Happy Holidays!

I hope all of you have a very happy winter vacation.  I know you will all be excited and ready to return to school in January!  Here are a few photos for you to enjoy that were taken at our Santa's Workshop Holiday Party before our vacation.  Thank you to everyone who was able to send in items and also to those of you who came to help us put together our ornaments.  We had a great time!

Mr. Brekke (a Hearts' Stories Guest!), DJ, Madison W, and Jayden making cork reindeer.

Alayna's mommy, Mrs. Bailey, with Tiara and Marcus making reindeer ball ornaments.

Kyle, Ashleigh, and Hailey with Miss Kenney who is one of our Coastal Mentors.

Madison P, Caleb, Seslyn (and her step mommy Nicole), with Jayden's mom making scratch off ornaments.

Madison and Caleb showing off their great work!

Jammie, Diana, and Brylee making candy canes.

Miss Donghia, our very special intern from Coastal Carolina.

Millie and Nicky with Mrs. Clark a mentor from Coastal Carolina.

Alec showing off his gingerbread man magnet.

Alayna, Ethan, and Kaylan at the food table.  We didn't have enough to eat as you can tell!

Mr. Brekke and Ethan.  It always makes me so happy to have Dad volunteers!

Seslyn and her step-mommy Nicole.

Mrs. Jennifer LeFever, Alec's Special Guest

Alec and Mrs. LeFever

We were a small group this day!  I love the shirts though!

Great silly Christmas vacation faces!

What a special opportunity it was to meet Alec's special guest, Mrs. Jennifer LeFever.  Mrs. LeFever has been a Hearts' Stories guest before 3 years ago and it was so wonderful to have a guest return and come and tell their story again.  Alec's big sister, Isabella, was in a Hearts' Stories classroom when she was in 2nd grade and Mrs. LeFever was also her special guest.  What a testament to Mrs. LeFever and the impact she is having on Alec's family and on all the children she meets.  Mrs. LeFever is a horse rider who began showing in interest in horses from a very early age.  She took her first riding lesson when she was 3 years old and now she is a trick rider and works at Double C Ranch.  Mrs. LeFever worked for Dixie Stampede for 13 years and she also brings her horse Rosie to Carolina Opry for the Christmas Show.  We got to see a very cool video of her showing some of the tricks she can do while she is riding a horse and we were very impressed!  Most of the time now you can find Mrs. Le Fever working at Double C Ranch taking care of the horses and giving lessons to students.  She also does a lot of work with the Fidelis Foundation which helps introduce kids to horses.  For more information about this wonderful organization click here.  I wish the weather had cooperated with us so we could have seen Mrs. Jennifer in action, but we all know where to find her at Double C!

Ashleigh's Special Guest, Miss Kendall

On December 10th we had a fantastic interview with Miss Jessica Kendall who was Ashleigh's special guest.  Miss Kendall works at Gymnastics Inc. where Ashleigh goes after school and also takes classes.  She is an athletic trainer and helps all the cheerleaders, gymnasts, and dancers who go to Gymnastics Inc.  Miss Kendall is originally from Maine and she grew up doing a lot of skiing.  In fact, she was so good at Alpine Skiing that she attended the Jr. Olympics 9 times and even earned a gold medal.  She ended up with a shoulder injury and couldn't continue skiing so she decided to go to college.  She got her degree in Exercise and Sports Science and she also has a Master's Degree too!  Before she worked at Gymnastics Inc she used to work with many professional football teams and players.  Miss Kendall taught us how important it is for us to stretch before we exercise and she even lead us in some stretching.  She also showed us how she wraps up injuries at Gymnastics Inc too!  It was so great meeting Miss Kendall!

Ashleigh modeling a wrapped wrist.

Listening very carefully to Miss Kendall's instructions!

All of us stretching our muscles.

Miss Kendall being silly!

Seslyn's Pop-Pop, Mr. Johnny Vereen

The class sitting on a bear surrounded by deer antlers.

The bear Mr. Vereen killed in Canada.

The turkey caller (that worked on calling the turkeys in our room too!)

Did Seslyn grow antlers?

Mr. Vereen teaching us about the color orange.

An antler filled group shot.

Silly faces!

Seslyn and her Pop-Pop!

I've never met a nicer hunter than Mr. Vereen.  Today we had so much fun getting to know Seslyn's Pop-Pop.  He is her mommy's daddy and he is from Conway.  He grew up in Conway and started coon hunting with his own grandfather when he was only 6 years old.  Mr. Vereen loves all kinds of hunting and fishing.  He has hunting dogs that he uses when he goes hunting (both coon and squirrel dogs).  He and Seslyn enjoy taking walks in the woods and looking for turtle shells.  Mr. Vereen has always enjoyed working on and selling cars and now that he is retired he spends most of his time enjoying the outdoors.  We all agreed that he has a great life filled with adventure.  Probably the thing we enjoyed the most about this special guest was that he brought a real bear with him that we all got to sit on and touch.  Mr. Vereen killed the bear with a bow and arrow during a trip to Canada and now he uses it as a rug.  If you have some little hunter's in your house now, you know why!

Pajama Day

I thought you might enjoy seeing all the kids in their PJ's.  They were so cute.  We had a fun day filled with The Polar Express and remembering the festivities of the season.

Team 100
Caleb, Ashleigh, Alec, and Madison P.

Team 200
Hailey, Kyle, Annette, DJ, and Diana

Team 500
Madilynn, Ethan, Marcus, Millie, and Kaylan

Team 400
Madison W., Jayden, Brylee, Jammie, and Alayna

Team 300
Nicky, Tiara, and Seslyn