Right before bed (and after the camera was put away) Mr. Giovannoni surprised her with a brand new bike. Hopefully before next year is over I'll get a picture of her riding it and share that too.
She brought this note home from her teacher at school, It's really nice to hear such positive things, how can we not be proud of such a wonderful little girl!
- Dylan also brought a certificate of honor home from school. He was really emotional about it. Apparently he had cried when he got it at school and on the way home from school he tried to throw it away. When he finally showed it to me it was a crinkled waded up mess. It read: Hard work leads to success (keep up the good work!). He told me that he thought it meant everyone thought that he was a failure up until now. Sometimes I see so much of me in that little boy. Dylan spends a lot of time at school with one of his teachers writing, she really has helped him find joy in expressing himself and his ideas through writing, she has been a much needed influence for good in his life. She emailed this note to me a few weeks back and it made me cry, it is so nice having someone be a cheer leader for Dylan. "I am so pleased to get to send you a message and tell you what an honor it is to have Dylan in my class. He is so creative and will be an excellent director or movie writer when he is grown. (He doesn't want to do this now, but he does have the aptitude".
- I totally forgot to take a before photo, but I finally got the mirror framed up in our guest bathroom. Someday I'll get to replacing those less than fabulous light fixtures and maybe just maybe I'll live out my dream of putting up wainscoting on the walls, we'll just have to see. For now I'll just feel giddy about the mirrors being framed!
- We had our good friends the Gunnell's and my cousin Mindy over for Thanksgiving dinner. You'll just have to imagine a kitchen full of delicious food and lots of kids running around because I don't multi-task well and taking pictures just didn't happen. When all was said and done it was a very pleasant Thanksgiving indeed!
- I built a train table for a friend in our ward. It turned out pretty good, at least I think it did...
- The Giovannoni's had a WONDERFUL Christmas!
The tree...Let's just pretend all of my pre-lit tree is in working order, I tried and tried to figure out which bulb was causing the outage and I just couldn't figure it out, maybe next year?
some very kind neighbors gave us this box of bread you see under the tree, I jokingly told Derik it was probably a $25.00 loaf.
Imagine me choking on my mouthful of the most delicious bread ever when I indeed saw the 25 dollar price tag online. But oh man that was good stuff! Hope they enjoyed my plate of Rice Crispy treats as much as we loved that bread (ha ha ha)....
Each of our children got new PJ's on Christmas Eve. As well as some popcorn and hot chocolate.
Dylan's Christmas
Alivia's Christmas
Isaac's Christmas
Abrielle's Christmas
My Christmas
Mr Giovannoni's Christmas
Poor poor dude...Hopefully he gets an enormous amount of joy out of seeing all our shining happy faces, because unfortunately he usually gets the short end of the stick for Christmas.
He did however get a giant whiteboard for his office and some running gear.
- I passed the 17000 mark for indexed names this year (17117 in total). I forgot to look and see how many names I did just this year and the numbers have been reset.
- New Years Eve (afternoon, if that makes sense) the kids and I (and the Mr. popped in every once in a while) deconstructed a twin bed box spring. It took us the entire afternoon to do. Rather than just dumping it in a landfill I decided it would be fun to rip apart. It kept the kids interested and for once I wasn't worried about them ruining something so we all pulled out staples and springs to our little hearts content. Now I have a box full of springs and some "salvaged" wood to build with.
The kids then had friends from the neighborhood over until 10pm or so. Around eleven I got tired and "grumpy" and sent everyone to bed. We all quietly slept through the New Years celebrations that were happening everywhere. People down her in Houston go CRAZY with fireworks! Maybe next year I'll muster up the gumption to actually stay up and ring in the new years with my kids and all these crazy Houstonians.
