Gobble, Gobble, Gobble

Okay, so I guess I just took a whole month off of my blog. I don't know why I keep thinking that things will slow down - especially around the holidays. This is probably going to be another novel about the happenings of the O'Gwin Clan. So here we go. First of all you'll see that we finally got some corn on the cob! It never quite recovered after being blown over and replanted, so most of the ears are only like 3" long. But it still tasted yummy!

This time we're going to start with . . . ME! The primary program is finally done - hooray! - and it went very well. The kids sang their hearts out and only a couple of the Sunbeams were unintelligible because they were eating the mike. The only crazy thing was that a few people were sick and we ended up going 15 minutes under and so I got up and gave an impromptu bearing of my testimony to fill up some time. I'm not opposed to bearing my testimony, but I think that next year I'll try to make the program a little longer. :) Everyone keeps asking me if I feel so much better now that the program is over and I am like, "Not really." I think I'll feel better once I get everything squared away for the new year - there's 10 new sunbeams coming in, teachers to call, classrooms to assign, etc. Hopefully we can take a little breather in January, but I'm not holding my breath. Life hasn't been all primary though. I went out with a group of ladies from the ward and saw New Moon. Everyone was just raving about how much better the acting was than the first one . . . I guess I don't remember the first one very well. There were a whole bunch of teenage girls screaming down in the front, which was hilarious. It was a fun movie though and a fun night out - I'm glad I went. But I must say I've also been on a couple of dates with Chris this month - much better than a girl's night out! Plus we have dates at our house reading or watching "V". That's the new series we've gotten into off of itunes. And speaking of Chris, I also spent a large portion of the Thanksgiving Holiday editing his 120 page thesis. Which leads me to his exciting news: Chris submitted his thesis yesterday!! Hooray! Go Chris! (I just can't stop the cheerleader in me from coming out, no matter how hard I try.) His paper was excellent and Chris put a lot of himself into it (and a lot of hours at the library!). He definitely deserves and A. Chris has about a week and a half more of stress this quarter and then he can relax a little bit over the holidays. No one deserves it more.
Okay, so now let's talk about the kids. I was able to go to the girl's parent teacher conferences this month and it was very nice to hear how much the teachers like my girls. Having them well adjusted in school is such a load off, I can't even tell you. Lise even told me over Thanksgiving that she doesn't like being out of school because she misses Mrs. Shugars. She's a cutie. Anyhoo, over the craziness that was going on during Halloween (though I can't remember exactly what that was at the moment), I totally fell off the "good mommy bandwagon" and didn't make it to any of the school's Halloween celebrations: parade, class parties, pumpkin patch field trip, or dance. So a couple of weeks ago Lise said to me, "Mom, next time all the parents get to come to something, will you please come?" It nearly broke my heart and I vowed to do my best to attend the girl's special days at school. So I went with Aly's class on their field trip to the lighthouse, museum, and butterfly sanctuary. It was a lot of fun. I also went to Analise's Thanksgiving Feast they had in their classroom where they recited some poems and sang some songs - very cute.

Aly has had a very exciting month (as Novembers usually are for her). First of all, she made the Christmas Chorus Group at school that will be performing in an assembly and at various rest homes and what not in the area. She has been practicing hard and even gets to sing her french Christmas song, "Petit Papa Noel", by herself! The main event for Aly, however, was her birthday. First of all, this was a special birthday for Aly because she turned 8, so she gets to be baptized! For her party, she made it low stress for me, which was extremely kind, by saying that all she wanted was to take her friends swimming at the community pool and back to the house for brownies and ice cream. And she said she didn't even need presents! What a sweetheart. Thanks for reducing my stress, Aly!

And finally, Thanksgiving. We had another family over which was awesome because it reduced the cooking in half. They aren't big turkey people (the wife is from Japan), so they brought over this yummy steak. We did have turkey too, just more food to stuff our faces with. We hung out and played games and then one of our neighbors invited everyone over for desserts later in the evening. It was a very relaxing day, which was nice. And I would like to say that I was most grateful to Chris who helped with the turkeys and cutting up the apples for the apple pies. He helped keep my stress to a bare minimum so that I was able to enjoy the day with my family. Aly was a huge help peeling vegetables as well and Analise helped by playing with Kate to keep her out of the area. I am truly blessed with a wonderful family. I love you guys!