Thanksgiving Week 2016

By Lesley - November 27, 2016

What a fun week we've had! We only had school on Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday was a fun day. We had a Turkey Trot for every grade level that the PE teacher organized. Van had a Thanksgiving feast with his Kindergarten friends. We were all ready for a 5 day weekend from school! We left for Las Vegas on Wednesday after Isaac's meetings. It was an awesome road trip. I'm pretty sure Isaac and I sang to the top of our lungs for 3 straight hours thanks to Spotify. When we turned on "Hello" by Adele, Van was beside himself yelling at us to be quiet. Ha ha!

We spent the weekend with Steve and Dana. Mitch and Supriya came down too. Thanksgiving was fun--we overate and played Spoons. Friday morning was the highlight of the trip for me--we watched Mitch and Dana jump off the Stratosphere--an 800 something feet drop. Steve and Will went to the top of the tower to watch. The rest of us watched from the deck on the bottom. It was crazy how high the drop was! I can't believe they did that! Friday night we saw Trolls and went bowling. We loved the Trolls movie. I didn't know it was a musical and that Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick were the lead voices. We've already listened to the soundtrack three times since Friday. Saturday morning we took a walk around the wetlands near the UNLV stadium. Then we drove to Parker to see Scott's family. It's been almost a year since we've seen Jason, Alex, and Nixon so the boys were really excited to see Nixon. We stayed and ate dinner and then headed back to Tempe.

Church was great, like always. I got to substitute Van's primary class. The subject was Being Kind to Animals. I told the kids about how nice Papa John is to animals and how I'm grateful for his example. I brought some stuffed animals for each class member so they could practice being kind to animals. It was cute and funny watching them pretend. After church we set up our Christmas tree and Christmas decorations. It started to storm outside so we fixed some hot chocolate. We also emailed Santa Claus at emailSanta.com so the boys could tell Santa what they want for Christmas. It's our tradition to do that and the boys love it. Santa responds with a video. He said there are only 28 more sleeps until Christmas! Woo hoo!

Overheard at our house:

Today in primary they were playing a Jeopardy-like game. It was Van's turn to answer a question. The question was "What is the scripture story that has the words 'Peace be still.'" I said, "Van! You know this one! What is the story when Jesus said Peace be still?" He proceeded with, "Jesus was in the boat with the disciples. The waves got really big and it was raining. His disciples got scared. Jesus stood up and said "Peace be still" to the water and the waves stopped." I was so proud of Van! He loves watching the Bible videos on the iPad on Sundays and that story is one of his favorites.
My colleague told me that on Tuesday when I was running the Turkey Trot, one of the second graders said, "Look! Mrs. Bickmore is running!" William turned and said proudly, "Ya! That's my mom!" Awww! That made me feel good. I better enjoy it (the fact that he's not totally embarrassed by me) while it lasts.