Rolling Along

We had a very music-filled Christmas. It felt like pre-Covid times again where our calendar was just full of performances. Sometimes I almost forget what it's like to sit in the audience and hear music because we're so busy being in all the things! AND our marching band season was still going strong because the football team was doing so well. They made it to the State championship and WON! Go YELM!

This is a picture of Dan and Alex that was taken at the Army Band holiday party. They're wearing our favorite ugly christmas sweater.

The holidays definitely mean treats, which means Alex was baking! Look at his goodies he did for his bake sale! Everything was so good!

After a few crazy weeks of holiday shindigs, we were able to enjoy some family time. We spent the week before christmas doing things like making poptart gingerbread houses and decorating cookies with friends. The week after Christmas we drove out to Boise to spend the New Year's holiday with his family.

We met up with our friends the Bennetts who left us in Washington and moved home to Jerome, Idaho. We enjoyed some time at the hot springs just chatting and catching up!

The foutz family does a yearly bingo on New Years Eve, it was fun!  And alex wanted to bake for everyone :) 

Fast forward a few months and it's 2023! We all hit the ground running after our holiday celebrations. I started my full time job teaching Elementary Music. The good news is that the more I'm in the classroom, the better I feel. It's hard coming in the middle of the school year and trying to get to know over 700 students. I work at two schools and see each kid once a week, K-5. That's a lot of faces! There's been a bit of a learning curve for me with classroom management and lesson planning. I have a resource to draw from for curriculum, but it's still a lot of work planning lessons for all the different ages I see.

I feel like January we were just in the deep trenches and now we're kind of pulling out for a breath. I had a lot of other previous commitments that kept me busy on weekends and evenings after work. We finally had a Saturday to ourselves and so we went to Tacoma for the annual Monkeyshine hunt. These are glass emblems that are hid during the Lunar new year timeframe. This year is the year of the rabbit, so other local artists will hide their creations too. We didn't find a glass orb, but found this resin bunny head!

Valentine's came and went, and that meant it was a great time for a date to Korean BBQ! It's become a tradition. And Alex had another successful bake sale. We hunted across a few cities for these pink M&M's! 

I think the kids might be starting to like me as their teacher, and learning to love music!

This weekend Cade was able to perform in the All-Northwest Honor Band. He auditioned in the fall and is the only kid in our area to make it. The conference had students from 6 states across the NW part of the US. Their performance was outstanding and I can't wait to see what Cade's musical future will be!

And here's something just to let you know that the cat and dog tolerate each other well enough. They play fight all the time and fight for our attention. :)