Merry Christmas! December 24-30, 2018, SLC, UT

We had a magical Christmas!  We rented a small condo near Park City, Utah, and had Eric, Hannah, Chase and Violet with us.  Our holiday began with them coming to our Branch for our Christmas service.  Eric, Chase, Hannah and I sang and Mike accompanied, "In The Bleak Midwinter."  It was beautiful.  We got so many compliments and all felt like celebrities.  President and Sister Fenn spoke and the young missionaries sang "Mary Did You Know," and Hannah sang the closing hymn, "O Holy Night" with Mike accompanying her.  She sang like an angel and everyone was so thrilled by it.  We were sure proud of her.  Violet was the only child, let alone baby, in the whole chapel and she decided she was going to babble the entire meeting and everyone loved it.  We had so many people come up to us and compliment our music and tell us how much they loved hearing those baby sounds all during the meeting.  It was a special time!

After church, we headed to our condo where we hunkered down for a couple of days!  We had delicious food, played games, watched movies, and just thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  We ate prime rib, fondue, ebelskivers, apple pancakes, potato cheese soup and tons of unhealthy snacks.  It was perfect.  We played Telestrations, Loaded Questions, and Jenga.  We watched "The Music Man" and "What About Bob."  We laughed so hard!  Not exactly Christmas movies, but lots of fun to watch.

Violet was so much fun.  She is such a good baby and was delightful every minute we were there. 

 There was some snow and she had a puffy little snowsuit that she was bundled up in and we had her slide down a little hill outside our condo for her first sledding adventure.

We read the Christmas Story in Luke 2 on Christmas Eve, opened our new jammies, and recited the Night Before Christmas. We missed acting out the Nativity, but didn't have enough little kids to do that.  Maybe next year!

Eric read us the story behind the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life."

We did something different this year and all put on facial masks.  Looks a little bit like we are trying out to be in Wicked!

We face-timed with most of our kids and it was a perfect Christmas.  We are so blessed and truly grateful for the birth of our Savior and the chance to celebrate Him along with spending time with loved ones.  It truly is the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

On Friday night, we had a wonderful spaghetti dinner at Joel and Erin's lovely home in Holladay.  It was so fun to be with Glen, Kendi, Carter, Bess, and Maggie who came down from Boise for a few days.  Have I mentioned how much we love our family?

Saturday night, we had a little gathering of some of our Colorado friends who now live in Utah at Janice and Cal Simmon's home.  It was so fun catching up with Linda Davis, Katie and Dan Witt, Glen and Jenny Clawson, Janice and Cal, and Ron and Becky Wheelwright.  Everyone was crazy about Violet, of course!

Today was our last day in the City Creek Branch.  Mike played the French organ there for the last time.  This has been a big week of lasts, but we are looking forward to a whole new year of firsts!!  We can't wait to see the new year unfold!  It should bring a lot of wonderful adventures...