Merry Christmas!

A Family Tradition

In my house growing up, we always made gingerbread houses every Christmas Holiday Season. I've slacked on continuing that tradition with my own kids a bit. But this year, my parents are living in Salt Lake as they serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (serving in the Church's welfare department). So they had all of their kids and grandkids living here in Utah come to their apartment for dinner and to build gingerbread houses. The apartment was full of 12 grandkids (not even half of the grandkids they actually have) and adults, and love, and laughter. Thanks, Grannie and Papa!

Her First Nutcracker Ballet

I took our youngest to her first Nutcracker Ballet. She knew the music well and a bit of the story from watching the Barbie Nutcracker movie. But I wanted her to see the real thing. She loves music and dancing so I knew this would be right up her alley. We had a wonderful time together and she even lasted until it ended at 10pm. She's proud of her Nutcracker ornament we bought there. She wants her daddy to take her next year so he can enjoy it too. Hopefully he can enjoy it simply because he's there with her. You've got a year to prepare, daddy.

A Long Post of Pre-Holidays

We missed posting some of the pre-holiday photos. So here are some from Thanksgiving until Christmas. So this'll be a long post.
My boys got to go to author of Fablehaven, Brandon Mull's house to get some books signed for cousins and their own books signed. Brandon is an acquaintance of mine through my author network here. It was nice of him to allow the picture in his flour covered grubbies. He was helping his wife with pies and rolls that morning (the day before Thanksgiving).

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at Nana and Papa's house as usual. A day full of food, puzzles with Great Grandpa, dice games, guitar hero, and video games.








And we had a wonderful Family Home Evening visit to Temple Square to see the lights. It was beautiful and it really helped us all focus on Christ a little more this season and how blessed we are.

Gallery Debut

My hubby had his first Gallery show opening on Friday night for a juried photography show. All the pictures had to be taken with a Holga camera. He got 3 pictures in (the 3 on the bottom row). Some of his professional photographer friends only got 1 in. He's awesome! We went to dinner first with a few other of his photo pals and then went to the Gallery.

Invention Convention 2nd Grade

Our middle son had to make an invention for school...he came up with this all on his own and his daddy helped him build it. It's a moving/rolling teeter totter. It worked really well actually (until the cheap particle board seat got slammed onto the ground and split off). His favorite part of making it was screwing on the wheels. Good Job buddy!

Our Jack-o-lanterns

Now that Christmas is almost here, I'm finally posting pics of our Halloween pumpkins (one even has braces). It was fun. The little ones of course don't glow but they are actually the only ones still on our kitchen table. We'll say goodbye to them after Thanksgiving. Wow! Time Flies!!!