December Happenings: Part 2

After my birthday, Lily had her last day of school.  Then the kids were out for summer holidays.  Yay!!!  We had all sorts of Christmas parties to attend after that.  There was Cory's work party, the ward Christmas party and then just our own celebrations for Christmas with friends here.  The rainy weather kind of ruined all the party plans, however.  The work party was supposed to be at a park, it had to get relocated.  The ward party was supposed to be at the local swimming pools, it also had to be relocated and have a complete change of venue.  Our party planning committee chair person did a fabulous job reorganizing the entire thing and providing entertainment for the kids just at the chapel, Santa Claus even showed up!  So it was pretty cool.  The kids loved it.  

Here is a rainbow after all that rainy weather.  :)  

 Lily and Ava both got great reports at the end of the year and are ready to move ahead to the next year of school.  I am not liking how short the summer is here!  Can we have an American summer and still have the two week breaks every 10 weeks also?  I think that would be a perfect schedule.  Anyways, the girls both came home with heaps of school work and art projects they had completed during the year.  This was one of my most favorite little work samples of Lily's.

 Here are Lily and Ava doing a Christmas crown craft.

 The finished product.

 Here are just a few shots of the kids running around at Cory's work party.  It was raining off and on, we were inside, this was just the back area of the Kalgoorlie Rotary Club building.

 Here is our Santa Claus appearance at our ward party.  Our high councilman, Pete McQueen, was the one with the suit and was supposed to be Santa, but I guess he couldn't make it for that part.  When they were trying to find someone else to wear the suit, people were suggesting that Bishop do it!!  Haha, so wish he would have.  But instead, we got good old Neal Armstrong, (yes, that is his real name).  He was a pretty good Santa.  Everyone was laughing saying that Santa had spent too much time at the beach lately...hahaha, since he is so tan, or well actually Maori.  :)

 This is me attempting to get Will to sit on his lap.  Will got as close as he had to to snatch his box of candy from Santa and then wanted out of there.

Here's Ava getting her turn.  

And here she is before Santa made his arrival.  Not sure where those elf shoes came from.

Here's Lily's turn.

Wish I could have heard what she was telling him.  :)

Then as soon as he came Santa had to leave.

 With the warm weather, Will has been on a Popsicle or ice cream kick.

 Love that chocolate face.

 Here are the girls with theirs.

 We actually got out the cones to do our substitute gingerbread house Christmas craft.  I saw this on pinterest, where you just decorate the ice cream cones as Christmas trees.  Sounded way easier, so we tried it out.  I think the girls really enjoyed it.  I should put the Pinterest picture on here next to mine, and you'll see how well I nailed it.  Hahaha!

 I love these two pictures of Ava having a marvelous time and Lily in the background crying something Ava's doing to ruin everything. Haha, luckily she got over it.

 See here's the pin that I pinned on Pinterest.

And here is one of our awesome trees....see, nailed it! :)

 One of our Christmas countdown surprises was red and green mustaches!  We all had so much fun with these.

 Will was the absolute best!! He loved his mustache.  He left it on for probably 3 hours!!!!  Ahhahaha! It was so cute!  He is a true William Rowe, sporting the stache!!

 We decided he needed his sweet fedora to go with the stache.

 Cory just needs a top hat and a cane, then he could break into a nice little tap dance.

 Lily wrote this sweet little gem on Sunday, December 22, 2013.  I warms my heart.  I love that girl.  If you need a little help reading the creative spelling and backwards letters, I'll translate.

It says:  My testimony is I know the church is true the book of Mormon is the word of God. I know Joseph Smith is true.  Lily later told me that it was incomplete.  She wanted to finish by saying, I know Joseph Smith is true because he translated the Book of Mormon.  She has such a believing heart, it never ceases to amaze me.  I hope she never changes.  Love her!  


Next up for the month....Christmas!!!  :)