family letter

Hi Family,
I have been staying up way too late recently, and I'm going to try very hard to get to bed early.  Here are a few things about this week.
We've decided as a family to learn German.  We bought the Rosetta Stone discs, and our plan is to go through all of those, then each of us has to read the whole Book of Mormon in German, and THEN we will go on a trip to Europe!  This will obviously be a multi-year deal, but we're excited.  We all voted on which language to learn.  It came down to Spanish or German, and German won out.  Luckily there were no hard feelings.  As a result, the boys have been on a Rosetta Stone kick!  They've all spent hours on it so far this week.  I'm going to get very behind since I haven't had a chance to try it out yet.  Mosey is especially excited.  He's told me several times how doing Rosetta Stone is more fun than computer games!  That is saying a lot, coming from my computer-game fanatic.

Joseph had another archery tournament yesterday.  Ben took him-- it was just down at UT, so way closer than last time.  He beat his score from last time and had an especially good second half-- would have been in the top three, maybe even won the whole thing if he had scored as well in the first half.  Anyway, he was happy and that's what I care about.

We (I) put up Christmas decorations this week!  I love having Thanksgiving earlier in the month, Christmas lasts so much longer.  I'm still trying to figure out where my decorations will go in this new house.  Now if I can just get Ben to put up lights!  We'll get our Christmas tree next weekend. 

Brigham and Mosey had their first orchestra concert this afternoon.  AYO has several youth orchestras of varying levels, and it was fun to hear how they improve from one orchestra to another.  They both love orchestra, which makes me so happy.  I wish I could find a youth band or something for Joseph to play in.  Ensemble playing is so much more fun than solo practicing. 

Speaking of which, Brigham and I are going to be playing a violin duet for our church Christmas program on the 23rd, so he and I went through a book of Christmas duets that I have to decide what to play.  He's getting to be a very good sight-reader, and playing with him is definitely one of those "pay-off" moments for me as a mom, for all the hours of practicing with him.

The rest of the week was filled with school, music lessons, scout pack meeting, our art group (Christmas origami!), and the first full jewel goblets!  I'm pretty happy about that system so far.

And now, I have to go to bed because I'm falling asleep at the computer.

Love you all!