A busy December

We keep having awesome sunsets. Here are a couple amazing shots.

Rachel's school band got to play at the Holidays on Houghton event out in the Walmart parking lot the first Saturday in December. It was pretty cool with lots of free treats and pizza and a bouncy house and not crowded at all. And we got to stop in to talk to the big guy without having to wait in line at all.

It was great. Rachel was getting ready with the band, and she wasn't really interested in talking to Santa on her own when her band was done. She knows that Santa already knew what she wanted, I guess.

Her band accompanied the school's choir on a few numbers. She's a percussionist, so she got a few turns on the snare and a few on the bass and did a great job.

The kids also got their faces painted while we were there.

Then we went inside Walmart and got some things for the Angel Tree kids each of the kids' classes at school were sponsoring to get in the spirit of giving and kick off the season right.

Rachel gets to participate in ELP at school once a week where she goes to another school for a few hours and does "extended learning" activities. They did some cookie election thing and her teacher sent me a picture:

I got to go with Ryan on his field trip to the Children's museum. Lots of fun was had by all.

Probably the biggest hit was climbing the fire pole and sliding down it over and over. Ryan is a little monkey and the first kid to climb all the way to the top and show 'em how it's done.

Rachel won her class spelling bee and got to participate in the school-wide spelling bee. She tied for runner up in the school-wide bee and did a great job, spelling some tough words.

When she told me she had won her class bee she said they had to stop for the day and continue the next day because it was between her and another kid and they both kept spelling every word wrong, and ran out of time to finish that day. Apparently a new day brought back some brain cells and she eked out a win.

Ryan caught strep from someone at school, then passed it along to Megan. He wanted to see what his throat looked like so we shined a flashlight back there and took a picture.

Neither Ryan nor Megan like the flavor of the penicillin, so it's been rough getting them to take it twice a day. Sprite has helped, but it's still like pulling teeth. Megan's got two doses left tomorrow, then we're all clear. Hopefully for a long time.

The Knights do a cousin gift exchange where each kid randomly gets a cousin not in their own family to give a gift they have made or bought for cheap to. Rachel has Peyton, who loves cats, so she looked up a tutorial on You Tube and made this cat for her out of fuzzy socks.

It turned out amazingly good, doing it with no help from me.

No picture of Grandpa Knight on his birthday, but Jacob did manage to snap a picture of celebrating Grandma's birthday with some apple pie.

Most Sundays we go over to their house, but it seems like on those occasional times when we invite everyone to our house for Sunday dinner it has fallen on the week that I have meetings after church and it falls to Jacob to take care of it all. It's not a plot to get him cooking more, but it may have that happy side effect--he seems to be slowly expanding his cooking repertoire. :)