Christmas

We had a nice Christmas! Since we went to Utah for Thanksgiving we decided to stay here for Christmas. A few weeks before Christmas, we went to Disneyland with my brother and his family. It was fun to get to see them!
After that some of the things that we did during Christmas break are:
going to the beach (the weather was really warm this year -- it was around 80 the day we went to the beach)
ice skating (This was A's second time to ever ice skate. She was fearless and would not let me help her at all. She would fall down and get right back up. We got to skate for an hour and by the end of the hour, she was doing great and able to stay up and skate around.)
target shooting (We drove up into the nearby mountains and found a place to shoot.)
Happy New Year!

Temple Trip

Our primary planned a temple trip for the children. They had a tour of the LA temple's newly remodeled visitor's center and then the sister missionaries gave them a tour of the temple grounds. What a neat experience for the children!

Jog A Thon

A's school has an annual jog-a-thon as a fundraiser for the school.
A did not get to participate, because she had just gotten her cast put on her foot. She was a good sport and watched all her classmates run while she cheered them on.

Halloween

We had an exciting Halloween!
Our ward had a fun carnival/trunk or treat Halloween party the weekend before Halloween. There was also a chili contest and each of the auxillaries had a booth where you could sample the chili that they had made. For the kids there was a jump house, face painting, games and a haunted house.
On Halloween night, we took A trick or treating to the mall with some friends, and then we met up after that with some other friends and went trick or treating around the neighborhood for a little bit. It was a bit cold but A had a great time!

Cast

A was jumping on the trampoline at a friend's house and somehow hurt her foot.
We took her home and the next morning she said she couldn't walk on her foot and that it really hurt, so we took her in to the doctor for x-rays. The x-rays did not show any sign of a break, so the doctor said it was probably a sprain and we took her home for it to heal. Four weeks went by and she was still favoring her foot and not walking on it correctly, so we called the doctor back and they referred us to an orthopedic surgeion. We took her in again for more x-rays and the orthopedic surgeon did not see any sign of a break, but diagnosed that she must have fractured her growth plate and so she put a cast on A's foot for three weeks. A got to pick out the color for her cast which was multi-colored.
At school she was not able to participate in PE, but she enjoyed being able to pick some toys and a friend to take her to the nurse's office where she played while her classmates went to PE. She was told not to run or climb with her cast on, but that lasted for about a day and we had to continually remind her to just walk.

Princess Parties

A has gone to a couple of princess birthday parties in the last couple of months. She didn't want to dress up for the first party, but she dressed up for the second one.

First day of school

A is now officially in Kindergarten! She is enjoying school and her teacher Mrs. Popiel. School is less than a mile away, so I walk her to school everyday and walk to pick her up at the end of the day. It is a nice time to chat and help her review some things from school. I am also helping out in her classroom a couple of times a week. I am enjoying being able to be in the classroom to see how A interacts with the other kids. It is also fun because this is the age I taught when I was teaching and it brings back a lot of good memories.