Catching up

I can't believe it has been almost a month since I posted. Here is a random post of what we have been up to lately. 

 Because of Shaun's major exams we stayed home for Thanksgiving. His tests started the Monday after Thanksgiving so he spent most of the weekend finishing his preparation. Thankfully we have a great family in our ward that included us in their Thanksgiving feast. We brought the turkey and Shaun was carving it up. Thanks Hansen family for your love! 

 My sister gave me a nativity set a few years ago that are ducks. To say Claire loves them is an understatement. We have great fun with these little ducks. Can you see the little baby Jesus duck attached to  the Mary duck? 

 This Christmas season has been so fun with Claire. She loves the Christmas lights and gets so excited when I plug in the lights. She has been awesome to not play with the tree. I'm very grateful for that! 

 The last few months I have been pretty busy with sewing projects. Our ward started a sewing class which gave me the encouragement I needed to finally make our tree skirt. We have had the material since we lived in Utah and I have always been afraid I would mess it up. You cant see the full skirt in this picture but you can see the nice golden tassels I added. We both LOVE how it turned out and I am very proud of myself. :)  

 I also decided that I would make my Christmas gifts this year. A while back we learned how to make this style of pillow case and I loved the three different materials. So I ended up making 17 pillow cases from all different material. My little brother, Joseph, got the pattern shown above. I had these finished awhile ago but I didn't want to spoil the surprise. If you want to make this pattern you can check out this You Tube video that helped me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAomYjHzUQk

Shaun has been working so hard preparing for his candidacy exams. Basically his committee of four professors each wrote him an 4-8 hour exam. These exams could be about anything science related and are meant to push the student to the edge of their understanding. I am please to announce that Shaun passed the written tests. Thank you so much for your prayers and support. It was extremely stressful but he did very well and felt a lot of guidance from above. Especially during the tests which had nothing to do with the area of science the professor told him to study up on. 
He has one more step in this process. The Oral exam will be in 10 days. During this time the same professors will grill him for two hours and then decide if he can finish his work as a PhD student. Assuming he passes we will probably have about two more years here. 
I'm proud of him and all he's doing! I'm definitely looking forward to Christmas Break! He will actually get a few days off!