Songs, Skates and Culture

It has been such a great week! We have been busy. First we had several renditions of music from Lucky Dragon's school. I was glad that they went by grade and the first grade was second in performing. I loved to hear them sing in both English and French! For the next several days we sang Jingle Bells in French. Lucky Dragon keeps getting made because we just make up our own words and "that is not French!" haha. 

 It was also the end of the semester. Every semester I find myself missing the students that I have learned to love over the semester. THey move on (as they should) and I get another group of students to love. This semester there was one class that was a small class so we were able to get to know each other better. We laughed and laughed and laughed. Some nights I would leave class with sore abs and sore cheeks from laughing so hard. I will miss sharing stories with them. I found myself today doing something dumb and thought that the class will love to hear this story--then I realized we no longer have class! For our final class we invited our families to come and we had dinner and played games. It was fun to meet families.

 As we focus on having the season focus on others and serving, we have tried to show how many other people celebrate this time of year. We did not do a Menorah this year as we have in years in the past. But we did teach Lucky Dragon how to use a Dreidel and play the traditional game. It is actually really fun. Both kids enjoyed it.

 After some spectacular sunrises this week, we loved having cousins over. We went shopping with them. (It was a bit crazy) We have shopping done so it was just a join-in-the-pain-shopping-the-weekend-before-Christmas experience. Our kids love having them around. they laugh and run everywhere.

 Part of our day was going ice skating at Herriman Ice Ribbon. It is a long outdoor track they freeze for the winter. During the summer you can go and walk or run the Ribbon. It was SO much fun. We skated until we were sweaty and warm. A few of us had aching hips and wrists, the rest had sore feet and one of a sore head (from slamming into the cement barrier).

 Koala Bear was sleeping for the beginning of the experience, but when she woke up she loved being in the wagon. Lady Hiva and I both took turns holding her while we went around. At first she did not like it, but then she would "woohoo!" with glee and have so much fun.

 I pulled this wagon and on any given moment had one or two people letting me pull them along.