The 1st Weekend of December

The first weekend in December was very busy! Friday the 5th was Curtis's 46th birthday, but we held off on celebrating until we celebrated Alice's birthday on the 22nd. However, I think a coworker took him to lunch that day. It was also opening weekend for Jack's first ever play. He didn't have time in his schedule to do Choral Fusion because of marching band in the evenings, but the club that does plays practiced right after school, which allowed for him to participate. I guess the teacher in charge picks out different plays they will do that year, and the students decided which ones they want to be a part of. Jack chose the one titled "Our Town". Curtis and I have heard the title but had never seen it before. Jack didn't really care which role he got, he just auditioned and they gave him one of the higher roles. He played Mr. Webb, who is the father of one of the lead characters. His role allowed for him to be a little funny, and he did so well for his acting debut. The best night for us to be able to go was on opening night on the 5th. He said that by the 2nd weekend he felt like he improved a lot and just really enjoyed doing the play. The night we went, we swapped kids with some friends. Their daughter, Harper, is good friends with Jack and it was the only night she could go watch his play and she really wanted to go support him. Well, their family had bought tickets to go see a hockey game and since Harper wanted to go to the play, they invited Charlotte to go to the hockey game. It worked out great because Charlotte got to hang out with one of her best friends, Ivy. She's just sad that she never got to see Jack's play.

Charlotte at the hockey game.

I had also spent that morning baking a bunch of mini loaves of bread for Alice's school bazaar bake sale. It was happening the morning of the 6th and I also volunteered to help with the bake sale for a couple of hours. It was fun to help out and nice to bake something that wasn't sweet. I also baked a couple of big loaves for our family because I knew the kids would want some. I baked 18 total for the bazaar. I know at least half of them got sold by the time I was done with my shift. More of them were purchased on the shift before I got there though. All of the leftovers were donated to the teacher's lounge for the teachers to enjoy.

Directly after Jack's play, we came home to watch BSU play in the Mountain West Championship against UNLV and they won 38-21! Curtis had purchased a subscription to YouTube tv so that we could watch all of their football games, plus BYU's (except there was one of BYU's that we weren't able to watch). It was nice because we could record them and then watch later if necessary and fast forward through the commercials, etc. 

Saturday evening was our ward Christmas party. Curtis smoked a ham, and Charlotte baked some oatmeal cookies as part of our contribution. There was a young couple in charge of the event this year and they sent a signup sheet around for baking desserts or other items. However, not very many side dishes were brought. So, we mostly had ham and desserts. Hopefully they will have learned from this and make a separate sheet for dinner items vs dessert items next time. There were some musical numbers and remarks by the bishop. They also had Santa set up in the Relief Society room before the dinner started and a nativity in another room. (I kind of missed that one unfortunately but saw it later when doing clean up)

Alice is here with some of her friends.

One by herself.

Then I forced both girls to get a picture together with Santa. It was hard because they wanted to run around and play with their friends.

Alice and Violet

Alice and Aliyah

Because the party started at 5:30, we were done by 7:00 and had time to watch a movie when we got home. Charlotte also had time to work on her talk that she was asked to do in primary the next day. I gave her a little help, but she typed most of it up by herself and practiced several times. It would be her last ever talk in primary since she'll be in young womens in January. Sunday evening Jack started to read "A Christmas Carol" to the girls. Unfortunately, he got sick the next day and they never did finish.

There is another show choir group in Kennewick that's just like Choral Fusion, only much more well known and bigger. They're called Forte. I had never seen them before and wanted to watch the show. The girls and Jack and I all went Monday night. Jack had a friend, Molly, who was in it this year. She had done Fusion last Spring and that's where they met. Unfortunately, Jack started to feel sick that day and so much that he had to call Curtis to come get him at intermission. You know he's not feeling good if he wanted to leave something like that. The girls and I really enjoyed watching the show and it got us excited to see the girls perform in Choral Fusion's show that coming weekend! One cool thing that Forte said they added to their show this year was a light show with music for one of the songs. It was fun to watch. I couldn't believe that they filled the whole Kennewick High School auditorium. We sat up in the balcony. That's how popular they are. Fusion has only been around for 4 years, so it may become that big eventually.

Jack's friend, Molly (they went to homecoming together)

These were the main performers of the Forte group.