Christmas Puzzles (possible Singing Time)

When I was asked to sub the other Sunday I had an idea and thought it would be fun to make the Christmas songs into brain teasers. I didn't have it ready and I did find some on the internet

http://jokelibrary.net/xOtherAtoM/b_to_e/c4-puzzle/puzzles.html

But they weren't in a format ready for Primary. So I did something else with the children.
But it was still on my mind. I played on my photoshop and came up with the following.
Yes some are almost exactly from the above website. However many are not and there are a number of primary songs. Can you figure them out?

Even if you're not a Primary teach I hope you can enjoy these.

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15.

1. Angels We have Heard on High

2. Away in a Manger

3. Christmas Bells

4. Far Far Away

5. The First Noel

6. Joy to the World

7. Oh Little Town of Bethlehem

8. Oh Come All Ye Faithful

9. Once Within a Lowly Stable

10. Picture a Christmas

11. Samuel Tells of Baby Jesus

12. Shepherd's Carol

13. Silent Night

14. Stars Where Gleaming

15. When Joseph Went to Bethlehem

If you're going to use them in Primary, you don't have to use all of them. Just use which ones you want. I also thought they might be fun to put on a wall for a ward party and let people guess.

Download each one by Saving the image onto your computer 

OR

click

HERE TO DOWNLOAD AS A ZIP

for all the pictures at once.

IF anyone has issues with the zip file PLEASE let me know
This is the first time I've done a zip for others to download.

Thanksgiving Weekend

We spent Thanksgiving week and weekend up at my parents in Mesa.

We had a great time.

My brother has a new girlfriend. She is sweet and a really good sport.

All the cousins got to play.

Grandpa works from home and find time to play with all the grandbabies.

desserts were great. MMMMM oreo tuxedo cheesecake

Uncle Ted still thrills my children by playing the piano with them.

We had a great time.
Happy Thanksgiving

Christmas Songs for Singing Time

I so thought I had blogged about these already I made them back in 2008.
I am the sub for Singing Time on Sunday since Thanksgiving weekend our chorister is going to still be out of town. She said to pick a Christmas song and teach it to the children.
She appologized that she didn't have any of the visuals I had made because when our ward was split all that stuff had to go to the other ward. So she has nothing. I thought hey I made them once I'll make them again. So I got on my blog to look them up so I could have something to look at and I couldn't find them. I had to go through our old photos from our old hard drive to find them.

First:

I made a Nativity scene from construction paper and then had it laminated. To give you an idea of size 

Joseph is about 9 inches tall. The brown part of him is all one piece, just cut and drawn on.

I used it for "Once within a Lowly Stable", "Shepherd's Carol" and the Nativity Song.
I pointed with a stick at the character in that part of the song.

I used it for "When Joseph Went to Bethlehem". I had a path that lead to it on the chalkboard and a "workbench" on the far side of the path.

I also used it by putting stickies on it, had the pieces on the table, children picked a piece and then we placed it on the board created our Nativity picture as we sang different carols.

Next:

Joy to the World

"Joy to the world"

"The Lord has come" ---use picture from library of the 2nd coming, nativity would work too

"Let Earth receive her King"

"Let every heart Prepare him room"

"And Saints and Angels Sing...."

all just made out of construction paper and markers.

Third:
Far Far Away

Each verse was a page. Not too thrilled with my pages, a little too busy. If I was to do it again I'd probably do 1 verse to 2 pages, with less words written on the pages.

We then did the chorus in Sign Language.

Here is the link to my youtube video of the chorus

I love teaching Christmas songs to the children.
If you're looking for something really different. You'd need to get permision from your Primary President, but last year my mom and I wrote a Christmas Children Song called 

Counting Christmas

click above and you can download the song.

These are the words:

ONE little baby sleeps on the hay in a manger far away.

TWO earthly parents watch Him sleep as their night long vigil they keep.

THREE wise men follow the light of a star shining bright

Bringing gold and frankincense and myrrh as they travel through the night.

FOUR shepherds hear the angels sing above, and they go to witness God's Love.

FIVE lowly animals make not a sound as the shepherds gather around.

I wrote it with the idea in mind of singing it with children and counting the 5 on their hands.

Have fun singing Christmas Songs!

Another Trip to Mesa (General Conference Weekend)

We went up to Mesa to go to the Temple and spend time with my family during General Conference Weekend.

 Our children love their Uncles.

Before going home we went to the Train park in Scottsdale

 

 We all had fun at the Train park

 It was cooler than the middle of summer but it was still a warm day.

Girls are Now One (15 months exactly)

I can't believe I haven't posted about the girls' birthday!!! I am a bad blogger. Bad Blogger (slap slap)

wow the girls are one (by now they are 15 months!) They were so tiny and now are so big and walking and are into EVERYTHING

they were so cute with their bow headbands I made.

the girls loved being the center of attention. 

 begging food off of everyone

 getting loves from everyone

 Both loved the cake

 and their new toys  

 We had so many family and friends come to celebrate this day with us.

 Such cuties. 

 All the foods were made from scratch and had strawberries.

 Here is how they look today at almost 15 months.

Spontaneous Trip to Disneyland

So you wouldn't think being "UNEMPLOYED" and "DISNEYLAND" go hand and hand. For some reason we seemed to think they did. In hindsight, considering we are still unemployed two months later, maybe it was a bad idea. But we had the money in savings and we didn't think we'd still be unemployed this long (now its looking like it could be A LOT longer). We did it on a whim because we wanted to take advantage of the time we had to spend as a family. I don't regret the memories we made or that we did it- just the money we spent. 

We left late in the evening and drove all night.

We arrive about 4am and checked into the hotel.

the next day we went to the Beach and the Newport Beach Temple

and then the following day to Disneyland.

Our children had no idea until we walked up to the gates where we were and then our son went all giddy shy on us and would say Disneyland. 

We did kiddo things all day

.It was the first time in my life since being 10 that I went to Disneyland and didn't ride one ride I couldn't have rode the first time I ever went to Disneyland (when I was 4).

 Everything we did was focused around Al having a great time.

 We were able to go to CARSland. It was fun but I was very disappointed that the babies couldn't do even ONE ride there.

Al did find CARSland really cool 

 It was a *really* hot hot day. Too bad I thought it was going to be a bit cooler and packed our clothes for the low 80's and not for 100's.

Also it must have been twin day at the park. We met TWINS everywhere. 

These grown twins were there celebrating their bday. They told my girl that they have no idea what fun is in store for them. Since it was first thing in the morning at Disneyland I thought they were talking about Disneyland But then I realized that they meant 'in their lives as twin'