Christmas 2010

Christmas Eve

Started out with some arm wrestling...

next came some grub...

then came the Christmas story re-enactment (minus our real baby-baby Everett had a rough night so he was replaced by a rolled up towel which Cora took great care of),

next came presents,

then off to bed and awaiting Santa's visit.

Christmas Day

Christmas morning brunch,

settling down for a long winter's nap (while cheering on Miami, only for the sake of the Lakers losing... and Michael),

then on to our 4th annual Christmas dinner at the Little America,

and last but certainly not least, some Christmas lights on Temple Square.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Kid's Quotes of the Week-Religious Edition

It's the Christmas season and my kids (students, I like to refer to them as my kids) have become new people. What I mean is that they are acting out and being so naughty! It doesn't help when i am sometimes the culprit in the sillyness, but I decided if you can't beat them, join them. Its made me not as grumpy but it's taken all my energy!

Anyway, on to the funny things...I wish I started this at the beginning of the year, because the things I hear from those children each day are epic! I know when that day comes that I have my own children it will be great, but until then I have 22 children Monday- Fridays that I absolutely am head over heels for. Ok, so the last couple weeks we've been talking about Christmas with books and art projects. I wanted my kids to know that Christmas wasn't just about getting gifts from Santa. I tried to explain to them what Santa symbolized; giving, nothing more, nothing less. Next thing I know, the kids are all raising their hands and yelling out that Christmas is about Jesus' birth and more things about him that I can't quite remember. I just bit my tongue and worked my way around the topic to get their minds off it, which is pretty hard when they all get chatting. In no way am I trying to teach religion to my kids, but I was glad to hear that each one of my kids knew that.

Next quote, "Only boys can be the priesthood." That came from a boy in my class when we were talking about the presidents that were on the coins. He then fixed himself quietly and said, "president." Another boy in my class that was sitting right in front of him, turned around suddenly and said, "What's the priesthood?!?" I quickly changed the subject.

Last one, "When we are resurrected, we won't have any blood." One of my girls said this yesterday when we were discussing a story we just had read about how we are alike kids around the world. The book talked about everyone has blood and hearts and another one of my kids had just commented that we all have bodies...so then came this quote. Luckily no one had anything to say back to her so my toosh was saved there.

Another student brought a paper-made manger with a paper Jesus inside for show-and-tell. That was interesting, too.

I just hope my kids don't go home telling mom and dad that Mrs. Price told them this or that because when these comments come I duck and cover and do my best to revert to another topic. It does give me a chuckle inside.

Our Christmas Came Early This Year

We decided to splurge a little on ourselves this Christmas... We have been sleeping in a hand-me-down mattress since we've been married and for the last 6 months the mattress has been on an angle, docs orders, but we've been planning for an upgrade and decided that Christmas would be a good time. We ordered a new bedroom set online and bought the most comfortable mattress from Knights. The set wasn't suppose to be here until Tuesday but arrived Friday afternoon. We also splurged on a media center. Thanks to our friends, Kara and Nic, who got Dave wanting one. We ordered most of the parts on Black Friday so we had all of the parts to build it in the last week.

With Dave's eagerness to do anything but study for his final coming up on Monday, Saturday turned into a building day. Dave is so good at building, fixing, and figuring things out and he LOVES it! He was having a blast putting together the computer for the media center. It was so funny to watch him and hear him say how much fun he was having. We took a quick break to go get our mattress and then we were back to building. We spent about 4 hours last night taking apart our old bed, moving furniture out, putting furniture together, cleaning and then setting up our new bedroom. By the time we were done we were so ready to lay on that new bed. Before calling it a night, we had to take advantage of our new media center and watch our favorite, Chuck. I don't think I've ever been so happy in my sleep as I was last night. Dave's complaint this morning was that I took all the blanket... my reply was, "I couldn't help myself. I was surrounded by puffiness and it made me so happy." I'll try to share tonight.

It looks like Dave knew I was taking this picture by his smiling but he actually had no idea, he was just that happy with what he was doing. Silly boy.

Our house was and still is a disaster!

I couldn't get up!

For some reason, a lot of our bills come in December like insurance, my car's safety and emissions, and this year my back tires were getting scary bald so we had to drop some money on those. There goes the rest of our Christmas money... I am happy we have two incomes at this point in time. If it was last year, I think I'd faint over the money we've spent.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gobble, Gobble

Turkey Bowl

It was about 7 degrees Fahrenheit when they started playing.

Yuck!

Our reenactment of the First Thanksgiving

I am grateful for all my many blessings! There are too many to name but I feel enormously blessed and am forever indebted to my Heavenly Father for each and every one of the blessings.

The Church is True!

I remember my first seminary teacher at Brighton would begin and end each lesson by declaring this to us and sometimes would shout it with joy. I wanted to express with the same joy for the good and cool experiences I have all the time; especially this one...

Monday night I was driving home from doing some visiting teaching and decided that I'd stop by my friend Allison's house, since Dave wouldn't be home for another couple more hours and I had planned so well in advanced for school last week that I didn't really have anything to do for that. We were hanging out, talking and I kept trying to leave because my tummy was hungry but ended up starting new topics each time. Allison used the restroom and I heard an "OH, NO!" from in the bathroom. It was not a normal tone of voice I hear from Allison so I was quite worried but hoped it was just her son getting into trouble, but she said it again and cried my name and then said, "I'm bleeding," with a horrified voice. Allison is almost 20 weeks pregnant so it was not a good thing. She got a hold of her OB finally and her instructions were to get to the E.R. So we dropped Jake, her son, off with her brother-in-law and me, Allison, and Rachel (her sister-in-law) hopped in my car and sped to the closet E.R. Her husband had just left for a business trip that morning. Luckily there were no waiters and we only had to wait about 15 minutes to get back to a room. It was pretty much silence from Rach and I until we heard the baby's heartbeat, which we were able to not too long after getting to the room. They had to do a bunch of other things and then we got to experience a live ultra sound. Waiting for that ultra sound was what took the longest, I guess the tech didn't get a message that the hospital sent at first so it took awhile to wait for her. Everything turned out to be ok. They think it was the placenta pulling across the cervex but no major damage was done. Phew!

I got home late that night. Dave wanted me to call a sub but I figured I'd be ok with just one night like that. I felt so good that night when I got home. I feel as if a lot of things played into me being there for my friend that night and I'm happy I was able to listen to the little promptings along the way. I like to have those ah-ha moments and realize my prayers are being answered. THE CHURCH IS TRUE!

Happy Halloween!!!

I hope everyone had a great time celebrating and enjoyed all the festivities that Halloween can bring! I know we enjoyed ours! We were able to do all the usual like carve pumpkins, decorate sugar cookies, hold the 4th Annual Price Spook Alley, plus we added a few more fun festivities in the mix.

This year we decided to have the spook alley the night before trick-or-treaters were out so we had trick-or-treating night open! We had some friends over and played some fun games. We all pitched in on writing a Halloween story, had to guess scary movies from the synopsises people would tell, put ourselves in the plots of scary movies and had to decide what we'd do in the situation, and made chocolate frosting haunted houses. It was a blast!

Don't mind our nasty chipped stairs, it's one project we're stuck on...

Making of the Haunted Houses

It was Dave's heaven with all that candy, he would eat 2 then give me half of 1 to use on our haunted house

Creative minds working

Everyone's was so different and unique! Most got quite morbid with the cat-shaped peeps but we had a good time!

Alli was a Kangaroo and had a pouch for her baby, so cute! Justin was Crocodile Dundee Oh and their house was invaded by a gigantic octopus...

Bridge and Ry are so excited, just like new homeowners


Allison and Darin's houses's focal point was the hanging cat chandelier...


Rach and Dusten's was just all morbid! They dressed Baylee as Joker! If you can't see she still has the leftovers of green hair.

Kenze and Ky won the Perfect Design Award

Mine and Dave's was a creation of 2 completely different...minds, I guess. He wanted explosions; I wanted somewhat attractive and neat...

Teaching Experiences

I've survived two of the most gruesome weeks as a teacher... parent conferences and the week of Halloween! I hear the week before Christmas is the worst so I'm not looking forward to it at all. The conferences went surprisingly well. I just decided to not be nervous and it worked! I had one weird experience, not with parents but with my body...it was early in the second night of conferences and I was talking with a parent when I started getting dizzy, shaky and sweaty. Luckily, I had a little break after that conference and my next one so I went searching for something to munch on because when I stood it all got worse and then my tummy felt empty. I ate an apple and some bread. It seemed to help enough to get me through the night. I'm pretty sure I was experiencing low-blood sugar and it was a first. I was so confused because it has never happened to me before. This job has done some funny things to my body, for example, I seem to always be hungry- I usually take about a ten minute lunch break where I actually sit down and eat a little something but other than that it's always go, go, go and so I eat a couple pretzels here, an apple there, so I probably am not eating properly but I don't have the time to notice or track it. I do feel blessed that I've had the energy to do all that is required of this job and that I have not had more issues with sickness than I already have. I've been sick for the last month but usually it takes a lot to stop me from missing work. I don't think I have really ever missed work due to illness, I usually just push through it.

Halloween week was crazy!!! The kids are so riled up and excited for Halloween that they forget how to function in school and how to behave all together! Even some of my best behaved students shocked me this week. Along with Halloween coming up, we had 3 birthdays in our class this week! It was a chaotic celebration all week. I was surprised at the end of the week when all my students did their best on the spelling test. We celebrated Halloween Friday and the students dressed up. There is a nursing home right next to the school so the school parades through there. I had parent helpers bring in games and activities for the kids at the end of the day. And again my students shocked me, they were ten times better on Friday, in their costumes and all, than they had been all week! Those little guys surprise me when I least expect it. I love them all, I really do and I am so happy I get to teach them and have this job!

Fall Break-aka a Great Time for St. George

Yes, we went to St. George and yes, the weather was beautiful and we had such a great time as always! My aunt's family joined in on our fun too. They stayed just down the road from us so we were able to do lots of fun things together like hiking, biking, swimming and going to the temple and dinner. Saturday Bridget race in the Tour de St. George 100 miler. She did really well for how many climbs she had and how hot it was. Sunday we decided we didn't want to deal with the Provo Traffic so we took a trip to Zions and saw a few more things we hadn't seen yet and showed Michael some cool places that we'd found before since it was his first time to Zions. We ended up getting on the road at 7 p.m. which meant we wouldn't get home til midnight but it gave us another whole day of vacation in beautiful weather! It did feel extra nice to get away now that I do work full time.

On top of the Dixie Bolders looking over St. GeorgeThe one picture I took of the boys playing their game turned out to be the best action shot I've probably ever taken! Dave caught it, too! The beautiful St. George TempleMy hottie!Cheering Bridget on in her century race. She took 5th even with going through the finish line the wrong way:)
Bridget was a little angry with the race but she did great!

Zions National Park

Dave in his element