The LaMont Latest: A Few Embers (as in Nov and Dec)

Our home computer has been on the fritz for the past month. Our virus/malware protection expired, we got a few viruses and yada yada yada $80 later... I'm able to blog again! We had a wonderful holiday season in 2010. Here's the rundown:

Thanksgiving:

I was thankful my parents were able to join us for Thanksgiving. We had Kim, Amber, Nick, Malleya, Brady and his kids, and my folks all up to our place to celebrate. We enjoyed a great meal together. The turkey bowl was nixed due to cold temperatures and snow covered lawn, but the boys played basketball at the gym to make up for that. I baked and cooked and prepared. I was pretty busy, and it all ended WAY too quickly. I didn't even get my camera out. tsk tsk.

December:

I'm not sure if there was 3 weeks or 3 minutes between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It flew by like a hurricane. I do a cute little Christmas Program at school right before the break, and that sucks up a lot of my time and energy. It went very well, though. The kids did awesome, and the parents loved it. We did a few classics, a few twists on the classics, and some poems. Troy and I celebrated our 14th Wedding Anniversary on the 19th with a kidless shopping adventure (thanks to my Mother-in-law), a dinner and a show. We also got ourselves a new vacuum as an anniversary gift. Romantic, right?

During our dinner at Cafe Sabor, I got a most upsetting phone call from my principal. Some students from our school were in a major car crash that morning, and two were killed. One of the boys was my student for part of the school year last year. I am currently teaching his younger sister, Marisa. Her 10 year old brother also died in the wreck. This weighed heavily on my heart and mind over the week. I didn't sleep very well for a few nights. I also found out through a parent in my class that all the girls in my afternoon class were at the home of the family celebrating Marisa's birthday when her mom received the phone call about the crash. All the parents were called and had to come early to pick up the kids. I was dreading school Monday. I didn't know if I could hold myself together to deal with the tragedy that my class was so close to. I thought the kids would be so sad and full of questions. Boy was I wrong. The kids are so accepting of things. I ended up feeling so much better by the end of the day. We made sweet Marisa a book of Smiles to help her feel better when she was sad, and I took her over the book and a teddy bear. Marisa seemed to be dealing with things well. She told me that her mom really missed her brothers and that her family used to have 9, but now only had 7. It's interesting how factual kids this young keep things. I'm not sure she fully understood everything. The funeral was amazing. All the siblings and both parents spoke. Though their hearts must have been aching, they were actually the ones comforting all those in attendance. What a wonderful service. I'm so glad I was able to attend and make peace with the events that occured. I still pray for my sweet little Marisa and her family. It must be a daily battle to function and pretend things are normal again. Here is a picture of the little man in my Kinder class last year. What a cutie! I will sure miss his beautiful smile, and I will miss reminding him to walk to the bus (instead of run) every day after school.

Christmas Break:

I really had a great time playing with the kiddos during the break. I made an effort to take time and play with them each day (life is short). We hit the gym a few times and played ball. We played lots of board games and card games. I read Kira lots of stories, and enjoyed playing dolls and house with her. She is so much fun. We did something new as a family this year. We tried out the light display at Willard Bay. They had a little horse-cart ride around a park snazzed up with lights and such. It was cold, but festive. After the ride was over, Kira turned around and exclaimed, "Good Job, Horsies!". I got a kick out of that.

Christmas was great, too. The kids were spoiled as usual and got some of the things they wished for. Douglas' favorite present was a Wii game called "Guilty Party" (which we all enjoyed), and TJ especially liked his Star Wars At-At (which is annoyingly the size of a Great Dane). Kira was really into her new shopping cart and play groceries, but I think she dug the candy most of all. It's all we could get her to say when we asked her what she wanted Santa to bring her. She definitely has a sweet tooth. She had her candy all eaten from her stocking before we finished opening presents. Here are a few Christmas pictures:

Christmas Eve was a nice, quiet evening at Grandma LaMont's house. We had soup and breadsticks and played games. We also took time to act out the nativity. Kira loved that her doll was baby Jesus. She also enjoyed riding on TJ's back when he was pretending to be the donkey. Douglas and TJ utilized their Grandma's canes as they were playing the parts of Joseph and shepherds.

Playing Quelf on Christmas eve. Douglas had to wrap his face with toilet paper and be a mummy for one of his rules. Crazy game. So fun. Not sure Troy's mom liked it, but she was entertained anyway.

Douglas sporting his track suit from Grandma and his new basketball from his brother. Please notice the lovely gingerbread house behind him. Another fun pre-Christmas activity.
Due to an e-coli scare, we did not devour the candy house this year.