Life and Times of The Johnston family: A Nice Low Key Week

This week was pretty low key and blissfully uneventful. Monday Devin had speech therapy which is going amazing! We're pretty much solely working on receptive language, as his speech is tearfully inspiring, Devin even made Audria cry after "parroting" everything she asked him to so well...she couldn't believe how well he was doing and that all our hard work is finally paying off...BIG! I'm sure it's those kinds of appointments that make her love her job! He still has a lot of work to do as far as his receptive language goes though, but even that is coming along slowly! Monday night Elizabeth had gymnastics, and as I've said before I love The Little Gym because it's not just physical exercise, there is learning going on as well. This particular week was doing letters, they would try to make different letters with their body and such. They also had all the letters printed out on papers with a word that started with that letter under it(no pictures though) so like A and under it was Apple, ect throughout the alphabet. Well when it got to Elizabeth's turn they pointed to the paper that had H...House on it and asked Elizabeth if she knew what that letter was(and I'm sure she scoffed) I heard her yell "H...and that says house!" One of the teachers then took Elizabeth around the entire gym and Elizabeth said every letter and read all the words as well. After the opening circle time the teacher that had taken her around came out and with a look of astonishment told me, "Elizabeth can READ!!" I just laughed and said I know she's been reading for almost a year now. She then told me, "that was so cool!" To which I agreed it was pretty "cool" to watch her read. Elizabeth is really starting to open up to reading in front of others more now, I think because she's becoming more confident with it. She even read a lot of her talk, on being a missionary now in primary last week! She's also realizing reading is a lot of fun, and that makes me soooo happy!
Last week's school lessons were on part one of Thanksgiving, why and how we celebrate it, and all the things we have to be thankful for. We also talked a bit more on eating healthy, the five food groups and why it's important to eat enough of the right things, and how it helps our bodies and helps her grow. I felt pretty awful teaching her this as I'm the worst example EVER! Elizabeth is actually an incredibly healthy eater, I just wish I could get her to eat enough! She really did enjoy learning about what different foods do for her body though! Her gospel lesson was on "I is for I am a Child of God", which was a great spiritual lesson!
Friday we went up to my parent's house for Elizabeth's Spanish lesson, Elizabeth now knows about 40 or more words in Spanish and can read pretty much all of them! She's really enjoying learning Spanish with my mom!
Saturday morning Tony took Elizabeth to Lowe's Build and Grow and they built a little Santa's sleigh! That is such a wonderful(free)thing! Then that afternoon we dropped the kids off at Tony's parents house and they watched them for us while we went to Desert Star and saw "My Big Fat Utah Christmas"! It was the funniest show!! We were busting a gut over and over again! Such a great way to kick off our holiday season! Then after we went and did a little Christmas shopping to get just about finished(with the kids at least). We even managed to go to dinner! It was such a nice night out!! Yesterday we went up to my parent's in the afternoon and helped them with the dinner they were doing for us and Eric and Jen. It was a very nice dinner with great company! Then we all went over to my Aunt Susan's for a little birthday get together for a couple of the kids birthdays. And that was our week!

These first pictures are of the kids having fun in the snow when it was still around!