Palmer left this morning for South Dakota for his first wrestling meet.  He decided to wrestle at 160 pounds after trying to lose enough to wrestle at 152.  He got down to 155 at the initial weigh in and decided to go back up to 160, which makes me very happy, he was really eating nothing for a week or so to lose those last pounds and it's not like he has anything to lose as he has 9% body fat.  Last season he had 6% body fat--way to gain some weight dude!

Andy was ordained a teacher on Sunday by Brian.  His tongue is healing nicely after his minor surgery.  He drank smoothies for a day or so and is back to normal now.  He plays his last basketball game tomorrow in the tournament.  I don't think they will win, but could possibly come in 3rd.  His team has been practicing with the high school team this last week and is really worn out!  He comes home and eats everything in sight!

We had our Ward Christmas Dinner on Wednesday night.  I was in charge of the entire program!  It was a little challenging since I'm not completely aware of what people can do and who to ask to do it, but everyone said it turned out well.  I thought it was a little rough, but everyone seemed to have fun. I had the Youth do a human Christmas tree, Emma and two others played Christmas songs on the flute, I played the harp, the primary kids sang, we sang carols, and had a nativity. At the end Mr. and Mrs. Claus came.  The food was great and there was a lot of it. There was a very large turn out with every chair taken, about 240+ people there.  Many people brought their neighbors and lots of less active members came as well.

Tomorrow is Brian's work Christmas party at our house.  I haven't even started putting up Christmas things yet, so that is the project today!  I felt very indulged yesterday as I finished reading an entire book on my kindle (Slated, a dystopian young adult novel by Teri Terry), it was nice to relax after the Christmas party planning.  

Lucy is finishing out her two weeks of swimming lessons as part of the elementary school curriculum.  She has really loved it and swam the length of the deep end without stopping the other day!  The coach says she's good and should come out for swimming!  

Emma brought home her cheerleading uniform last night.  She has been so busy lately, she went to the state drama competition, she has cheerleading practice everyday after school, and she has been helping with the flag corp tryouts for next year.  The coach asked her to be the captain of the flag corp for next year as well.  I had to check her out of school so she could get her homework done!  Then yesterday she told me she is thinking of going out for the soccer team in the spring because cheer ends at the end of basketball season!  EMMA, stop!  I had to remind her school is for academic learning, not every extracurricular activity you can fit in!  

Emma and Palmer had their band concert the other night.  They played well, even though I wanted more than 3 songs from the band and 3 from the jazz band.  They provide tuxes for the guys to wear and black dresses for the girls, so everyone looks really nice.  The band teacher is very good at picking songs that they can play well.  They don't have the most talented bunch of people, but they played well at their level.  There isn't an orchestra here and I miss hearing more musical things sometimes.  The choir also sang at the concert and did not do so well.  There was only about 30 members and the director, who is new this year, picked songs that were too hard for them.  I would have rather not listened to them and heard more band stuff, well actually just more pieces where Palmer was rockin' the drum set really.