Ward Christmas Party, etc.

Casey and I got to help put the ward Christmas party together this year and we all had a lot of fun.

Emmett was excited to remind Santa Claus to bring him his all important doctor tools.

Bethany surprised us by not crying. She had more of an avoidance strategy and refused to look at Santa all together.

Kevin Bischoff, the second counselor in our ward, dressed up as the Grinch and read "How the Grinch Stole Christmas to everyone. Emmett was a little nervous about getting his picture taken with him and later explained to me that "The Grinch is a really grumpy guy, but he's a nice guy too!"

When the party ended we went home and spent the day shoveling snow. We must have gotten about 8 inches but there were places in the valley that got a lot more.

Emmett finally got his own snow shovel this year. I felt too guilty to make him use a dust pan again like he did all last year and it was only five dollars from Walmart. He likes using it so much that he's occasionally included in his memorized prayers, "Thank you that we get to shovel the snow".

Emmett now wears TWO hats around the house all the time. :)

And Bethany has caught on to the hat craze as well!

Trying to find activities for snowy days is hard! So far, Emmett's favorite is finger painting. It is not, however, my favorite so we don't do it nearly as often as he'd like.

Bethany had an incident last week where she slipped and hit her chin on a bookshelf. If you look closely at this picture you can see part of the cut in her swollen little lip. Not only did her top teeth cut deeply into her lower lip, but her left upper tooth was knocked backward. There was a lot of blood and the gum above her (now loose) tooth turned purple. We took her to a pediatric dentist and he said that although the tooth was knocked pretty far backward he thinks it will survive. We'll take her back after Christmas to make sure she's okay. For a while she struggled to even eat cheese, which is her favorite food, but now she seems to be doing much better. No crackers or hard foods till after Christmas though.

The tooth incident still hasn't prevented her from enjoying her favorite activity and teaching her friends to do the same thing. I can't tell you how many millions of times I clean books off the floor each day.

Even though there are no pictures, Bethany loves to sit down and turn through the pages of each book she pulls down. Then she wanders over to wherever I am, hands me the book and says, "Here ya go!" before toddling off to find another book.

Our grumpy, fussy, funny girl.