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Buon Natale

The Bigelows have a Christmas Dinner/Birthday Party for Grandpa every December 23. We choose a country and attempt to make food from that country (Mexico- good; Phillipines- bad!) . This year we chose Italy and had the party at our house.



















In honor of Rusty's mom, who LOVED Pavarotti, we played pin the bow tie on Pavarotti and listened to Pavarotti Christmas music. Here's Nathan's turn. And Macie's. The big kids had to play, too.






Clinton and Erna











After Pavarotti, we played "light limbo" and pass the candy cane.



Blake















Lexy












Arturo and Jaxten

We really missed Kerri's family, who live in the valley. Kerri sent up these cute little glasses and a yummy lemon drink mix. We toasted Kerri and sang the Bigelow's morbid little birthday song.

It's the Most Busiest Time of the Year!

Yea! Christmas is almost here! Here are a few of the things that have kept us busy, busy in December:

My counselors and I threw together a last minute little nativity program for our ward Christmas party, and miraculously it turned out so cute. That's Nathan and his little friend Nellie as Mary and Joseph.





























Ididn't work a whole lot, just two days of junior high PE, one preschool screening, and I subbed fifth grade the last two days before Christmas break. Craziness, but in a fun sort of way.














Took about fifty million pictures of the kids trying to get one decent enough for Christmas cards. This is not the one I picked, but it is pretty true to life!!














Went to the really fun Madrigal dinner, a game night with some friends, the light parade, Katie's violin concert, DJ's 4th grade music program, and the high school music concert; my last few weeks of 8am church (hallelujah!!) ward council, Priesthood Preview, visiting teaching, ward choir practice, and our Christmas enrichment meeting. Took Sam to the doctor twice for his rotten asthma that's flared up, and took DJ twice to therapy in ShowLow. One of those times we had quite a fun little adventure that I'll write about later.


We had a scaled down version of our "itty bitty party" that we have on the last day of school before Christmas break. This party should be called the"Let's invite all our friends over and trash the house party." It's always fun in spite of the chaos. We have an indoor snowball fight with marshmallows, roast mini marshmallows over birthday candles, and eat lots of mini food.

The Tree Continued. . .

The lights have to be just right. . .even if it takes two hours!












The boys tried to make it a theme tree. A Star Wars Lego tree!














I love how little kids put about 10 ornaments all on the same bottom branch:















Katie and Nathan

Breath of Heaven

A few years ago at a Ward Christmas Party, the Burnhams played "Breath of Heaven" along with "Luke II"- one of my "favoritest" church videos. I thought it was pretty neat the way the song and video fit together exactly. I just found this on youtube and thought I'd share. The part at the end, "Let earth receive her King" gets me everytime!

The Bigelow Family Christmas Tree

We haven't had very good luck getting a Christmas tree in the forest, and the last few years we've done something I didn't think we'd ever do- use a fake tree. But this year, since Russ spends LOTS of time out in the woods, he kept his eyes open for a good Christmas tree. I take that back: for Rusty, it has to be THE PERFECT TREE! He found one up by sheep's crossing, and lucky enough it was right next to the road.

Matthew learned a valuable lesson about wearing croc shoes in the snow!

What Christmas Is All About

Santa Claus is Coming. . .

to the Forest Service Christmas party. . .





And the 4th grade music program! Santa and his cute little elf are DJ's two best buddies.

Reading

A few nights ago I came down the hallway and saw Matthew reading Calvin and Hobbes in his bed. Things have really clicked for him this school year and he loves to read!

When Rusty and I got married, the man who performed our marriage counselled us to "hold our little ones on our laps every day and read to them." The very first night we had little tiny Sam home from the hospital, I came into our bedroom and found Rusty reading a Winnie the Pooh book to him. That is one of my dearest, sweetest memories.

We've spent lots of time reading to all our kids and they all love to read. Fortunately they've picked it up pretty quickly in school so far. Nathan is starting to notice letters and words so I have some hope for him, too! My kids have had GREAT teachers: Mrs. Whiting, Mrs. Benson, Mrs. Rhoton, Mr. Aldrich, and Mr. Hardy (I've requested the same teachers over and over!).





Here are a few books I've enjoyed in the last couple weeks:

I really liked the description of how badly the boy in this story wanted to start over and let himself love and be loved, but just wasn't able to. Also a good parable that teaches how the Atonement (without directly calling it that) can make things right and gives us all a second chance.

The Star Garden is the third in a series, coming after These is My Words and Sarah's Quilt. I love, love, love Sarah Prine, the character in these stories!

The Shape of Mercy is about a college student who is hired to transcribe an old journal written by a young girl caught up in the Salem witch trials. It's really well written and I didn't want to put it down.

Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin

SALT LAKE CITY 2 December 2008 Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, the oldest living apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died last night, age 91.

Elder Wirthlin had gone to bed at his Salt Lake City home, and died peacefully at about 11:30 pm of causes incident to age. His oldest daughter, Jane Wirthlin Parker, was present. A member of the family had been staying and caring for Elder Wirthlin, whose wife, Elisa Young Rogers Wirthlin, died in 2006.

He had continued to work at his office right up until the Thanksgiving holiday.

Funeral arrangements will be announced.

"Kindness is the essence of a celestial life. Kindness is how a Christlike person treats others. Kindness should permeate all of our words and actions at work, at school, at church, and especially in our homes.

Jesus, our Savior, was the epitome of kindness and compassion. He healed the sick. He spent much of His time ministering to the one or many. He spoke compassionately to the Samaritan woman who was looked down upon by many. He instructed His disciples to allow the little children to come unto Him. He was kind to all who had sinned, condemning only the sin, not the sinner. He kindly allowed thousands of Nephites to come forward and feel the nail prints in His hands and feet. Yet His greatest act of kindness was found in His atoning sacrifice, thus freeing all from the effects of death, and all from the effects of sin, on conditions of repentance.

The Church is not a place where perfect people gather to say perfect things, or have perfect thoughts, or have perfect feelings. The Church is a place where imperfect people gather to provide encouragement, support, and service to each other as we press on in our journey to return to our Heavenly Father.

Each one of us will travel a different road during this life. Each progresses at a different rate. Temptations that trouble your brother may not challenge you at all. Strengths that you possess may seem impossible to another. . .

We are all children of our Heavenly Father. And we are here with the same purpose: to learn to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves."

"Satan" comes to the door and Happy Meal lays an egg

When I went to Canada back in April, I didn't have any contact with the family for a couple days (being in a "foreign country" and all). When I finally got back to the U.S. (traveling a whole mile in an underwater tunnel that led to Detroit), I called Russ and he sounded funny. I said, "what kind of animal?" "Chickens" Our chicken called Happy Meal was the first to start earning her keep by providing us with a cute little egg.








Here are my Primary Activity Day Girls (I vote that the church come up with a cute name for them!). They spent a couple hours putting together kits to send to kids in 3rd world countries. Katie and her friend Jess are front and center.








We've had an old mostly dead willow tree in the back yard that the kids have fondly called the Womping Willow. This week Rusty discovered that it was full of hornets, so he cut it down, set it on fire, and he and the kids made s'mores.









Here's a picture of DJ and Caleb eating fish at our latest Sunday fish fry. The kids call it "Fishgiving". Tomorrow Rusty and Mark are going quail hunting, so does that mean we'll have quail instead of fish this Sunday?






After eating fish, we loaded up the kids and went to pick pinons. I love how Katie is holding up her new favorite book. We saw the movie today - Russ and the boys went to Madagascar- and I actually liked it much better than the book.

Now two stories:

First, "Satan at the door"- last Sunday at the end of church, Nathan came tearing into the Primary room and said, "Did you know Satan is bad and he gets in people's hearts? Did you know Satan has horns?" I cleared up second question, and as the day went on we were bombarded with questions about Satan. "Is Satan a boy or girl?" "How does he get in your heart?" "Did Anakin follow Satan?" (surely you saw that one coming!) Nathan's primary teacher called that night to tell me about a little discussion they had in class that day so I knew where all the Satan talk was coming from.

The next morning we got all the kids to school and I was in the bathroom putting some makeup on when the doorbell rang. I was still in my pj's so I asked Nathan to please not open the door, but he could look out the window and see if he knew who was there. He came running back to the bathroom and said, "Mom, it's a man and a lady. I think it's Satan!"

Later that afternoon, the principal and vice principal of the middle school dropped by, and said they had been there that morning but missed me. They had to make a certain home visit because a certain scatterbrained mother had her children vaccinated in August, but kind of forgot to update the school. If any of you know John Allen, you can give him trouble about Nathan thinking he was Satan!

Story #2 "Rusty and Amie have rotten luck"- In the "black Friday" walmart ad, there was a trampoline for a really good price. We threw around the idea of going over to Show Low at 4:00 the next morning, but decided that since the weather was bad we would just wait until 8:00 and take the kids over with us. We get there and walk into the garden center just as a worker is loading two trampolines up on a cart to take to a lady's car. Sure enough, those were the last two trampolines. We missed one by 5 minutes! Oh well! The birds that like to sleep in do not get the worms!

Giving Thanks

Here's Nathan at the little feast they do at his preschool. I made Rusty go take some pictures since I was working and had to miss all the fun.

The day before Thanksgiving, my mom, Katie and I went to the valley for a doctor's appointment. Before the appointment we were able to go visit the Browns at St. Joseph's Hospital. Rayanne Brown is Katie and DJ's piano teacher and she's the best! A couple Saturdays ago, her 8th grade daughter Taylor was in a car accident and has been in a coma. When we finally got to her room (I have a little trouble with parking garages and knowing which way is east and which way is west!), we were so glad to see that Taylor was starting to wake up! Rayanne said they had removed her breathing tube the day before and that's when things started looking up. She had her eyes closed, but was very responsive to her family and had to be restrained while we were there because she was trying to pull her oxygen tube out. Now this was a blessing to be thankful for!

Here are two silly little boys on Thanksgiving Day:














For Family Home Evening on the Monday before Thanksgiving, we took this cool little box that my friend Tonya and I made last year and filled it up with blessings:

Everyone had four little papers to draw blessings on. The rule from the start was that nothing could be star wars related. Yes, lightsabers are fun, but this mom doesn't really qualify them as a blessing.

Dad: temple marriage (nice way of saying stuck with me forever), family - including the cats and chickens, home, and America

Mom: books, temples, flowers (I miss them!), and good music

Sam: toilet paper, cats, hands, pizza

Katie: friends, family, books, food

DJ: body parts (drew a picture of eyes, nose, mouth, and a hand) , the scriptures, the Atonement (that's a big one, so I guess he didn't need to do his 4th blessing!)

Matt: God, house, mom and dad, family

Nathan: President Monson, mom, family, Jesus

If you look closely at the picture, I drew a really bad picture of the temple. On the top is Moroni, and I drew the trumpet in his hand instead of his mouth. Let's not mention that it kind of looks like a lightsaber :-)

The 1st 20 Days of November

I started this post on the 15th, and it was called the 1st half of November. So five days later, I'm calling it the 1st 20 days of November! I've got my calendar in front of me so I can actually remember what's happened. Anyone suspecting Alzheimer's yet?!

• Jay, River & Christy came up to visit. We love that little girl like crazy. Doesn't Sam look happy to play tea party with River?

• Rusty and I got up early on election day and walked a couple blocks to our polling place at the pacman church (I think the pacman may be gone now, but I still call it that). It was such a beautiful morning and I felt all "proud to be an American", even if I had to vote for John McCain just because he wasn't Barak Obama :-)
• went to Sam's play three times and never got tired of it. The kids were great! After the last show, Nathan worked his little tail off to help put chairs away.
• I've subbed 1st grade, middle school special ed twice, computers twice, choir and music theater four times, and preschool today. Had three different fights in the classroom. Spent time with lots of neat kids, and told the middle school assistant principal I was ready to go back to the Primary school, where at least the kids were cute when they were being naughty!!
• went to snowflake to Sam's regional band concert. He's come a long way with his trumpet this year and is really enjoying band. Should have gone to snowflake again to the temple with our ward, but unfortunately I put my temple recommend in such a safe place that even I can't find it.
• Learned to make noodles at my mom's enrichment night. I love Relief Society. Hate when I'm working and have to miss enrichment things with my ward.
• Went to a great Stake Conference meeting- I do enjoy that break from setting up the Primary room. Had one really long presidency meeting/talkfest. Really missed my counselors and secretary on a Sunday they were all three gone. I kept repeating to myself a quote I had read earlier that week: "In Primary, we stay serene no matter what".
  

• It snowed, and I didn't like it! I miss Summer!
• 

.

• Rusty accidentally shaved off his goatee, but had it back in about two days :-)
  

• We ate fish with the Willis family twice after church, because Rusty and Mark feel like they have to go fishing every Saturday so their poor families don't starve on Sunday. Ha ha!
• fought with strep throat, allergies, asthma. glad everyone feels good today!!
  

• This month at my interview with my Bishop, he asked me if I'm happy. And you know what, I am. Life is good.