Christmas Eve & Christmas Day 2022

Christmas was SO different this year! It was our first Christmas without all of our kids home. It was our first Christmas holiday in 10 years that we didn't celebrate Christmas Eve with our circle of friends. It was the first Christmas since moving to Salmon that we didn't get a live tree to place into our home for the holiday season. And it was our first Christmas that we decided to spend at a warm desert destination hotel instead of at our cozy home amidst a blanket of snow. It was something we'd discussed for years--taking the kids on a warm vacation over Christmas break--but something none of the kids were interested in. However, this year the parents' votes now outnumbered the vote of the one kid who still lives at home, so the timing was finally right to act on that idea! And since Ammon is currently living in Scottsdale, we knew where our destination would be.  

Josh, Kanyon, and I had a flight booked from Idaho Falls to Mesa, Arizona on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, so we declared Dec. 23 as our Christmas Eve date this year. We watched Christmas movies, I finished wrapping our small amount of gifts, and I started my new 1,000 piece "Christmas Vacation" puzzle. It was VERY quiet, especially compared to Christmas Eve of years past!

On the morning of Dec. 24th, Josh, Kanyon, and I celebrated like it was the real Christmas morning. We even woke up to a blanket of snow, which felt appropriate! We opened our stockings and our small amount of gifts (most of our Christmas gift money this year was on the actual vacation rather than presents). We each got a new Christmas t-shirt (and I also shipped two to the twins). We scratched our annual lottery scratch tickets that were in our stockings, and had our Christmas breakfast of French toast, bacon, and eggnog. Then we packed our bags and drove to the Idaho Falls airport. 

This year's tree was the same one we used for
our first year of marriage--a 3 ft. skinny, fake one.

Josh's pile from "Santa"

Scratching lotto tickets from our stockings

Kanyon opening one of his few gifts

This was Kanyon's first flight. It was nice that it was from a smaller airport! When we got through security at the airport, we discovered our friends Myron & Diane were on the same flight and we had a good chat with them in the terminal as we were waiting for our departure. The direct flight was fairly uneventful, thankfully. Ammon picked us up from the Mesa airport, and we stopped to eat dinner at an open restaurant and shopped at a nearby grocery store to get food for the next few days before heading to our hotel. I'd gotten a larger hotel room with 2 adjoined rooms so that we could spread out for the next few days. Kanyon slept in the "living" room that was next to the kitchen and dining space, and Josh and I slept in the "master" room that was on the same side of the suite as the bathroom. We stayed up late that night watching Christmas movies, eating snacks, and starting a new puzzle in the hotel room. Ammon went back to his apartment to sleep that night. 

Kanyon's first flight

On the real Christmas morning, we awoke in Scottsdale, Arizona. We were all tired and had slept in, which was nothing we ever do on Christmas morning! When Ammon arrived, he opened his stocking that we'd brought from Idaho for him and he unwrapped his new Christmas shirt. We relaxed in our hotel room for a few hours, playing games and snacking until the twins called from their missions. It was so wonderful to see all my boys at the same time! 

This was Ammon's Christmas stash, laid on the 
hotel side table next to the room's art piece (the
closest thing there was to a Christmas tree!).

In the afternoon, we decided to go to Ammon's apartment to hang out for a bit. We cooked up a late lunch/early dinner there, and played some more board games to pass the time before heading to our big plans of the day: going to the Christmas NFL football game west of Phoenix to see the Arizona Cardinals play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. 

Seeing Ammon's apartment for the first time

This was the first NFL game any of us had been to before, and it was the major gift I got both Ammon and Kanyon this year. I was so excited to go because Tampa Bay had been my favorite team for years, and Ammon's favorite player Tom Brady was also playing for Tampa Bay, so not only would we get to see our first NFL game in person, but we'd also get to see some of our favorites of the sport in this game! We looked forward to this event for months! It was a fun game, and since the weather was so good, they also opened up the roof for the game, which was cool. It was a super close game, and ultimately, the Buccaneers won, which was awesome! We had a good time, but we decided we prefer watching NFL on TV instead--especially since there was a very loud, profane fan that sat a couple rows behind us and we got tired of all his repetitive verbal vomit during the game, but at home, we can mute the TV if we want!

We were plenty early for the game. We had noseblood seats--which
were still NOT cheap--but it was cool to have a view of the arena
and to watch the mechanized roof open up before the game began.

Ammon bought a new Cardinals hat.

Josh also bought a souvenir cap.

Tom Brady is #12

Such a close game!

The Bucs won!

Even though Christmas was MUCH different than any we've ever celebrated before, I was so grateful to be able to spend it with 2 of our sons, to see and talk to ALL of our children, and to make new memories together! 

Holiday Hooplah

December this year was MUCH less stressful and overwhelming for me than it was last year, and I was SO grateful for that! Although we celebrated the season with some of the same types of activities we've done in the past, it just didn't feel as chaotic. It was definitely strange only having one kid at home during the Christmas season this year, which hasn't happened since our oldest was a toddler! However, there seemed to be a lot less places to be and things to do as a result. 

SCHOOL PROJECTS:

Last fall, my class had a discussion one morning about being resourceful and I showed them pictures of the Grinch mural my students in Mud Lake had made using milk lids. They instantly wanted to do the same project, but I told them it would be a LOT harder for them to save the large amount of green lids required for the Grinch, because there were so many less students in Leadore than at West J. Plus, I didn't want them to just copy the idea of what my previous students had made; I wanted them to make something uniquely theirs. So I asked them if there was anything else they thought we could create using milk lids, and one of my students suggested a Christmas tree. The other students were excited about it, and for 2 months, we all saved, washed, and dried plastic lids from our school lunches and home meals. At the beginning of December, I gave the students graph paper, and asked them to design and color a template for our tree and we would vote on the winning design to replicate in real life. The winning design was a combination of two students' creations. It took us just over a week to individually glue on the plastic lids onto the large rectangular box to match the design of the template. It was such a fun project, and we all loved how it turned out! It was the Christmas tree we put in our classroom this year, rather than having an artificial one like most of the other classes. 

Progress of the milk lid tree

Students took turns gluing on the lids in rows

The finished product with the 2 designers

I covered the other sides of the box with paper.

We put the tree on display by the front office
during the last week of school before Christmas
break so everyone else could see our creation, too.

I did another reading challenge in December, similar to the Polar Express Challenge and the Grinch Challenge that I've created and implemented in previous years. This year I created the "Christmas Carols Challenge". I worked on it a lot in October and November, planning and creating and preparing, in order to be ready to begin the challenge on December 1st. This time, the Kindergarten-4th grade students participated, so I also made differentiated grade-level book reports for the students as part of the challenge, too. To start off, the elementary teachers each read a grade-level, shortened version of "The Christmas Carol" to our classes so the students would be familiar with the story. Each student then colored a fireplace to hang in the hallway on the banner between our rooms. There were 6 stockings that could potentially get hung over each of the fireplaces, and each stocking had one of these letters "C-A-R-O-L-S" on them. The students were challenged to read books in 6 different categories, complete the corresponding book report that emphasized different comprehension skills for each category (kindergarteners just drew pictures rather than wrote book reports), and then they received the coordinating stocking to hang over the fireplace. Once they read all 6 books, completed all 6 book reports, and received all 6 stockings, they got an official invitation to our school party where we wore pajamas, watched The Muppets Christmas Carol, and ate a feast. The 6 categories were: 

C = Christmas book (fiction), A = Animal book (non-fiction), R = Red & Green on the cover, O = Over a certain # of pages (12 for kindergarten, 25 for 1st grade, 50 for 2nd grade, and 100 for 3rd & 4th grade), L = Love (re-read a book you love), and S = Snow (a book that has snow in it, fiction or nonfiction).  If they didn't complete the challenge by the day of the party, they worked on reading and completing the book reports in the classroom and could then come to the movie party with the rest of their friends once they were done. I had one student who joined us after 15 minutes, and there were four 1st & 2nd grade students who finished theirs the day of the party, so that by the last half hour of the party, everyone had completed the challenge!

I like that all the students could see the progress that the others
were making with their book reports, as signified by the number
of stockings placed on the student's individual fireplaces. It
made students be more accountable and encourage others. 

The fireplaces on the day of the party

SEEING THE LIGHTS:

I went to Idaho Falls with my Mud Lake Dominoes friends one night to drive around and look at the Christmas lights together. We stopped to eat first, and then we went to 3 locations across the city. Two of the spots had a musical light show, so we stayed for about 30 minutes at each of those houses, and the 3rd house had a circular driveway to slowly drive through and see all their lights. It was such a wonderful evening with my friends!

This house had a lighted screen on the side of the garage
that coordinated with the lights around the property to
play images as the songs were played. 

This house has the best tree lights!

This place installed a flat screen on the front porch
to play short clips while the music played.
The amount of exterior lights is impressive!

This business on Main Street in Salmon
is so festive, and I enjoyed admiring
its lights all season long. 

CHRISTMAS CONCERTS:

Kanyon played with the Salmon High School band at their Christmas concert in the commons area. They're a much younger band this year, so some of the students were still learning their instruments, so it sounded different than last year's group. Kanyon is so good at the tuba and it's fun to watch him as he's playing and hear his low notes that enriches the band's bass sounds.

I went to watch the production of "The Nutcracker" put on by Nida Jensen's ballet students one Saturday in December. I could feel the difference in both the school music concert and the ballet performance without the participation of the students who graduated last year. They were a talented group, and I missed their presence. The production was cute, and the costumes were amazing, but the show felt different this year--it was more like individual classes learned dance songs and styles to perform as segments, rather than an entire coordinated musical performance to continue the story line. 

GIFTS:

I gave my usual raspberry freezer jam as friend and neighbor gifts this year. I paired it with a muffin mix and wrote "We'd be MUFFIN without good friends like you. Have a BERRY merry Christmas!"

Since I teach a split-level class, I don't want to repeat Christmas gifts every year for my students, so I changed it up again this year. I gave them a box with 4 things in it, and the card said: "Something to wear, something to read, something you want, something to eat".  Inside each box was a pair of gloves (everyone's was a different color), a book (the girl's and boy's books were different from each other), a class coupon (the 3rd and 4th grade coupons were different from each other), and a large fruit rollup (all different flavors). 

The students with their new gloves.