End of the year 2014

Tonight for the Christmas activity we did an end of the year questionarie.  Sara's answers were pretty predicable except for I didn't expect her to say that Easter was her favorite holiday, I thoguht she'd say Christmas.  I think it will be fun to see how their responses change over the years.  I hope I can remember to do it again next year.  

Sara stayed home sick today and it was really sad.  Her teacher had planned a big surpise for the parents by taping their Christmas performance.  I'm really sad that Sara had to miss it.  She stayed in bed all day and slept. 

I recently gave her the choice to take Hip Hop Dancing with Brennan in January or to stay with swimming and she chose to stay with swimming.  She loves it so much and her teacher loves teaching her so it's a win win.  She has gained so much this year from swimming so I'm glad she chose that.  She has been asking to come to swimming early and stay late so she can watch the older kids swim.  She hopes to try out for the swim team this summer.  I know she will be ready by then. 

As the year ends, I would say her biggest achievement this year was her reading.  She went from reading Dick and Jane type readers to in a matter of a couple of months reading chapter books like Balto and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  She is an amazing reader and we are so proud of her.

Thanksgiving and Pre-Christmas

The kids really look forward to the holidays although, Sara does not like Thanksgiving very much.  She says the thought of all the turkeys getting killed makes her sad and that they should really call it National Kill the Turkey's Day.  She still does not eat meat at all.  She says she is allergic to it, who knows, maybe she is.  They made turkey wraps at school and her teacher let her make fruit kabobs instead.  It was actually something she got really excited about so she came home and made fruit kabobs for us at home too.  They were actually really good.

I though this paper she brought home from work was pretty funny.  It says circle the foods you like to eat on Thanksgiving.  At least she circled something, vegetables, bread, and she added in pumpkin pie, which is kind of iffy but anyway....

Luckily for Sara we didn't have a big Thanksgiving meal this year, we went out of town, she she got to avoid the Turkey all together.   We went on an awesome hiking/ exploring trip instead to Bluff Utah.  She's the best hiker.  We did several trails that were really steep, one had a 4 foot drop off where i had to lower the kids down to Dan and it was on a cliff side.  The other was a trail going down into a very large gorge.  She never complained on either of the hikes, not even once.  In fact, she kept swatting my hand away when I would try to help her and saying, "Mom, I got this" or  "time to put it in four wheel drive".  I think Dan was actually way more afraid of the heights on the trail than she was.

Here are some pics of her on the riverwalk by our hotel in Bluff

 Hiking the Moon House Ruins (Anasazi ruins build around 1200) we kept trying to impress upon her what those peoples lives would have been like 800 years ago.  They had no cars or horses, no stores, they had to make all their own clothes, dishes, etc.   We tried to engage her in comparing her life to the life of what a Anasazi kid would have been who lived there.  I'm not sure she totally got it but maybe some of it made sense to her.  She also kind of liked the ruins but found it a little boring too.

She found this little mini-arch and thought it was silly to lay under it.

The next day we hiked the Honaker Trail by Goosnecks State Park.  Sara hiked it like a champ.

One of my favorite things about her is how much she loves the outdoors!

When we got home from our trip, the kids were super excited because the next day we were starting the punch calendar.  It's their favorite thing.  They get to do fun Christmas themed activities, crafts, sing songs, read Christmas books, etc.  Also they get a small candy treat in each punch.

The first night we did another advent calendar project, a Santa and a Reindeer they got to color and add cotton to and then hang in their rooms.  There is a loop for each day that they can tear off to count down to Christmas. 

The second day, we decorated windows in the house with window cling stickers and I got Sara a mini-Christmas Tree for her room that we all decorated together.  She was over the moon for her little tree and musical snow globe.  Next year I'll probably have to get Brennan a little tree for is room too.

I hope they have a really good Christmas.