Snow Day(s)

It has been so gorgeous here with a 6 inch snowfall. Everything is canceled, including church. We watched "Music and the Spoken Word" on BYU TV and read a lot. There was a great quote by Teddy Roosevelt on the broadcast: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." That just seemed to fit today. David spent a good portion of the day shoveling almost all the driveways on the street. I made chocolate chip cookies and hot cocoa for my hero. The snow came all day Saturday and the sun came out on Sunday. Outside is a glittering wonderland!

Everything is canceled for Monday as well. I'm sure it will be almost gone by Tuesday, when it is supposed to be in the 40's.

Elena is 3!

We were back in NC for Elena's birthday weekend. It was great! She had all her friends over for a pajama party and birthday brunch. It was so cute. Kevin had his first chocolate in the form of a muffin. One of Elena's fun gifts was a princess dress! All the children liked the "pin the star in the sky" game.





Instead of cake Elena wanted a cupcake tower. She helped her mom decorate the cupcakes with stars. All the little kiddos were darling. The pinata smash-up was amazing and took much too much time and effort to get in one video! A good time was had by all.



Among assorted toys we got her an easel from IKEA. Here she is in her new Christmas outfit from her aunt and uncle looking adorable.

Table for Two

After Christmas we went on a field trip to northern VA to IKEA! It was a fun, exhausting day. The thing we really wanted to get was a smaller table for our "new" kitchen. Of course, there were a few other impulse buys, but ... we love our new table! It makes the kitchen look even bigger, and there will still be enough room for the kiddos when they come to visit. Watch the videos!

Christmas!

Christmas, as always, was incredible! Such fun, good food, cookies, caroling, and especially family!

Our son's family was supposed to arrived late night Christmas Eve, but weather postponed that a day. So we made cookies and went out singing with, at various times, sister missionaries and ward friends or our own little band of minstrels. When the sister missionaries first came over, they looked over at the tree and started oohing and ahhing. I thought it was about how unique our tree is. It turned out they were admiring our stereo turntable, something neither of them had ever seen before! Makes one feel a little old.

It was a fun evening and we all came home with smiles on our faces. Christmas morning we slept in and then opened one gift apiece. We decided to delay Christmas a day to wait for our 3 special guests to arrive.

Everything went wonderfully on the 26th. It is so much fun opening presents with babies! Six months seems to be the perfect age to really get into tearing paper!

Here are some pictures of wonderful, happy people who don't mind having their pictures on the web!

Amazing!

Christmas Town

I took a video of the giant Christmas tree in front of the Fest Haus in Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, but it plays sideways. I held the camera that way to get the whole thing, but watching it is very annoying. Suffice it to say we went to Christmas Town twice this season and loved it. I also purchased some of the best wassail spices there!

Amazing as it is, we visited FOUR different theme parks in the month of December! That must be some kind of record for us, even for David!

It's over

We drove home from Early Christmas in NC and went directly to the church because I had Ward Council meeting prior to our 3pm Sacrament Meeting on Dec. 20th. After Ward Council the bishop asked me to stay behind and told me I was going to be released as Relief Society President the next week. I was kind of taken aback. I still had so much to do, so many goals. But, I guess 6 years (and 2 weeks) is long enough to hog one calling!

That week was going to be my catchup week to get all the last minute things done before Christmas, but instead I spent 4+ hours going through my files and binders, 3 hours cleaning out the RS closet, and about 3 hours meeting with the new RS president. I didn't realize how long our meeting was; I really should have given her lunch! David was a wonder, as usual, running errands everywhere, baking, shopping, making deliveries, etc.

It was such an honor to be RS President in this ward. The sisters are so wonderful, caring, loving and spiritual. I have worked with three incredible bishops and so many great women. People have said some really nice things to me. The thing that touched me the most that day was when the previous bishop came up to me said, "Congratulations, I guess. I'm sure glad it didn't happen on my watch."

Relief Society (link to a fabulous 3 minute video) is an inspired organization. It is so important for the women of church to embrace it and be embraced by the spirit of Relief Society. There are so many opportunities for spiritual growth and loving service, and numerous examples of them in this ward. So many sisters are constantly giving and serving. The president doesn't do it alone. I wish I had done more. Somehow, six years wasn't long enough. Watch the video.

Early White Christmas

We celebrated Christmas a little early to see our NC grandbabies (and their parents) before they went to California for the holidays. It was a lot of fun and we even had SNOW! There was about six inches. It made for great snowpeople and even some backyard sledding.

They started out with two cute little snowpeople - look down on the deck.

Then, it kept snowing, and sledding with the wading pool became the sport of the day.

By evening the snowpeople had gotten much bigger and taken over Granddad and Elena's hats!

Kevin, a champion drooler, proved to be an electronics whiz as well with a new Christmas toy.

Annual Theme Park Weekend

Every year in December David does Physics shows at Busch Gardens in Tampa Florida. I almost always go with him! It's hectic and fun and we make a weekend out of it, usually attending an additional theme park on Saturday. This year we went to both Sea World and Disney World, thanks to a pass from our son. We also attended church in Florida with the teenage daughter of one of David's home teaching families. The weather was great, the hotel room was fabulous and we enjoyed the time together. I think the rental car was nice also, but I'm not sure. Thanks to my motion sickness medication I fell asleep everytime I got into it.

We loved the baby frogs at the Busch animal nursery station.

These leafy seahorses are the craziest looking things.

My favorite sea creature!

I know I posted a video like this from the Osbourne Family Lights at DisneyWorld once before, but I had to bring the Christmas songs back now that my Elf Yourself videos have expired. :( I didn't realize that would happen.

Here we are with DiAnna at her grandparents' backyard in Florida - the world's longest home teaching visit!

Thanksgiving

This was the best picture to show off our pretty table settings. Sorry, BB, about the closed eyes!

We have so much to be thankful for - especially our family! Thanksgiving was great! The food was plentiful and we kept eating all weekend. It was so much fun to have our girls here cooking together in our "new" kitchen. Our grandbabies made the weekend perfect.

Elena enjoyed the crystal napkin rings.

Kevin had fun with a spoon and was very careful with the china.

Ketchup

I was doing so well in keeping up with blogs about the kitchen remodel and the rain storms. And now it has been more than two months.

We were so excited about having the kitchen ready and the dishwasher installed before Thanksgiving, but, then we went ahead and used our china. Both it and our Christmas dishes have metallic rims, so we didn't use them in the dishwasher! We still had a lot of preparation dishes and utensils to keep our wonderful dishwasher busy.