Sleeping by the Tree

Yes, I am updating my blog on Christmas Day. Everyone else is asleep and I am not sleepy yet. I didn't say I wasn't tired, just not sleepy. Anyway, for the past 2 years my older two children have slept by the Christmas tree the night after we open presents. It started out as Bethany begging to sleep by the tree on Christmas Eve one year (to catch Santa of course). Which we promplty said no way. As a compromise, we let her and Andrew sleep there on Christmas night, after the presents had all been opened. It has kind of stuck as a tradition, at least for Bethany. They all three started out by the tree, but Andrew left for his bed after only about 10 minutes - he wanted someplace more comfortable. Jorgen was hungry and ate an apple, then wanted to sleep in his bed. Dan fell asleep on the floor next to Jorgen's sleeping bag, then moved to his bed. And now Bethany is the only one left, sound asleep by the Christmas tree. This picture is the kids pretending to be asleep before we turned the lights out.

Christmas Day

Our Christmas was great this year.

We hope yours was too!

Christmas Eve

Cookie Making

Train-track Building

Frosting Licking

Candle-light dinner

Christmas Pjs

Nativity Play-ing

Christmas Eve was great!

Piano Recital #2

A friend of mine from the USU Piano Department, Deborah Cannon, moved to Syracuse about a year ago. So this fall I decided to try having Bethany take lessons from her. I have been her teacher up to this point, but it is hard to be both mom and teacher for many reasons. I think it is going really well so far. Bethany practices way more than she did before (probably because we are paying for it now, thus we remind her more often) and she is progressing way faster. They had a little Christmas recital on Dec. 21st. We did get some videos but I need to compress them first and my tech support is asleep. I will try to add them later.

Christmas Recital

On Saturday, Dec. 18th, I had my Christmas Recital. Everyone played so well, I was very happy with it. Bethany played "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies" and "The First Noel." She is actually taking from another teacher now (to preserve harmony between us) but I let her play in my recitals still. She played very well.



This was Andrew's very first recital. He is only sort of taking lessons from me. He will sit with me for about 10 mintues for a short lesson, and not every day either. But he picked out the 2 hardest songs in his book for the recital and was determined to play them. I told him he had to practice them every day or he couldn't play in the recital. And he did - every single day! I was very impressed. He did a great job! He played "Away in a Manger" and "Silent Night."

Temple Square

On December 15th Bethany's singing group had a performance at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Her group had the very first time slot in the afternoon - which meant we had to check the kids out of school early. It also meant that the only people in the building listening were parents of the singers and the volunteers who staff the building. This brought back memories of when I performed here many years ago with my high school Madrigals and Bell Choir.

I was having a hard time getting good pictures with the low light in the building and the bright sunlight out the windows, so the pictures aren't great, but this gives you an idea anyway. And I realized later that there was a smudge on the lense.

After the performance we went up to the observation area.

Jorgen would not pose for any pictures.

Jorgen called Joseph Smith a giant. I guess he's right.

After grabbing some dinner, we strolled through Temple Square looking at the lights. It wasn't very crowded - at first. Then at about 7pm it was suddenly all teenagers, everywhere! Yes, it was mutual night.

Awesome model of the Temple, in the South Visitor's Center.

When we walked up towards the Church Office Building to see the luminaries and nativities, we noticed the Lion House was giving out free hot cocoa. This was the best hot cocoa ever! It was sooooo yummy! They put a big huge dollop of real whipped cream on top, which the kids got all over their faces. It helped warm us up, temporarily.

The next night, Thursday, we were lucky enought to have tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Concert, with David Archuleta. So we got a sitter and made a date night out of it. We thought we gave ourselves plenty of time to get there, but we barely got a seat. We were in the second to last row of seats in our section, and they turned a lot of people away and sent them to the little theater. One lady who started complaining quite loudly during the concert was escorted out by the usher. Other than that, it was a great concert. David Archuleta has a beautiful voice and did a great job. My favorite piece of the night was Richard Elliot's organ solo. He is the definition of a virtuoso - it was fabulous!

From a 3-year-old's perspective

Jorgen likes to steal my camera and click away. He comes up with some pretty random shots. Like pictures of the garbage, or the toilet, or my backside as I'm cooking dinner. I will spare you those pictures, but here is a collection of the Christmasy things he took a picture of one day. If you look carefully you can see his reflection in some of the ornaments. The cereal is not necessarily a Christmas thing, just one of his favorite things - food!

Mauri's Baptism

Last weekend we went down to southern Utah for the baptism of our niece/cousin Maurianna. Bethany and Mauri love getting together since they are the closest in age to each other of all the girl cousins. It was a fun little trip.

Can you believe Mauri's mom made this dress?!? I thought it was store bought, but she made it. It is gorgeous. She is very talented.

Bethany got jabbed in the hand with a pencil by Andrew. Holy cow, she can scream. To appease her, I gave her one gigantic wrapping with gauze, but she really only needed a bandaid and a chill pill.



Bethany and Mauri did a little photo session with their dolls, Andrew was the photographer.

On the way home we stopped for dinner in Nephi. We were not in the mood for fast food, and the only sit down place is JC Mickelson's, which we have never tried. So we decided to try it. Boy did we pick the right place - they have model trains running throughout the whole place. Jorgen was in heaven. He didn't want to leave. And the food was better than we were expecting. I didn't really get a good picture, but you get the idea. They also had their Christmas lights syncronized to music, which the kids thought was fascinating.

Choral Collection

Bethany's singing group had a couple of Christmas performances recently. She did a good job and she loves to sing! One more next week.

Thanksgiving

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year. Our house is bigger than my parents, and somewhat in the middle of everyone, so it works out for hosting. It's not too bad, and it gives me a reason to get the house really clean. Everyone helps by bringing part of the meal, so I didn't have to do all the cooking. I made the turkey, mashed potatoes, and a veggie tray and that was all. Turkey is really one of the easiest dishes - as long as you thaw it out soon enough :)

Jorgen calls it "EAT TIME!" We had 10 adults and 10 kids. We were missing Eilene (my sister), Steven and Serena who live in Oregon. But we passed the phone around to chat with Eilene.

There isn't always snow at Thanksgiving, so it was fun to get out and play in the snow with all the kids. There were even a couple of half-hearted football games in the snow.

Andrew left his coat at school when we went off-track and I never got around to picking it up because it was so warm and then we went to Disneyland. So the Tuesday before Thanksgiving when there was a supposed blizzard coming I decided I'd better go find the coat. So we did, and saw these cute turkeys on a bulletin board that one of the 1st grade classes had done. We decided to borrow the idea and make them with all the cousins. They were pretty easy and turned out kinda cute.

Of course, it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without Black Friday ads to browse. My mom also brought an early Christmas present for each grandkid and the adults too - a handmade hat for everybody. Thanks Mom! They turned out cute.