Not Penguins

Look, we're posting on time! Only one week's worth of stuff, so it'll go fast.

Last Sunday, Rea got her patriarchal blessing! She decided she wanted it and set up interviews and things, and it was so exciting to have it happen at last. It was a lovely experience.

Wednesday Rea did a Secret Santa gift exchange in Young Women's. She had planned to make a snow globe with a sea turtle in it, but Mom procrastinated shopping until it was too late to find the turtle. After a lot of thought and effort, she ended up putting a Christmas candle in the glass globe with blue glass gems and a package of peppermint bark. It was pretty well received. One of her good friends got her name, and gave her a gorgeous locking journal cover that you can put new books into when you fill one up. It was perfect for her!

Thursday this week was Rea's end-of-semester blue book exams. She had to draw the Western Hemisphere + Europe and label all countries, US states. and Canadian provinces and their capitals, as well as major physical features. She outlined an essay on Moon's plan to free Darkstalker in the Wings of Fire books and annotated the literary devices used in a poem. She explained how to solve two math problems in writing, and she declined Latin nouns in all 5 declensions and translated them. She also wrote an outline comparing and contrasting axolotls and pangolins and a short essay on Neptune. It was a busy day! She did a fabulous job, especially since it was her first formal testing experience like that. We're very proud of her hard work this semester.

While Rea was doing tests, Sara was invited to an end-of-year celebration for Essentials students. She's been earning points all year for doing her work, and she got to spend her points for decorations to make a gingerbread house. It ended up looking amazing! Gideon and Elsa came along too, and played while the older kids made their gingerbread houses. (Timmy decided to stay home and listen to his audiobook.) Then we all watched a new animated Christmas movie called The Star. It reminded me a lot of The Secret Life of Pets, and it was cute and funny.

Both Sara and Rea had White Elephant gift exchanges at CC. Rea gave a pair of light saber chopsticks and got a super-cute tiny wire whisk and a dip mix. Sara gave a really cool sword pen she got from the library reading program and got chocolate and pretzels. They both had fun!

Friday night Mike and Alison played their final round of Pandemic: Legacy. We won! We saved the world from the plague! We thought we had everything arranged to win easily, but they added a new twist right at the end that made it much harder. But we succeeded in the end! Yay!

Saturday night was the ward Christmas party. They chose Christmas in Nauvoo for the theme, and they went all-out. Different rooms were decorated with activities like tin punching an ornament, playing traditional games like stick pulls and tick-tack-toe, making rag dolls, learning the Virginia Reel, and dinner and dessert. It was so much fun! They had the local high school's elite choir perform, and they are phenomenal. That is one of Alison's new favorite Christmas traditions, seeing them. We all had a great time partying. The kids especially had fun doing a version of the Virginia Reel where you swing around with your partner by the elbow and then switch and grab somebody else's elbow and try to never be without a partner. We laughed a lot doing that.