Christmas

As mentioned, Granny and Papa were here for Christmas.  We had a good time and were busy between NY, cooking, eating, playing, sleeping, The Franklin Institute (Pompeii), Ocean City, etc. 

We wore them out....

Phantom of the Opera

My parents are hard to buy gifts for.  You try to pick something out for them and hope that it doesn't end up in their underwear drawer.  They don't need anything.  When we found out they were coming for Christmas, I finally had a brilliant idea for a present...they had never, ever been to New York City despite all their travels.  We bought them tickets to Phantom of the Opera and drove into the city the Saturday before Christmas.  Things got hairy right before the Lincoln tunnel until we got to the theatre, but we made it with time to spare :)

We all had a great time and the present was a success!

I had never, ever seen a parking lot like this.  These were car elevators!  They parked the cars on multiple levels with lifts.  It was really cool :)

Dad knows all

"Mom can you check my homework?  Dad always ruins it with grammar and logic."  Lol! 

Family Pics

Get ready for a whole lot of ....us.  We got a super great deal on having our family pictures taken.  We got about an hour on the beach and all digital rights for a steal.  Enjoy....

Thanksgiving

We hemmed and hawed about what we were going to do for Thanksgiving for weeks.  We thought we'd just go out like we did last year until we found out that 4 missionaries didn't have anywhere to do.  Then a friend of ours needed a place.  And then, morning of, 3 more people needed somewhere to go.  It ended up being a very full house!

From FB:

     

           It was a lovely Thanksgiving! When I woke up Ben already had half of the meal under control. We ended up having 11 of us for dinner and all turned out well-except for the too runny crock pot mashed potatoes. I made a last minute decision to run out shopping tonight and found everything I wanted at Toysrus, Target and Macy's. People were friendly and polite and there was no drama. Best of all, when I got home Ben had done every last dish even though he works tomorrow and I don't. I am thankful for all my blessings-especially leftovers orange rolls now that the guys are asleep

And the middle schoolers say...

Had a middle schooler walk up to me today and say "Mrs. X, I have std, I have to leave." Um, that would be DDT. (Which sounds equally bad if you're not familiar with our school Lingo.)

You know it's going to be a mind numbing conversation when a middle schooler starts with, "ok Mrs. X, so we speak English, right?"

 Today a student complained about having to take Spanish. "I'm never going to Mexico, so what's the point?" I told her, amongst other things, that learning another language would make her smarter. "Fine! I want to learn British!" Sigh. I'm not sure Spanish is going to make her smarter.

I asked my students to NOT use google translate for any part of their assignment in class today. I had a hard time believing one of the girls didn't use online help so I questioned her and she vehemently denied it. I gave her one more chance to confess and when she didn't take it, I pointed out her sentences were written in FRENCH. Oh middle schoolers.