Our Ultimate Life: December Goodness

The first two weeks of December were all about survival - just getting to Christmas break. On the last day of school before break I kicked a kid out of my classroom for the first time all year. Dang! I almost made it a whole semester without having to do that. Oh well. I am a pretty chill teacher, but if you're going to openly defy me, you can get yourself up out of your chair and get out of my classroom, or I can assist you; what would you prefer? Ha...that line always seems to finally get results.

I did some "Christmasy" activities with my 8th grade class the final week before break. We'll start astronomy when we get back and then move into the physical sciences before they take their ISATs. 7th graders are starting evolution and then we'll roll into the Earth sciences for the rest of the year. We got absolutely dumped on the week before break and even got a snow day the Wednesday of that week. I measured 14" before Justin cleared off my measuring spot- the audacity! But it had pretty much stopped snowing at that point.

Christmas break has been absolutely lovely. We got Logan and Emmett's dental work all done. Logan had too many cavities in too many inconvenient places, so we had him put under to get all that work done. We enjoyed our ward Christmas party - the primary sang two songs and I sang in a group Mom organized. Justin baked and baked and baked and baked and we gave tons of treats away to anyone we could think of. We hosted our Christmas party with friends at our house and had a lot of fun! Justin ran the games and I ran the air fryer - I will never make chicken the same again! YUM!!

Beckham started babbling and it's my favorite thing! He is a little chatter box making joyous squeals to himself and his brothers whenever they play with him. He is on the verge of crawling and sitting on his own! Just not quiiiite yet. We're trying some baby led weaning suggestions with starting solids which have been pretty scattered. When he's sitting independently I'll get more serious but for now we let him munch on the occasional orange, chicken bone, or standard purees.

Our chickens are surprising us; they have not slowed down their laying. We don't have a heat lamp for them, and they are in their coops all day and night...we are still getting tons of eggs! I have 10 dozen saved up so now I may have to start giving them away...I was banking on using those eggs all winter because they are supposed to need more sunlight to lay every day...hmmm....

We got snow again and enjoyed sledding at Mom and Dad's today. I've been helping Mom with her picture organization on her computer. We got them a backup storage device for Christmas so if their computer crashes they don't lose everything. We'll see if my turkey holds up in the fridge before we feast tomorrow!