New Friends

Shortly after Christmas poor Rhino-Hamster disappeared.  William had gotten up in the middle of the night when he heard him running on his wheel, opened up the cage to pet him and then forgot to close it.  I was so mad at first but William was heart broken and is only 5 after all.  So James bought new hamsters and we gave William a very long and miserable lecture on being sure that our pets are safe.  Now he pulls the cage door every time he closes it to be sure it is latched tight.

Our new little guys are Peter (the golden one) and Liam (the greyish one).  They are cute and very active.

Third Grade Program

The 3rd grade program was early morning on January 27th.  It was a series of operas written and performed by the students of each class and then a medley of songs that everyone sang together.  Emily was one of the main dancer's in her class' opera.  It was so cute to see her doing a 50s style jitter bug wearing a bright green poodle skirt.  I just love my girl!



You can't see it really well in this picture but here she was spun around and then sat on Andrew's knee for the finale of the song.  She was a little embarassed about it but also thought it was great fun since she has a crush on Andy.



Family Week at Bonneville

Family week at Bonneville Elementary gives a lot of fun activities that the whole family can participate in at school.  They show movies after school in the gym, have donut read-a-thons in the library, and one day in the week families are invited to eat lunch with the students.  James was working but William, Rachel and I all showed up and had a fun afternoon with the girls.

Welcome 2011

Every one of us stayed up past midnight watching movies and eating treats.  When the countdown came we sprayed each other with silly string and popped the toy poppers.  It was a lot of fun to make the mess but not so much to clean it up!

Christmas Day

I took a picture of the tree around 1 AM when I was finally finished wrapping presents.  It was a wonderful morning and the children were squeeling and giggling with excitement.  Christmas is so special.

And this is what the living room looked like by the time we were done.

Grandma Pajamas

Every Christmas Eve the kids get to open one present, and each year we open Grandma (Atwater) presents because while we don't know the design we do know that she makes a set of pajamas for each of her grandchildren.  This year each child had their number on the shirt.  I'm not sure how far the official number goes but I think my parents have nearly 70 grandchildren.  Grandma accidentally put the wrong number on Emily and Esther's though.  Can't remember what they should be but she sent the right ones and I just haven't sewn them on yet.

Zoo Lights 2010

Our entire family loves the zoo at all times in the year.  During the month of December the zoo is filled with thousands of Christmas lights, many of them animated, to reflect the inhabitants.  It is cold but we buy a cup of chocolate and walk around to enjoy the sights.  If it gets truly freezing we just duck inside the orangutan building and warm up for a while.