A New Season of Soccer

Soccer has started and both Marcus and Brian are playing. More pics to come, but here is Brian in one of his first practices getting used to dribbling the ball....gonna be so fun!

And this will be the other two kids' life for an hour every evening...playing at the park...what a fun life. :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS

The holiday has been nice and relaxing, starting with a fantastic Christmas. Brent had a few days off and the kids loved it. Christmas Eve was spent with the Elders. Christmas day was filled with relaxation and play. And so on and so on....

Madelyn started the holiday with a new locks. We cut her hair into an A-line style. Looks super cute!

Christmas Eve with the Elders. We enjoyed our normal traditions: prime rib dinner, reading from Luke 2, watching the Nativity, reading 'When He Comes Again', watching a Christmas movie - Dennis the Menace Christmas, opening new jammies, and setting out treats for Santa.

 Elder Feller and Elder Workman

 New jammies...

 Christmas morning...we pray and sing songs together before we check to see if Santa visited the house. We had an unfortunate thing happen Christmas Eve. I went to get our yummy butter braid out of the freezer from the garage to eat and noticed the freezer had been OFF for I don't know how many days. Everything was thawed and ruined. Luckily I hadn't been good at keeping it stocked so we only lost a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff. The GFI had tripped and we didn't realize it. Bummer...but if that's the worse thing that happens over the holiday I'd say we are in good shape! :)

 Priceless expressions....

 This was funny...SANTA must have been in a hurry to make this CD for Brent. He thought he was giving him 'Five For Fighting'....but it was 'Five Finger Death Punch'...lol. With songs like 'The Way of the Fist' and 'The Bleeding', and ' Death Before Honor' who could ask for anything more! That will be a big fat RETURN!! But a good laugh.

 Our hand carved cuckoo clock from Germany. Don and Karen sent this beautiful treasure. We enjoy it every hour on the hour...well actually its set to go off about 3 minutes past the hour but whose counting, right...lol

 Christmas day park time....it was a beautiful day!

 Dinner outside...left overs. We always have left overs for like the next four days after Christmas Eve

 Brian says he "hates this picture"...he doesn't like what I'm doing with my face....lol

 We cat-sat for a friend. The perk, besides the kids making two new fenial friends was the use of the hot tub at their clubhouse...we bribed the kids with a dollar if they jumped into the pool....they did-over and over and over.

 Christmas clothes...looking sharp!

LOVE LOVE LOVE the holidays with the kids! Or maybe it's just that I LOVE LOVE LOVE the kids!!! Thanks for a fantastic holiday everyone...

The holiday was even more special this year because we were "Secret Santa's" for a woman who's husband has been deployed for awhile. We just ran simple things to her door with stories or poems attached for the twelve days before Christmas, but the kids loved taking turns and were excited about giving...a new tradition, I do believe!

Oh...and without getting into specifics we had an extra treat this year as well. We had our own Secret Santa for the twelve days of Christmas. For remembrance purposes I want to post the gifts, but I don't want people to think we are absurd. So in our hearts we will remember the year that daddy(Brent) creatively came up with twelve days of Christmas with notes and gifts to go along. He wanted to do something special this year and took us all by surprise. So THANK YOU SECRET SANTA!!!

And after the new year we still have a full week off of school! Yay!.....

FRONT PAGE....

Madelyn and Marcus made the front page of the Yuma Sun today, December 28th. Brent had taken the kids to play tennis yesterday and ran into a newspaper photographer looking for people using their new Christmas treasures. The kids think they are famous! Don't they look STINKIN' CUTE!!!

, tennis, bushman, new - News - YumaSun

RANDOM Holiday BREAK Fun....

The kids are out of school...we're having fun. Here's a couple of random moments around the Bushman household...

 ONE...a beautiful desert sunset...

TWO...A random Martha Stewart moment for me. I made napkin rings for Brents dinner party

THREE...A recent family picture

FOUR...Marcus and his imagination

MARCUS..."Mom, look! My tummy's old..."

well at least he didn't say his tummy looked like MINE! Gotta love kids!

Handel's Messiah....

It was my pleasure to perform Handels' Messiah once again. This year I joined the Yuma Ecumenical Choir under the direction of Brandon Stroup. My good friend Ericka Nelson was also helping with practice directing. It was a fantastic experience, so fun to be back in a choir. After performing three years in Boise I wasn't sure if this experience would be able to top the previous ones. It was just as fantastic or even better. Brandon(Brother, Mr....whatever) Stroup was fantastic. He truly is a site to see as he stands before the choir and directs. I'm going to go out on a limb and say its actually quite beautiful. So thank you Mr. Stroup for the experience. I look forward to working on the Easter portion of the Messiah this spring.

Picture from the paper during a weeknight practice. If you look behind the girl with the dark shirt in the front row and over one to the right you will see me with curly hair...big curly hair, to be a little more precise(hehe)

Our director, Brandon Stroup. He is an amazing genious a what he does. And he does it all with "two hands and a baton".

Thank you, Ericka, for ALL your hard work as well. Ericka was a behind the scenes miracle worker....literally!

PROVO UTAH GIRLS....

K....I totally had to post this...I love my life, my religion...but this solidifies my on-going joking statement that "Utah Mormans are a different breed!" ENJOY!! :) And know that I post this in fun, of course. If we can't make fun of ourselves then...well....

MADELYN'S FIRST PIANO RECITAL

Madelyn had her first ever Piano Recital on Thursday, Dec 16th.. She has been taking from Debbie Moyes at Moyes Music School. Oh, and did I mention that Debbie is like the coolest ever...hehe. Madelyn started in September so has been learning now for about 3 1/2 months. We don't practice religiously...actually, sometimes we forget for a couple of days in a row. But she is doing well. I'm excited for her.

I was so proud of her at her recital. She has been known to be a little shy when it comes to getting up in front of people so I worried that she would be a little frightened to perform in front of the crowd. She didn't even notice we were there! I was so happy for her, her confidence, excitment, and best of all I know she was happy with herself.

There's debbie looking on at her piano students. I have to say that I was very impressed with every student. Debbie is my friend so I have nothing but good to ever say about her. But, and here's my plug, her students were very prepared, seemed to all be excelling at different levels and she chose songs that magnified their abilities. I'm excited to see how much Madelyn progresses over the next few months until her next recital.

I think seeing the different songs the others' were playing and the different levels excited her too. She sees that if she practices she can gain a very valuable talent.

SO PROUD OF YOU, MADELYN!!

Last But NOT LEAST....

To end the three day program cycle, Brian and his preschool put on a 7-8 minute singing charade. It was super short, but super super cute! The kids, who range from 3-5 years old, were dressed in their best and decked out in reindeer horns and Rudolph noses.

They sang Rudolph, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Oh Christmas Tree, and Jingle Bells. Then following the performance everyone enjoyed a HUUUUUGE spread of food - rolled tacos, pizza, salad, veggies, sandwiches of every variety, desserts gallore.....oh - did I mention the eating began at 10:00 in the morning. LOL!!

 I made cupcakes for his party...didn't they turn out cute!

 Really? Can you get any cuter than that!!!

 Brian and a couple of classmates acting out the Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer song....time filler for sure.

 His teachers. Ms. Rachel(Right) has been both Marcus and Brian's teacher. She is done now, moving on to complete her student teaching and GET MARRIED. Ms. Penny(green sweater) is so great! Ms. Marilynn and Ms. Cindy(levi skirt and white pants) are newer to the class.

 Brian with Ms. Penny

Santa made a surprise visit....the kids were sooooooo excited! Of Course!

Wow...the kids' programs were so great! I wish I could go to 10 more of them. ROFLOL!!! (In ten years or 50 years I might not remember what that means...it means I'm ROLLING on the floor laughing out loud!!) But in all reality, there isn't anything greater in life than seeing a smile on your child's face. And if it means going to 10 more school programs just to see the smile over and over, then I will go to ten more school programs.