McKibben Family Blog

In a quick effort to "catch up" on blogging before Christmas, I'm throwing a bunch of things into one post. Here goes:

Christmas Tree
We went to get our Christmas tree the first weekend in December. We always go to the same place to cut it down--they have beautiful trees and it's close by. There's nothing like the smell of a freshly cut Christmas tree and then decorating it with red lights while listening to Percy Faith! For some reason, we didn't have enough lights for our tree this year, so we only had half of our tree lit and decorated for the first week until we found the kind of lights that we use (could not find them anywhere). Anyway, we had fun decorating it and enjoy looking at the glow of red lights.


Santa Claus
That night, we went to our ward Christmas Party. Well first, we went to Forest Grove and watched their Christmas Light Parade, which was pretty cool for a small town. They had some great floats! Then we went to our ward Christmas party a little late and had dinner and listened to the program and then took the kids to see Santa. Lydia went before I could go with her and Maggie had no desire to sit on Santa's lap. So we took Bella and Paige. Bella did not like it one bit. It was actually her nursery teachers dressed up as Santa and Mrs. Claus. We joked that she recognized their voices, because she still does not like to go to nursery without one of us with her.


Preschool Christmas Program
The next Friday was Paige's last day of preschool and her Christmas program. She was asked to memorize a part of the program (which was like 6 lines long), and so we practiced it a few times and she had it down. Kids have the most amazing memories!! So we get to the program and she does her part--the kid shows no fear. She walks up to the microphone and clearly, slowly and quite loudly says her part perfectly. Talk about a proud mama. I never could have done that. They continue with the program with other kids speaking and all of them singing songs and then the teacher announces that Paige is going to come up and sing a song. So she confidently walks up the the microphone and starts singing "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth" by herself!!! I had no clue that she was singing a solo. She told me numerous times at home that they were singing it in the program, but she never said that she was singing it by herself! What a kid! It was great! I filmed it with my older video camera and I don't know if I could get it on here though. It was SO cute. She loves to sing; she sings ALL THE TIME!
You can't really tell in this picture, but Lydia lost her 2nd front tooth. Now she can sing that famous song!

Sorry I'm so late on this post...been busy as usual. :)

Thanksgiving was nice and low key. We stayed at home and didn't have any visitors this year. Made all of my mom's and dad's good Thanksgiving food, watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and the girls watched the Dog Show that follows. They love watching all the cute dogs. When it came time to eat, the table was set, the candles lit and the food put out only to discover that the turkey was not quite done yet. So we had to wait another hour for it to be done (that was a very LONG hour) and then had to reheat all the other food before we could eat. It was delicious anyways and of course we (Garrett and I) over-ate. We played apples to apples with the girls, listened to Christmas music and started decorating for Christmas. It was a nice day.

A couple of Saturdays ago was Lydia's birthday party at Skate World. It was so fun! Every kid that she invited was able to come (a first for her parties--usually someone's sick or busy or gone) and they all had fun skating. Lydia was a little scared at first. She didn't want to let go of the wall because she was afraid of falling, but eventually she gained a little more confidence and had some fun. She only fell eight times, she told me, so that was pretty good. Her little friends were so cute--some had never skated before and fell quite a few times, but got right back up. We had our party "area" for 45 minutes where we ate hotdogs, cotton candy, root beer and chocolate cake. Then Lydia opened her presents. By this time the kids were ready to get back out and skate.

In the 4th grade, Maggie is learning about Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. In class they are doing all sorts of activities relating to Native American life. They've made bead necklaces, made head dresses, they had to write a myth about how an animal got one of it's features or how something came to be. Next week they are having a potlatch, which is a celebration with songs, stories and dance that celebrate many different. Maggie is participating as an eagle in a dance. I'm going to go watch it on Wed. and will post more pictures. So, along with these activities, the students were asked to create a Native American village at home. Garrett and Maggie worked on it for about a week and created a fantastic scene. Here are some pictures: