Hart and Jory, Brynn and Kyle, Braden, and Mitzi's family came for Thanksgiving. I wasn't sure how my kids would do because Mitzi's kids are a bit older, but they had a lot of fun together. Tuesday night Mom and Dad stayed in IF for Dad's procedure the next morning while everyone else arrived. I came to Mitzi's rescue because she had arrived first to a locked house and couldn't find the key to get in 😂 I didn't stay long that night but I enjoyed catching up with Brynn and Braden on all their stuff.
Wednesday a few of us decided to hike to lonesome pine. We made too many errors figuring the right path to take that we ran out of time/enthusiasm by the time we found the actual trailhead. We made lofty plans to try again the next day which didn't happen, but I enjoyed the outside time anyway. That night we had our pies and by the time they had Trains, Planes, and Automobiles going my family and I peaced out for the night.
Thanksgiving dinner the next day was as good as ever. Justin planned another treasure hunt for the second year in a row. This time he made the clues specific to certain family members so everyone had a chance to solve something. Emmett was SO excited; there were many teachable moments to let others be the leader/solve the clues/find the next clue. One time when we were going from one clue to the other, he loaded into the car and said, "Let's Go! We're running this!" I died ... so funny.
Mitzi performed a Christmas miracle by convincing everyone else to stay one more night when they originally planned to leave that afternoon. I'm so glad she worked her "woo" to make that happen because we had another great night together. We zipped up to where Dad has the cement blocks of Erin and Burns, we solved multiple puzzles, and Mom even allowed football to be on the main TV for the entire afternoon (a second Christmas miracle, TBH). We were finally able to make our game of Rage happen and it was FUN. For the first time, I was actually in it and was having a perfect game. But at hand 5 or 6 Justin took me down with an epic outrage that forced me to win a hand I didn't want... I spiraled from there and somehow Justin won it all. We sang a few Christmas songs before Jory suggested we watch The Man Who Invented Christmas. We enjoyed that while eating multiple pieces of Mom's fudge. Everyone left promptly Friday morning and we enjoyed a chill weekend.
Monday was busy; I had an early morning meeting (7:30) specifically about our 8th graders. Parents have been calling complaining about what their kids are dealing with at school with their language, dirty talk, etc, so we've been petitioned to buckle down on them. I've been making a lot of excuses for why they are hard in my class, but finally decided to reread my favorite classroom management book and implement some stricter rules. I came ready with my arsenal of rules on Thursday only to have 1/2 the class GONE. It was lovely but now I have to do it all again tomorrow...ha! The good news is, either way I only have 8 days of school until Christmas break, and the new semester starts the week after we get back from break, so I'll only have my big class to work with for 3 more weeks. Then I'll lose 1/2 of them to the other teacher. Even though they are tough, I will miss whoever gets moved. It's a good life when you're a teacher and genuinely like kids. My job at Auburn taught me how to love even the toughest kids, which...kids at Butte don't even come close to that.
After my meeting I zipped home to get the kids rounded up because we were scheduled to meet with the land surveyor that morning at 8:30. Well after waiting 20 minutes Dad called and they said 9:30...so we went home and came back at 9:30 only to have Mr. Surveyor show up at 10:00. Ha! I guess I better get used to all this for when we actually start building our house...By the time he finally showed up and we finished talking about everything, it was time to get lunch into the kids and go to work. When I got home, our new piano had been delivered! I paid them extra to take the old piano off our hands. It is perfect - what a perfect time to have it for all our Christmas music.
Friday we had doctor appointments for the kids and I had an in-service meeting in the afternoon to pick our science books for next year. Since we had to zip back to get home in time for my meeting, we went back again on Saturday to finish our monthly shopping. Phew! It made for a long weekend. Saturday night Justin gave me time alone to lesson plan for the entire week next week. It's always SO much better when I have that all figured out before the week starts. I'm committed to not doing anything on Sundays, so sometimes that means staying up late on Saturday to get it all done. That has left today wide open to do a puzzle with the kids that Emmett picked out yesterday "for us to do as a family." Justin has been baking up a storm getting ready for our cookie exchange, and I will go to community Christmas choir practice with Mom tonight.
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