What a Wonderful Merry Christmas!

This Christmas was a wonderful one! We intentionally cut way back and simplified things and still it was wonderful! What a great lesson to learn. We started out the morning by seeing what Santa brought. Then we headed off to church for a great musical program. That really set the tone for a nice Christmas day. Remembering what the season is all about.

After the service, the children were more than ready to go home to give and receive their presents. We took turns passing out presents to each other and then opening them. The rule was you couldn't get your own present from under the tree, you had to be gifted by someone else. That worked out really well.
This year the children received things like a snowboard, a karoake machine, new ski clothes, a sleeping bag and pad, and a bunch of board games. David and I received our Real Salt Lake season tickets, a date night certificate at the spa for both of us, and a gift card for me to buy some clothes! As a family we also purchased canvas's of our family pictures to hang up this year!


Christmas eve we celebrated with the traditional Christmas PJ's!

After opening presents and packing up the car we headed over to see David's Grandma. We were her earliest visitors this year and we got her all to ourselves! It was wonderful to feel of her spirit and to share our Christmas joy with her.
After picking up Grandma Libby from the airport we headed up to Park City to see my side of the family. It was a fun evening filled with giggles and stories and some delicious stew and roast chicken. It was a low key dinner this year that seemed to fit in just perfectly with our holiday!

We found ourselves pretty tired at about 9pm and all headed to bed for a good night's rest. It had been a long, beautiful, enjoyable Christmas day!

Zoo Lights

This year we decided to go and see the lights they have at the Hogle Zoo here in Salt Lake City. We knew it was going to be cold...but it was FREEZING!! There was a slight wind and bitter coldness, but it was fun. We bundled up the best we could (we've added a few items to our Texas wardrobe this past year) and cruised through the zoo to see all the different animal lights.

Many of the animals were actually out and about. Some we snoozing and we just looked at them, but the nocturnal animals were active and moving around. We really enjoyed the reptile house with it's more tropical temperature inside!

We made our way through all the displays and stopped at a few of the heaters spread out around the zoo to defrost our extremities before moving on. All in all it was enjoyable. But I have to say...I'm still a warm climate kind of girl. One night a year is good, but I wouldn't want to do many more.

Merry Christmas from Zoo Lights 2011!

Smith progressive dinner

One of the funnest traditions we have is the Holiday Progressive Dinner. It started about 10 years ago when everyone agreed that we wanted to see everyone else's homes decorated for Christmas. So we started our progressive dinner where we go from house to house and eat all along the way! This year started at Mark and Maylenes with some delicious appetizers. Then it was off to the Carman's for the salad course.


The main dish of ham, rolls, and potatoes was served at Nana and Grandads, finishing up with dessert at Mike and Mischele's home.

Gathering everyone up several times and driving from Lehi, to Highland, to Draper adds a lot of time to the dinner, but it's such a fun event. Plus, it allows us to digest a little while we drive to the next stop!
Much fun was had between all the families and getting together is one of the greatest blessings of the holidays! We are lucky to have such a great family and it's fun to see everyone get along and enjoy each other. Merry Christmas to all and to all...a great night!

Children's Nativity

I was busy running the video camera to capture the fullness of this event, but I did snap a few pictures. It was so cute. There were a lot of angels, many shepherds, and wise men who wandered back and forth the whole time! The kids really enjoy dressing up and the reading of the story is Grandma Pearson's favorite part. She really enjoys seeing all the little children act out the nativity. As for my little ones, I had a really darling angel,

and her brother was Joseph this year. Aren't they adorable?

All of stage right. There were more on stage left, but I didn't get a shot. I do have the video of the whole thing though.

Grandma Pearson's Christmas Party

Grandma Pearson's Christmas party is always a great part of the Holiday season. The family has gotten so large that we now hold it in a church building to accommodate all the families. There are some people that we only see once a year, so it's a great time to catch up. This year we had a wonderful pulled pork sandwhich dinner and all sorts of salad and desserts. The family enjoyed visiting, the kids enjoyed playing, and everyone had a great time.

Lindsey, George and Maxwell Patterson
Jeff and Dave Smith (not related, one of several Pearson Smiths!)
Allison and Jeremy Davenport
Mark, Maylene, and Ellilia Smith

The night ended with the children performing the nativity scenes and then Santa's presents! (post tomorrow!)

Christmas Party

At the beginning of the year I told McKinley I would do one of her class parties. I asked her which one she wanted me to do and she picked the Christmas party! So, today we were in charge of 21 2nd graders for 1 hour of fun. It was hard to do everything we wanted to do in the 1 hour, but we did it. We had so much fun.

The kids were able to do a snowflake craft, decorate and eat cookies, play bingo and musical present (like musical chairs). It was a whirlwind of fun, but I saw lots of smiles and happy faces!


It was fun to see all McKinley's friends and her classroom and how well behaved they all were. We had lots of fun, but it was all organized and manageable for everyone. Merry Christmas!

This is where we were last night! It's one of my favorite musical performances and I absolutely love the songs and the story and the show. I took Austin and Ethan with me this time and I think they enjoyed it. They probably wouldn't admit it, but they paid attention the whole time and even laughed at some of the funny parts. I hope they felt the spirit of Christmas like I did. It was a great way to start of the Christmas season. Now I'm ready to celebrate!!

Thankful for Family!

This Thanksgiving was a wonderful celebration of family. It was a week long celebration with fun, food, and family! We were blessed to be able to spend time with both sides of our extended family this year. A few days before Thanksgiving we headed up to Park City to be with Grandma Libby, Grandpa Irv, and Vicky and Jim and the girls. We had such a good time hanging out and visiting...we didn't take pictures!! We visited the new Utah Museum of Natural History (fabulous!!) and celebrated the twins birthday with ice cream cake!

On Thanksgiving it was the Smith family feast! We had 50+ people over for a big Thanksgiving dinner and desserts. It was a beautiful warm day and the kids played outside after we ate. We all visited and chatted and ate, and ate, and ate. There was a little football and several watched part of the James Bond marathon! All in all it was a huge success and very enjoyable!






We were also able to celebrate Trenton and Maxwell's birthday which actually fell on Thanksgiving day. So Happy Birthday cake to end the evening!

Sticky Strength

Today is the science fair at Evan's school and we finished up his project on Sunday. He tested three different tapes...packing tape, duct tape, and gorilla tape...to see which tape was the strongest. It was a great experiment and he determined that the gorilla tape was the strongest. I'm not a big fan of science fair projects, but this one was an easy and fun project that came together well.

Halloween Night

Before everyone headed out for some Trick-or-Treating I was able to snap a picture of my beach bum, referee, $100 bill and BYU cheerleader! Living in a subdivision was good pickins for our candy haul...and the kids are still consuming it!

The weather was perfect and trick-or-treating was really fun in a neighborhood of friends. The older kids went off with friends, but McKinley and Evan stayed with us for over 2 hours of door to door begging for treats! There was even a BBQ, a fire pit, and a haunted driveway thrown in! All is all it was a great Halloween night!

Carving Pumpkins w/Larry

We were staying with my sister and her FIL came over to carve pumpkins with all the kids. Grandpa Larry was able to carve 3 or 4 pumpkins and supervise the carving of several others. The creations were great and unique...the kids drew their own designs. But most importantly, everyone had a blast! Thanks Larry!

Our last Pinewood Derby

Tonight was the Pinewood Derby for our Cub Scout Troop. There were 12 racers and it was quite a night. To make it fair there had to be 132 races. Everybody raced everybody else twice (each side of the track). Evan's car was green and gold and shaped like an arrow. He designed it, cut it, sanded it, and painted it himself...with very little guidance! His car came in 5th overall and he had a great time. There were no tears from anyone involved...and that is a successful derby!

Family Halloween Party

This year Nana asked me to help with the Halloween party for all the grandkids. I always like to plan parties... and this was no exception. It was actually pretty easy since I just did a bunch of things that we did at a Halloween party in Texas last year!

We gathered early to take advantage of the sunlight and the warmth and started off with a chili and hotdog meal! After eating we were ready to play: We had donuts on a string:

Bobbing for apples:
Facepainting:

Playing in the leaves:
And a candy walk, pumpkin bowling, and sack races! It was a lot of fun and the whole family enjoyed spending the evening together!

Blue Knight State Cup Finalists!

This past 2 weeks our Blue Knights 01 team has been competing in the State Cup soccer tournament. It was a long and very hard road to the top! We had a fabulous season, coming in 2nd in the league and followed it up with this tournament. We had to face the #1 team twice in this tournament and beat them in the semi-finals to advance to the finals! Sadly, we lost in the final game, but our boys played so hard! We are so proud of their 2nd place finish in the state! Way to go Blue Knights!

Demonstration

Evan's class at school was required to do a demonstration in front of the class. Evan chose to do a demonstration on how to make strawberry, banana smoothies. For Evan, this was a breeze. He loves to make smoothies and he was a pro up there demonstrating. And everyone enjoyed the smoothie after he was done! Way to go Evan!