Sarah's band concert

Sarah had her winter band concert this week.  Both beginning strings and beginning band played.  I am still amazed at how good they sound!  Mr Schuster is an incredible teacher and puts on a nice concert.  Sarah is enjoying playing flute and one of her best friends, Maddie, plays flute too.  

Katie, Sarah and Maddie.  They have become really close friends this year.

Sarah and Mr. Schuster.  He has been teaching band at Valley View since I was there in the 80's.  How many pictures like this do you think he has posed for?

Sarah's fourth hair donation

Sarah has really been wanting to cut her hair, but she wanted to be able to donate it again. It has been less than two years when she last donated to Wigs for Kids and it wasn't long enough to donate to them so she decided she would be happy donating to Pantene Beautiful Lengths where you only need 8 inches. She loves her new cut no she looks super cute and that much more grown up!

Sarah's Chinese banner

Sarah had to make an ancient Chinese processional banner for her social studies class. Usually we don't help with projects like this, but she really felt like she needed help and I really enjoyed helping her make it. I'm glad she has some sewing skills under her belt and was able to do so much..

Cutting our tree

We had so much fun cutting down our tree the last two years that we decided to go back to the same place again this year. We got there and we were so disappointed! They only had a tiny section of trees left and those they had were terribly small. We were ready to just leave and go get an already cut one, but Lizzie was so sad! So Donald proposed that since they were so small and not that expensive that we let the kids pick and cut one, then we go get a bigger one from Costco. The tree was so tiny! The kids were thrilled and now we have a small tree in the family room and a big tree in the living room in the front window. The kids were thrilled and the house smells so good! We still have left over ornaments! So, we have to figure out where to get a tree next year, there aren't very many places left to cut down a tree anymore.

Growing overnight

I swear Sarah woke up taller the other day! I had to take a picture of her next to my mom, they are almost the same height. She is thrilled and can't wait to be taller than me. I'm not nearly as excited!

Retro Big Springs

I pulled out my old Big Springs shirt for Lizzie to wear. Isn't she cute? I showed our principal and she loved it! No one had seen it before and several people said we should get new shirts printed in that style, but this was from when the olympics were in LA and the eagle on her shirt was the Olympic eagle. I. Sure it would be some sort of trademark violation now, but somehow is 1984 no one seemed to mind. Maybe it was all the excitement of hosting the Olympics!

Lake Castaic with the Alijani family

The Alijani family was down visiting.  They moved from Chico to Washington and were down visiting their families in Thousand Oaks.  We had a nice day at the Lake with them, even it was a bit on the cold side!  

The lake level is really low and we could walk way out into the "lake".  Lizzie found all of these shells and she sat down and said, "I'm rich in shells!"

Sarah was having fun stacking rocks.  Very Zen.

Joshua had fun throwing the football and playing with their three boys.

Thanksgiving 2015

We were happy to have a crowd here for Thanksgiving!  Everyone could make it except Brenda and Ash who were in Las Vegas.  Wayne and Jolene even came this year!  Daniel and Stephanie were here and were so sweet to bring Christmas presents for everyone.  The kids spent a long time running around in the cold, dark backyard shooting Nerf guns and arrows!  Vickie and Clayton were here and so were my parents.  The meal was great and everyone had a good time!

Sarah made a Turkey out of pipe cleaners in Lizzie's hair.  It was super cute, then a huge tangled mess which Grandma Peaches sat and combed out so carefully.  

Santa at California Adventure

We also got to see Santa while we were there. I'm so glad we did. He was great, the kids got to tell what they want and we got to take pictures with our own camera!

Disney at Christmastime

Our annual passes for Disneyland expired and we decided not to renew them.  We had a great year with lots of fun visits!  We went one last time right before Thanksgiving and got to see all of the wonderful decorations.  We also waited in line to meet SpiderMan and I'm so glad we did.  Elizabeth was the one that said she wanted to and Joshua was reluctant.  Lizzie talked to him first and she was super cute!  Then it was Joshua's turn.  He just lit up!  He was really in awe and SpiderMan spent so much time talking to him!  It was a fun, special thing to do and I'm glad we took the time to do it!

Sarah's garage sale

Sarah is supposed to earn $50 of her own money to go toward Young Women's camp. I'm in charge of it and have been for the last two years. I am tired of planning fund raisers for all of the girls, with minimal help from them, so this year I proposed that each girl raise $50 on her own, then we fundraiser for the rest. I can't believe they approved it! I wanted Sarah to get hers done right away, so we had a garage sale. She worked so hard sorting and pricing everything that we had cleaned out or that she had gotten donated from our family and our generous neighbor, Colleen! She was up early Saturday morning wheeling and dealing with the people who were there at 6:30, a full hour before we wanted to start! She was confident and savvy and I was super proud of her. She earned more than enough and if they have to fundraiser again next year, she will be set!

A few more of Elizabeth's program