Holidays!

It is time for the holidays!! For Thanksgiving I drove over to Palm Desert to hang out with Mom, Dad, Sean, Grandma and Grandpa! That was really fun :) Except then we went to Vegas for Sean's 21st bday and in the course of one night I lost my purse which had my phone, credit card, camera, and license in it....AND on the drive home I accidentally locked my keys in my car when I was 3 hours from Tucson. Soooooo I decided that I just fall apart when I leave Tucson hahha.
It was really nice to get back to Tucson and see my community members again and sleep in my bed! (not that couches aren't awesome;) I had only been gone for 5 days but it felt like a long time to be gone! For Christmas we are going to Guatemala for 2 weeks...that's gonna feel like forever I bet!!

In our house we are celebrating the Christmas season by handmaking cards and watching holiday romantic comedies:) the bestest! Jen and I have been making cards from construction paper, ribbon, and glue. I'm making cards for my co-workers with little peppermint chocolates on them~ we watched Love Actually and The Holiday. good stuff! We might decorate a little bit, but no Christmas tree for the house :( (too expensive!) But Erin and Jeff planted some things in our garden so that's exciting!!!

Work is going pretty well. For the 7th and 8th graders, I'm having them each research Christmas traditions in a different country. We're making Word documents with pictures, citing our sources, and hopefully printing them out when they are done...I'm low on color ink...but anyway....oh the 6th graders are making Christmas cards in Word. The younger kids (2nd-5th grade) all have blogs now and they are really excited about them! They love to comment on each other's blogs (usually things like "nice!" and "cool!" haha) And then the really little kids (pre-k thru 1st) are just mostly playing educational games that I find online for them. And doing some typing practice. So that's fun...

On Friday I got to be a chaperone for the first time in my life! We went to a high school with 17 K-4th graders to a Christmas party. It was held for those kids whose families are the most in need. They each got presents from Santa and got to pick out a present for someone in their family as well. It was really cute! The high schoolers also did crafts and played sports with the kids, sang choir songs and put on a few skits, as well as had a dance party with the kids! They were sooo excited when Santa finally came out to give them their presents! It was great too since there were so many high schoolers I really didn't have to do much. The kids were a little rowdy on the bus, but I decided to just play I-Spy with the 2nd graders sitting next to me instead of "shh-ing" them every two seconds. As long as they were sitting down, I just let the kids be kids.

I think the only real problem I'm having is that I'm a little too nice sometimes. I don't really want to punish the kids or be mean to them, so when they don't follow directions or chat with each other I just tell them to stop, but don't really do anything like yell or take their computers away. I think if I did take the computers away, they would just talk anyway. Soooo besides that, work is going well! They eventually listen to me :)

Only a week and a half left until I leave for Guatemala! Exciting!!!