Winter Break Week #1

Andy's mom, sister, and sister's family were in town for Christmas.  We had a wonderful Christmas filled with laughter, fun, and food!  His sister, Whitney, has a 9-month old so Emma and Abigail loved entertaining her while they were here.

 decorating Christmas cookies at Grandpa and Grandma's

Andy and I got out to ski with Whitney and her husband one day.  

Now that Park City and Canyons is one big resort, they put in a gondola connecting the 2 areas.

 bath time with Kennedy

Abby's hair is finally long enough for pig tails.

We had a 3-day storm that brought lots of snow!!

We held on to our tradition of seeing Santa at Zoo Lights.

Abigail was not a fan of Santa...

While Abby's hair is growing longer, Emma decided she wanted short hair.  One day, while she was up in her room having quiet time, she snuck to get a pair of scissors and gave herself a hair cut.  It could have been worse.  We took her to Great Clips to get it to look somewhat even.  

The Tullis Christmas party is always held on December 23rd.  Andy's dad's side of the family is so large it has to be held at a LDS ward.

 We took part in a project for refugees--stuffing bags with toiletries.

Abigail found a friend and started playing catch with an orange.

Santa came to our house!  

 Andy had a Santa suit so my mom made the girls and I suits to wear over our ski gear.  We just had to test them out on Christmas day.  

We went to Uncle Jim and Aunt Robin's for dinner on Christmas day.

cousins

 Emma got a lot of crafts for Christmas so we have been crafting up a storm.

Finally, Andy and I went to see the new Star Wars movie!  It's awesome!  

We hope you all had a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!  Stay tuned for "Winter Break Week #2!"

Holiday Happenings!

We are in full swing of the holiday season!  We are on winter break for 2 weeks, Andy has a break from graduate school until January, Andy's family flies in today, and more snow is on its way!  I am sure I will have a plethora of photos to post with all of our upcoming Christmas festivities but, for now, this is what we've been up to the past couple of weeks:

We try to take advantage of every minute of daylight when we get home from school.

Abigail's school had their annual Christmas party.  She is in the upper left corner.

Abby wanted to take a silly picture.

 We have been getting quite a bit of snow lately.  The girls started making a snow mountain.

My friend, Melanie, and I planned and organized our staff holiday party.  It was held at The Spur on Main Street and had a "Cowboy Christmas" theme.

 We combined our holiday party with a retirement party for our special education teacher, 

Susan Tabke.  As a former special education teacher myself, I usually get a majority of her students each year, which means her and I have worked pretty closely together in the 8 years I have been at McPolin.    

After our staff party, we took advantage of having some adult time, and ventured off to the No Name with some friends.  If you have watched "Blood and Oil" on ABC, this is where they filmed the scenes for the Tack Room.

 On top of doing the social committee at our school, I also do the teacher appreciation committee for Abigail's school.  For their holiday gift, I made these bags for the teachers and filled them with a few goodies.

My mom made the girls and I Santa suits to wear over our ski gear.  We plan to go skiing at Brighton on Christmas Day (for free!).

 After reading Too Many Tamales to all of the classes, our school librarian organized an event where each class learned how to make tamales.   It was so awesome to see some of the Hispanic parents participating in this event. 

Then they got to taste test a variety of tamales.  Yum!  Yum!

 I got to sneak away from my classroom festivities to see what Emma was up to in her kindergarten classroom.  

We had a district-wide ugly sweater day on Friday.  Don't we look lovely?  

 Last night, we drove around and looked at Christmas lights around town.  These were a couple worth sharing.