Christmas Traditions

The first two pictures are just random. We got a big snow storm Saturday night and our neighbors across the street built a snowman around their mailbox. I hope the mailman gets a kick out of it when he delivers the mail today!

Sunday evening we had our 3rd annual progressive dinner with all our kids. It has become a fun Christmas tradition. We get to see everyone's Christmas decorations as we visit each house for the part of the dinner they hosted. Everyone's homes looked very festive and I loved the time with family and seeing the grandkids romp and play with each other. We had a little Christmas miracle happen. We had a bad snow storm that started Sat. night and continued on into Sunday. We had some concerns that the snow might prevent our progressive dinner, but about 3:30 in the afternoon the snow stopped. By 4:30 when we headed out to our son's house the roads were wet, but clear and everyone had safe travel! I was so grateful for that! We had a great time together. Thanks everyone for your participation and help with the dinner!

Sat. night was the Winter Formal at Annie's school. She had a great time at the dance as well as the other activities that went along with it! You looked beautiful Annie! I was grateful the storm held off until after she arrived home safely!

Sat. morning Kim and I and some of our married kids and their spouses went to the Cannery and dry packed. We were able to add to our food storage as well as have fun visiting with each other as we worked! We had a great weekend!

Lights, Program, Piano

This past week Alyse's sorority had a fun activity. They went and saw the Christmas lights on Temple Square. It was freezing cold, but she bundled up and had a great time!

Alyse's Kappa Mom with some of the girls.

This past week I got to go see Mr. H in his school program. It was such a cute program I really enjoyed it and he did such a good job!

I also got to go to this handsome young man's piano recital! Good job you did great!

It was fun to be there! So far I am loving every minute of this fun, busy time of year!

Thanksgiving Holiday

We had such a nice Thanksgiving holiday that it was hard to face reality and go back to school, work, and all the other activities yesterday. Last Wed. the evening before Thanksgiving all our children and their spouses joined us at the Lion House Pantry for dinner. We enjoyed good food and good company. Then we all walked across the Temple grounds to the conference center and saw the musical play Savior Of The World. It was a really nice evening, I always love time together as a family!

On Thanksgiving day we saw the movie the Blindside and the 4 of us really enjoyed it! Then we hurried home to get dinner on the table. The turkey had cooked while we were at the movie. It was the year for our married children to spend Thanksgiving with their in laws so we were a smaller group this year. April's family joined us and brought some really good mashed potatoes that Eric had made. Of course we all ate too much but after all it was Thanksgiving. Little Brianna pictured below enjoyed her Thanksgiving dinner!

Alyse couldn't decide between the pecan pie or the cheese cake so she had some of both.

We even had fun cleaning up after dinner!

Most people watch football games on Thanksgiving but with these two little girls at our house we watched Disney movies instead.

One of the funnest things for me on Thanksgiving was seeing this little one walk! She had just taken her first steps the day before and was nice enough to give us a repeat performance. In fact once she started she just kept going! It was so fun!

I love the way babies walk with their arms out to keep their balance, so cute!

We spent the rest of the holiday putting up Christmas decorations, Christmas lights, doing some shopping, and doing HOMEWORK. Both girls had a ton of that but they got it all done! Yay! We hope all of you had a nice Thanksgiving too!

Mothers & Daughters and Volleyball Banquet

Last Thursday at Kappa Alyse was the officer in charge of the Mother Daughter Night. We had such a great time together! There was good food, a service project for children in Africa, and a fun game where we found out how well the daughters know their mothers. I must say Alyse knows me pretty well!

Last night we attended Annie's volleyball banquet at her school. The girls received awards and we had a wonderful dinner. The team photographer gave each girl a disk with pictures from the season on it. So I thought I'd share a few of them. The last picture is the only one I took that turned out from the banquet. It was a great season! Below is a picture of the whole team.

Below is the JV team.

The Juniors.