Happy  Christmas

Family Christmas selfie.

It snowed a lot more.

One advantage to not buying the latest thing is that when you do get it it's new to you. We got a used Xbox 360 for Christmas that came with a bunch of games. We played for hours and hours.

We got to Skype with Kaitlin in Paraguay.  I posted some video highlights from our conversation on Kaitlin's missionary blog. So pop over to her blog to watch! 

This Week:

Jared turned 13. We celebrated by eating fish and chips and playing minecraft together.

Here is a video he made on his birthday of himself doing yoyo tricks.

It snowed. A lot.

Chuck and Becky went on a date to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert, which was excitingly excellent.

Not pictured:  Becky's church choir Christmas program was today. Becky sang a duet and Chuck sang in the choir.  The choir did great, and Becky waved her hands at them with vigor.

Today Debate, Tomorrow the World

Ruth competed in another debate tournament this weekend. She was competing in two new categories, Oratory and Poetry Reading, as well as her normal Humorous Interpretation (HI) category.  She won first place in HI varsity, and first place in Declamation (which was open), and she got second overall in speech categories for the entire competition; that's second out of hundreds of students.  Her wins also put her in first place on her school team which she was pretty excited about.

I spent all day Friday judging at the tournament, but I'm not allowed to judge any student from Ruth's school, so I never saw Ruth.  Still, it's fun to watch these bright and talented students compete.  They come into the room all giggly and goofy like normal teenagers, but once they stand to compete they are all very impressive.

First Band Concert

This week was Jared's very first band concert.  He played the snare drums, jingle bells, and bell set.   He did a really good job and seemed to really like it.

You  might remember that I basically forced Jared into band this year, but this week when a friend asked him what his favorite class was he said "band."  I'm amazed.  I hope he decides to stick with it.




Wedding

We went to my niece Amy's wedding this weekend.  My sister put on a beautiful lunch and reception, and we enjoyed visiting with family and celebrating with them.   Another niece brought face cut outs of my nephew Benjamin and Kaitlin, both on missions for the LDS church, and we passed them around and took pictures with them.  

After being put off because of employment and insurance issues, Jared finally got his braces on this week.  He's been a little sore but has enjoyed having all-you-can-eat pudding all weekend.  The orthodontist is guessing a year and a half for this guy.

After all the costume contests Becky has competed in this fall, Chuck finally won one of his own.  At our church's Christmas party people were assigned a color to wear based on gender and age.  Chuck won this sausage for the old man set who were assigned the color blue.

I had some friends lined up to go to the free day at the new local aquarium (usually costs $17.00 so I'd never been) but they all dropped out last minute.  Undaunted, I decided to go by myself and had a very pleasant time.  Here is me with the sharks.   It was a fun day to celebrate my completion of NaMoWriMo.  I finished the first draft of my book on Nov 29th - a day early. 

Ruth had a debate tournament this weekend. She made it to the finals in her category and got 4th place.  She also competed in an additional new category this time and said she learned a lot.