Compton Corners: Holidays 2019-Feb. 2020

We opened the holiday season with Adelaide's choir concert at a local craft fair. She has loved singing with this group and developing her vocal talent.

Peter really enjoys berries --on oatmeal or anything else, including his face.

This was Jojo's Thanksgiving celebration at school.

We had a huge crop of olives this year. I was really ambitious and made olive oil for the first time.

We had to grind them to a thick pulp, then hang them to let the liquid drip out. It was the color of blood, for real! Then we had to let the oil separate from the juice and scrape it off the top. For all the work it was, I don't know that it was worth it, but it was really good for cooking.

As Peter was just learning to walk and toddling all over the place around Thanksgiving, he fell against the side of our leather ottoman. The corner was sharper than any of us realized and gouged a pretty deep hole in his forehead. He wouldn't keep any kind of bandage on, so he just went around looking like he got shot in the head. He still has a scar...

The girls and I went to see the Nutcracker for the first time this December. I have fond memories of seeing it in Austin when I was a girl, and it was fun to share it with my beautiful daughters.

Of course we performed the Nativity before Christmas. This year, our friends, the Litherlands, joined us.

Our kids have so much fun together. They've really become like our adopted cousins. Most days of the week they are at each other's houses in some combination or other.

The end of the year also marked the end of my career as a Cub Scout Den leader. I was very proud of all the work our boys put into finishing up all their requirements before our church's participation in Scouts ended.

Christmas! We hosted the whole Compton clan at our house Christmas morning. Good times!

After Christmas, we found that we hadn't ever gotten around to doing our gingerbread houses with all the cousins, so we did them with friends instead.

2020 started with a bang.... except we didn't do fireworks this year, for some reason.

In January, Michael started basketball again with the Upward league and loved it. I wish he could keep doing it, but 6th grade is the last year they can play.

"Cake Day! Cake Day! The best day of the year!" This is the chant and concept we adopted from reading a fabulous book series, "The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place." CAKE stands for Celebrate the Acquisition of Knowledge Exhibition. We recited poetry and other things we had been working on through the school year, and then we ate cake. Yum! We liked this so much we've already decided it's going to be a new tradition.

Dad had a lot of fun do an evening math lesson with the kids using gummy bears.... I think this will be a new tradition too.

Annie, showing off her Valentine's Box at the home school group's party.

Michael turned twelve in February. This handsome boy is growing so fast! He is almost as tall as me now.--He will be by the end of the year. Grandma came up to help celebrate and to take him to the temple to do family names.

We hosted a Tween Party on Michael's birthday. The theme was a birthday party, including lots of party games and cake.

Speaking of birthdays, Jojo was invited to a friend's party at Chucky Cheese. I went with him and drug Peter along too. Of course, Jojo had fun, but Peter was in heaven. So many lights and sounds, and moving things to ride on!