Teams for Teens recents!

 Teams for Teens is a fun class that my mom teaches at the Alliance Learning center! It's so much fun, we get to play and lead games, and make friends along the way. Here's some of the recent and fun activities we've done!

First up we have a new thing we're doing, called Hobby Highlights! Where a couple students get to take a few minutes to show us the hobby of their choice! For the first week we had Tyler, Carter, William, Christopher, and Jonathon! 

Tyler's hobby highlight was playing the VR! (Virtual Reality) We got to watch him play a game that looked sorta like tag, but with monkeys. He also let anyone who wanted to take a turn playing the VR. William also chose for his hobby highlight to do the VR, except his headset couldn't connect to the TV so unfortunately we didn't get to really see what he saw.

For Jonathon's highlight, he chose droning! You can see the little black drone there, above the heads of some of the students. It was so fun to watch the drone zoom around the parking lot, and it takes skills! I've tried flying one before, and it's pretty difficult.

Christopher's chosen hobby was roping! He was originally just going to make one of his brothers get roped, but then several people volunteered! He was able to successfully rope all the volunteers, and it was fun to watch him chase after them swinging the rope like a cowboy!

After all the hobbies, we went and played games! This one below is called Scatterball, and it's a favorite! It's kinda like dodgeball, but when you get hit, instead of being out you just sit down. Then if the ball rolls to you while you're down, you can pick it up and throw it at someone who's up, and if you hit them you're back up!

Now, we're going back in time to a different day, where we played werewolf! This was a fun game, it's kind of like mafia, except there's more roles. I (Amara) was a villager for all the rounds I think, which is pretty rare since we played 3 rounds and there's so many different roles! So I just sat and did nothing except vote at the end. 😂

Now these next pictures below are a different day I think, where we played Blind Man's Bluff, and Sock dodgeball! Both of these games were so fun to play, and I especially loved dodgeball!

This is the last class I'll be highlighting, but in this one we played Wink murder, and we played a couple rounds in a different variation. Wink murder is the game where one person is chosen as the "murderer", and they have to kill the innocents by winking at them. We all walked around in the room until someone died, then decided who we thought the murderer was. Whoever we chose got eliminated! And the different variation was, instead of winking we shook hands with the people around us. Danyn was the murderer both times! What are the odds?

I absolutely love this picture of "dead" Carter just laying there smiling at the camera 😂

Saint Patrick's day 2022

This year for Saint Patrick's day, we had a leprechaun come to our house! He hid 10 gold coins around our yard, and left us a little bag of goodies! We hired this little leprechaun from our ward, he was fundraising. It was lots of fun going out in the morning before school to find all the little coins! It was absolutely f r e e z i n g though! 

Pippin enjoyed finding the coins with us! Also, gotta love the green scarf being used as earmuffs.

The picture above was taken right before disaster struck! And the one below is the aftermath. See those three little pancakes in the center of the plate? They fell on me, bounced off my head, and landed in the crook of my arm! The pancakes were delicious, we dyed them green and used a little squirt bottle so we could pour the pancakes into shapes easier! In the picture above you can see we did clovers, 3 little "gold" coins, and a leprechaun, which looks interesting. 😂 Can you see his face?

The little shamrock crown I'm wearing is one that mom purchased for me for fun! I wore it all day and to school. Dad also wore a tie made up of little green metallic beads!

Valentines Day

Amara was so sweet to think of each of us.  She made a mini scavenger hunt for  me which led to a valentine's gift from her (a mini soap bar),  Steve and Lily also got scavenger hunts with gifts.  
Steve and I gave the girls a puzzle app which they love called Monument Valley.

We celebrated Valentines with some heart-shaped homemade sushi.  This was also my entry to the Marco Polo Lauret Cooking Challenge- valentines meal.

 

Christmas 2021

Christmas Eve we took our neighbor friend Alleen to look at Christmas lights.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!  Christmas this year was made magical by the myriad of decorations Amara put up all by herself the night we got home from Thanksgiving vacation.  She stayed up until 2am setting up everything, the tree, the nativities, the lights, everything.  And as soon as the tree was up, it was only moments before presents began to fill the space beneath.  It really made the season feel exciting to see the presents piling up.  

A tradition we have is to deliver homemade treats to neighbors.  This year, we took a little help from the store and bought pre-made sugar cookie dough and snicker doodle dough.  That was a wonderful energy-saver, even though the flavor isn't as good as from scratch.  The sugar cookie dough we added a little flour and rolled out to cut into cute shapes. We turned the sugar-cookie gingerbread men upside down to create reindeer heads!

 We also made some green Christmas tree-shaped rice crispy treats.  They weren't as dark green as we would've liked, so next time- use more food coloring! or better yet, dip it in green colored white chocolate!

The ward Christmas party was back this year, even though the pandemic is still around.  We enjoyed going there, singing carols, eating dinner, and the kids created mini gingerbread houses with graham crackers.

The evenings in December, we watched cheesy rom-com Christmas movies almost every night, and this year we discovered a channel, GAC (Great American Christmas) that was even better than our old go-to, Hallmark.  In fact, every Hallmark Christmas movie we watched this year felt so agenda-driven it was hard to enjoy, but GAC put out equally cheesy movies without the socio-political mumbo-jumbo.  Yay!

One movie we've added to our traditions the past few years is a funny comedy called Pete's Christmas, which we watched on Amazon Prime.  It's about a boy who lives the worst Christmas over and over until he figures out how to break from it.  It's a good clean comedy.

On Christmas Eve day, we watched a couple of our favorite movies - It's A Wonderful Life, and A Christmas Carol with Patrick Stewart as Scrooge.  Something we didn't watch, but a movie I love is The Man Who Invented Christmas.  Maybe we'll get to that next year.

We unwrapped new pajamas on Christmas Eve after we went looking at Christmas lights.  Because we did that in the opposite order we usually do, I didn't ever get a pajama picture, aww.  But you can see in the following pics our pajamas.

Pippin doing his "long puppy" crawl across the floor as we are getting ready to unwrap our Christmas pajamas.

Christmas Morning

Our pretty white, silver, and gold themed tree with piles of gifts on Christmas morning. Amara's mini gingerbread house made of graham crackers is on the armoire.  The book displayed in the lower part of the armoire is a vintage magazine from one of my friends.  We would change the pages and display new stories, poetry, and artwork every few days.

I started collecting mini nativities when I got married.  I like to display them all for Christmas.  You wont see many Santas and reindeer in my decorations because I really want the focus to be on our Savior.

Our stockings are too heavy to hang when they're filled with goodies, so on the couch they lie until the sleepyheads get up.  Pippin posed funny for this picture.  In the background you can see one of the 3 strands of red and white garland Amara made

We spent Christmas morning opening gifts.  We had lots of gifts!  It was so fun.

On Christmas Day we drove to my dad's house for a big family gathering.  There we were surprised by my brother Joseph and his entire family who had flown in from Hawaii!   

The traditional Christmas dinner with my dad and Debby is a FEAST!  We always have crab-stuffed mushrooms, Christmas Jello Salad, French Onion Soup, rolls, roasted prime-rib, potatoes, vegetables, and dessert.

appetizers including the famous crab-stuffed mushrooms.

Helping in the kitchen next to my dad is heaven on earth.

Mom smiling next to her eldest son, Joe, her surprise gift from Hawaii! 

Roast BEAST! This year it was injected with whole garlic cloves, which when roasted turn into a delicious, nutty, savory treat.

Mandy made the delicious homemade rolls.  The jello salad is "Betty's" salad from my dad's childhood.  It's got a layer of sweet cream cheese-pineapple mixture layered between lime and strawberry jellos.

The table is always set with Christmas China and every setting has a Christmas cracker gift for everyone to pop open and wear the paper crown.

 What a Merry Christmas! When family is gathered to share a delicious meal, it's my most favorite event. ;)