::he's a child of god::

In honor of finally having the primary program over with for another year, Max and I made some fun music on sunday.

I think grandmothers and grandfathers will especially appreciate this, as Max sounds darn pretty adorable in this first song.

And they're only a video because I couldn't figure out how to post them here otherwise.  So I stuck a couple of my pretty fall pictures from last year on them.

The recording quality is pretty bad, so don't listen too close dad.  It's all just for fun.

And this is the other version we did.  It cracked Max up when he heard it.

__Christmas at Max's School__

They sure knows how to keep Christmas at Max's school. I guess that's one of the benefits of a private school--the teachers can celebrate Christmas if they want to!
When I came to pick Max up on the last day of November his teacher was madly sewing. I didn't know what she was up to, but when we went back to school on the first day of December there they were: an advents calendar for each child, with their name on it. There was a small toy or trinket sewn to it for each day. How cool!
Here's a picture. I took this picture pretty late in December, so there's not much left on the calendar, but you get the idea I hope.

The names are kind of covered, but Max's is the one with the pink kooshy ball near the bottom. He dreamed about that ball all month.
I thought this was such a cute idea, and so much individual work for his teacher. I also found out later that the kids got to pick out all their goodies. The teachers passed trays of toys around and the kids got to pick out what they liked. What could be better? One of the days Max came home with a rubber cockroach. This cockroach was very realistic, and startled me several times. The worst was when I was doing the wash--switching clothes from the washer to the drier. I got to the bottom of the washer, and there waiting for me was the cockroach. I hadn't seen it for a while (I'm sure that was because it was hiding out in some pocket somewhere) so I had kind of forgotten about it and it really scared me! Max thought that was pretty funny.

At school they learned a whole bunch of Christmas songs which Max really enjoyed. He knows songs now that I don't even know, like "Up on the Housetop". Here's a little singing video we did that you're welcome to check out if you want. Max is definitely an enthusiastic caroler.


One day last week he came home with the lovely snowflake ornament that I highlighted in my post about the tree. I love it of course, and Max was very proud, and very excited to hang it on the tree.


Sometime last week they had a big Christmas party too. Santa Claus came and brought everybody a present to take home, and they danced and ate a yummy Christmas meal and treats. It looked like lots of fun to me. They gave me a couple of pictures of it, but Max was so enamored of the pictures that he walked off with them and I haven't seen them since. I'm sure we'll find them when we move in a few months....
Here's a picture of him all dressed up and ready to go to the party. So stinking cute!

Hmmm, I'm trying to think what else they did...they cut out lovely paper snowflakes and hung them from the ceiling, they made cute snowman frames for small prints of their school pictures and they got a very exciting fiber-optic tree with moving glowing lights that made the kids very excited.
I'm always impressed at the work Max's teacher puts into her school, and this Christmas stuff was no exception. He had a lot of fun.

∞∞ Seven Random Thingys About Me ∞∞

My dear friend Megan tagged (or challenged is how I like to think of it) me to come up with seven random unknown but interesting things about myself. This was really really hard! I'm not really used to delving too deeply into my habits or thoughts I guess, and so it's been interesting to do so. Hopefully my seven things aren't too boring and hopefully some of you don't already know them! Without further ado:

1. I really don't like vegetables. The only ones I can really say that I like a lot are carrots and broccoli. That's it. Kind of sad huh? The ones that I like OK are cauliflower, some squash, lettuce, kale, potatoes, sweet potatoes, (do those count as veggies?), green beans, corn. The ones I find tolerable depending on the presentation are onions, some squash, alfalfa sprouts, spinach, artichoke, peppers. I HATE tomatoes (yeah, sorry dad, I still do), brussel sprouts, eggplant, asparagus, beets, olives (wait, are olives actually fruits?), okra, kohlrabi, peas.
Alright, that's a long enough list. Do you get the picture? I'm not so good at vegetables which makes eating well a little bit of a challenge. I've become a lot more adventurous in the last few years though, and have extended and improved the happy part of the list. My plan is to keep working on it. But no tomatoes. Never tomatoes.

2. I love to sing. I love that we get to sing at church and I take advantage of that fact. However, I absolutely hate it when somebody is singing the same part as me and I can hear them. So if I'm singing soprano and the person behind me is also singing soprano loud enough for me to hear them I have to switch parts. Bass or tenor works fine for me as long as I can't hear anybody else singing it.
My singing and sightreading skills have really had a hard test lately. Kris got called as the ward chorister and he's been picking the hymns that nobody ever sings and nobody knows except the really old ladies. So usually if I don't sing the songs really loud nobody sings at all. It's been interesting. I used to think I knew pretty much all the hymns in the book but Kris has helped me to realize that just isn't true.

3. I really dislike politics. When I was about 11 or 12 my mom got me this great book. It was some kind of kid's guide to politics and I thought for sure I would end up as some sort of politician, maybe even president. No way. These days sometimes I don't even want to vote. I feel like voting without researching into all the issues and candidates is no good. And I hate discussing politics because I never feel like I know enough about what's going on to have an opinion I can stand behind. I am not the kind of person that can just pick one side of an issue and argue it unless I know all about it and have proof and examples to back me up.
So I just avoid politics as much as I can.

4. I didn't know my hair was curly/very wavy until we moved out here to Kansas City. I thought it was straight. It's not. I can make it straight but it wants to wave and curl if I just leave it on it's own. Weird huh?

5. I am terrible at sewing. Some of you might find that weird if you know my mom. She's awesome. And my mother in law is awesome too. I have a fabulous sewing machine but I barely know how to use it. Maybe someday when I have a little more time I can learn more and won't be so terrible.
I did make one thing once I'm very proud of. Witness the pea pod:
6. I'm really scared of badgers, wolverines and wild boars.

7. I spend most of the time when I'm trying to go to sleep planning what I'm going to do the next day (most of which I never get done) thinking of the phone calls I need to make, thinking about the work things I need to do and writing emails to people and blog entries. Most of the emails and blog entries I write never actually get written in real life, but sometimes I'm confused and think that I actually did write them. And they're so much more witty when I'm half asleep than they really are once I do get around to writing them. So all of you out there that have been waiting for an email or a phone call from me, relax. I probably already did it. And Megan, you were probably wondering why it took me so long to write this entry? It's because I wrote it like 7 times already and every time it was great but I couldn't remember any of what I had written the next morning.

So there you go. Now maybe you know me a little better. Maybe not?

I'm not tagging anybody especially, but any of you that feel the urge to do this, please do. It's fun to learn things about each other. Actually I take it back. I'm tagging Kari, Lorri (lorri, you really need your own blog!!), Charlotte, Lechelle and Miffy. Let's hear it guys!!