little for Christmas.