Thanksmas dinner and gifts.

Since Grandma Libby was in town early in December we delayed Thanksgiving and celebrated Christmas a little bit early...so Thanksmas 2017.

We had a wonderful time gathering together for our big dinner.  Of course we had Christmas crackers with the traditional hats and corny jokes!  After dinner we exchanged a few gifts and enjoyed each others company for the evening.  It was a beautiful Thanksmas night!

Sister Kathryn Smith is home!!

On Tuesday, December 5th we all gathered at the Salt Lake airport to welcome home Sister Kathryn Smith.  She had completed her 18 month mission and was coming home to her huge loving family.  It was such an amazing day and having her home is great.  What a great early Christmas present indeed!

Well done Sister Smith!!

Decorating the tree for 2017!

We got the tree up early this year because we were going to be having an early Christmas dinner at our house while Grandma Libby was in town.  It was a fun evening of going through all the kids ornaments from all the years and decorating our tree.  The "theme" of our tree is great memories and family moments.  I absolutely love decorating the tree and getting the house ready for Christmas!

I'm grateful to be able to celebrate Christmas with those I love and to remember the reason for the season...Jesus Christ!

Thanksgiving and Vegas

This Thanksgiving we were able to eat with the Smith family and then head out to Las Vegas for a soccer tournament that started the next day.  We had a wonderful dinner and visit with the family that was there at Chad and Cynthia's.  I even took my camera there to make sure I took some pictures.  I took a few and then put it away to eat my dinner and my pie before hitting the road.

We drove to Vegas in really good time and got to our hotel at 10:30pm.  Evan, McKinley and David went out to the outlet mall to experience Black Friday shopping, while I had the room to myself and went to bed!  They had a great time and got back around 1am Vegas time.  The next afternoon Evan had 2 soccer games in which he played great.  Saturday morning McKinley and I went and did baptisms in the Las Vegas temple (we didn't take a picture??!!)

 Saturday afternoon and evening we had 2 more games, and the team lost in the semi finals with PKs.  Evan scored 3 goals in 3 games and played very well.  It was warm and amazing weather and we enjoyed watching him play.

 In between games on Saturday McKinley and I went to the roller coaster inside the NY NY and walked to see the sharks at Mandalay Bay.  It was fun to be on the strip in the afternoon before it got too dark and weird.

Sunday we drove home and it was a little bit slow with all the people on the road, but we got home in time for Evan to go to work and for us to unpack and unwind.  All in all in was a great trip!

Halloween and pumpkins

With fall upon us we've been busy finishing up soccer seasons and now it's Halloween.  McKinley was the only one who wanted to carve a pumpkin this year and so she did.  She found an idea online and took one of our pumpkins and did the whole thing herself.  

Halloween was another quiet holiday...with only McKinley going trick or treating.  The rest of us had a pretty quiet evening with our home on a dark dead end...but she had a good time going around with friends.  She was a happy blue unicorn! 

Fall Break in Idaho with Grandma

For Fall break McKinley and I were able to fly up and see my mom in Idaho.  She has bought a new house and is remodeling the whole thing so it was fun for us to go and see it.  It was in the middle of being sheet rocked and we got ready for the kitchen to be taken down.  We also were able to ride her horse Carlos and do some yard work.  We had fun cooking and eating and cleaning out a shed as well.

 
We also tore down a really ugly railing from the front walkway...that was fun!!

 We enjoyed visiting and meeting Charlie, the amazing cat my mom got from the shelter.  He's a real riot and finally got used to us after a couple days.  We had fun snuggling with him and playing with the remote mouse toy as well.  I'm so glad we were able to visit.

Be still my heart...what a wonderful surprise!

On Sunday afternoon we were all just relaxing when my phone began to "ring" with a tone I'd never heard before.  I looked down at it and it showed Ethan's mission president Facebook video chatting my phone.  I didn't know whether to answer or not.  Was it a mistake?  What would he be calling for...on Facebook??  So I pushed answer and saw and heard my son playing with the choir at Stake Conference in Brazil!  Who does that?  I was so happy to hear and see him sharing his talents.  My heart could almost burst as I listened to the choppy live feed from this sweet man's phone.   About an hour later we got another "call" and it was a second musical number with the choir and we were able to grab a camera for a last 15 second recording.  What amazing Sabbath day blessings!  We love the Juiz de Fora mission!

Evan's homecoming dance proposal

Here in Utah there is a fun tradition of dance date asking having to be cute and creative.  It sometimes makes things pretty ridiculous but for the most part the kids have a really good time with it.  Evan decided he was going to ask a girl and they are both soccer players, so he wanted to incorporate their likes into the proposal.  So he came up with the ball with his name on it and a poster that reads, " I hope I'm not being too FORWARD, but can I SCORE a date to homecoming?"  Pretty cute!  He left the poster and ball on her doorstep and texted her to check the front porch.  A few days later she answered with a pair of sports socks and a poster that read, "Getting asked to Homecoming by you knocked my SOCKS off!  I would "toe"tally love to go!"

Rocky Mountain Cup on field experience!

I was able to be the fan representative for RSL to walk the Rocky Mountain Cup on to the field before the RSL v. Colorado game.  It was such an amazing experience and I have Dave to thank for it.  He was the one who entered me into the contest to be chosen.  He saw a Tweet that said "tell us why you should be the one to walk the cup on to the field" and he replied with my name and a little bit about how much of a fan I am.  When we talked with the people there they said that his entry was chosen because everyone else entered their own name and he suggested mine, so it was so selfless.  What a sweetheart!  I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to be on the field for the opening ceremonies and down on the field for warm ups and the anthems and all that.  And what made it even better was that RSL beat Colorado 4-1 and won the cup!  It was a fun night!

Pearson family summer reunion 2017

Since Grandma Pearson passed away we no longer have the Pearson Christmas party and have tried to have a summer Pearson reunion instead.  This year the summer kind of got away from us all and we tried to pull a reunion together when we heard that Todd and Robyn would be in town from Oregon.  So we got the word out that we would be having the reunion on a Sunday evening at Mark's house.  It was our family home evening night, so we knew it worked for the Smith family.  Unfortunately not too many others were able to make it.  But there were a few and we had a great evening visiting.  Hopefully we can get a better turn out in the coming years as we make this new tradition of a summer reunion.

Solar Eclipse 2017!!

There was a lot of hype about the solar eclipse that was going to sweep across the United States and have places with total solar eclipse viewing.  It was talked about everyhwhere...and we should have gone to see it where it was a total eclipse (about 4 hours each way), but we did watch it from home.  It was fun to see the way the moon got in between the earth and sun and the shadows of crescent suns.  It was about 92% coverage here in Draper, but really it seemed to just get dim and as if it were cloudy, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky.  

We didn't even have approved glasses to wear, so we thought we could wear the welding helmet, but even that didn't seem to be working.  So we were able to make a contraption with a shoe box that allowed us to see the image in the box of the crescent.  It was interesting!!