Life and Times of The Johnston family: A Piano Recital and Gardener Village Elves!

Last week was a good one! Monday was a typical Christmas break day and that evening Elizabeth had her theater class holiday party, where she got some treats and a pretty sparkly snowflake ornament! They also handed out the "show shirts" Elizabeth got a hoodie....I can't believe I didn't get a picture of her in it! She wore it for like three days straight!! Needless to say she LOVES it! While she was gone I had Devin wrap his gift to Elizabeth(I had Elizabeth wrap his while he was at preschool one day the week before, and they'd already wrapped their gifts to their daddy). Elizabeth was super excited to come home and see it under the tree! Tuesday Devin had preschool and it was another typical day. Wednesday evening Elizabeth had her holiday piano recital, she played "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" solo and the class played "Holly Jolly Christmas" I didn't have a good view of Elizabeth during the class song so I didn't take video but I should have cause she was the only one playing and she did it perfectly!(They play to music accompaniment) She was the only one in her class to not need the teacher up with her as well! I'm thinking we are going to have her try a level 2 class as she memorized both her songs with ease(she took her music up in case she got nervous and forgot) She was SO proud of herself, as were we!! Devin almost didn't make it at first(luckily Elizabeth played first) and had to taken out shortly after Elizabeth was done, then he spent most of the rest of the recital under his chair with his Little People magazine. But we made it! Afterward she requested as is tradition to go to Applebees for dinner, as we were getting ready to leave Bravo Elizabeth complained that she had pain in her lower abdomen, so I had her go potty. She said it still hurt so we thought maybe your just hungry so we went to dinner, but she seemed miserable throughout dinner, so after we hurried to be done we took her to a kids care up in Ogden. Shortly after checking in she told Tony that she was feeling better......naturally! But we had her looked at anyway. They ruled out appendicitis and and a UTI and told us sometimes pains come and go and what to look for in the next few days with appendicitis, and sent us on our way. We went home and called it a night! Thursday Devin had to be to preschool 15 minutes early due to the school doing a practice lock-down drill. Then Elizabeth and I went to Dollar Tree and Walmart to pick up treats for graham cracker "gingerbread" houses. After I got the kids some lunch I ran Shadow a couple houses down to be groomed, then put Devin down for nap and picked her up. After Devin's nap we drove down to Cookie Cutters for Devin's haircut, then went and spent a couple hours at my grandparents' house visiting and playing, for dinner we took the kids to McDonalds and let them play at the play place as they really needed to burn off some excess energy and for most of the time they had the place to themselves which was really nice! Friday my mom took us to Chick Fil A for lunch and the kids played their hearts out for three hours! It was such a nice treat! Tony had his company holiday party/lunch that day so he was home early which was nice! Saturday we went to Gardener Village and looked at the fun elves then had a delicious lunch at Archibald's! Then we went to the Nester's so Ketty could do a quick sewing favor for us, and we visited while the kids watched a couple shows. The kids slept pretty much all the way home. We watched a Christmas movie after dinner and that was it! Sunday the kids wore their new Christmas outfits, and were adorable! Both kids did well in class which was a relief! And we just took it easy the rest of the day. We watched another Christmas movie for family movie night. And that was our week!

Here is the video of Elizabeth playing We Wish You a Merry Christmas on the piano

The kids in their Christmas shirts on Friday

Making a Christmas ornament!(one of the advent activities)

Making marshmallow snowmen!(another advent activity)On a totally random side note Elizabeth's eye patches have not been successfully staying on past dinner time....as she rubs them loose then off. Luckily my crafty mom solved this problem yesterday!