Photos with Santa

It's been a few years since all my kids would sit on Santa's lap. This year I snapped pictures of all 4 of them on his lap!! It was the beginning of a great Christmas season!

Living Aquarium

December 13th was free day at the Living Aquarium in Sandy. My SIL and I braved the crowds to take our little ones there. I checked McKinley out of school around 1:45 and headed over to get in the line. I was able to find parking immediately and got our space in line. The line was wrapped all the way around the building, but it did eventually move quickly. We were in line about 40 minutes to get in and then it was super crowded inside, but we were still able to see everything. We enjoyed the octopus, the seahorses, the penguins and all the other fish and sharks too. It was an enjoyable afternoon with all the other cheapskates like us!

Smith Family Progressive Dinner

One of the holiday traditions in the Smith family has become to do a Progressive dinner where we travel around to each families house and eat! This year we started at Mark and Maylenes house for appetizers, headed to Mike and Mischele's for salad, main course at Mom and Dads, and dessert at Chad and Cynthias! We started at 4pm and we ended at 9:30 (only because it was a school night!). It was a wonderful dinner with yummy food and great company. We're so glad we were here to be a part of it this year!

Kathryn and Kendra

Zachary and Austin

Dad and Ashlee

Mark and Maylene

Paige, McKinley, and Avery making gingerbread cookies

Allison, Kendra and Lisa

Salt Lake City Temple Square

On Saturday we loaded up the kids and headed up to temple square to see the lights! It was a particularly warm night for December and it was very enjoyable to walk around the sights of temple square without being freezing cold! The younger kids didn't remember ever having seen the lights, so it was a fun time.

We were also able to tour the conference center. We learned that the conference center auditorium is the largest in the world. It seats just over 21,000 people!! It is an incredible building and a beautiful place. We really enjoyed the tour and the evening out!

Early Snow Storms

This was the view and road conditions we drove through for 7 hours. At 30 mph. Slowly. Slippery. Snowy. We were on our way back from eastern Washington to Utah for Thanksgiving. After the 7 slow hours, we had 6 speedy hours to get home!! The visit was great...the drive (both ways) was HORRIBLE!!

Kamiak Butte Park

After eating so much food on Thanksgiving, on Friday we bundled up and headed out into the outdoors for some exercise. We took the dogs and two cars down the road to Kamiak Butte Park. We hiked around for a while and then found a great sledding hill to play on for a while.We had to hike on the road for part of the way because we didn't have snow boots! It was beautiful in all the fresh snow and the dogs had a great time running and playing.

Austin and Evan had a rough landing at the end of their double ride!!

Truly Thankful Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we traveled up to Pullman Washington to be with my mom and Irv. We left on the day of a big storm and raced ahead of it north through Idaho and on to Washington. We were lucky most of the way, but we did encounter a white out blizzard for about 30 miles. It was really scary and slow going, but after that we made pretty good time. There were some slick areas and it took longer than it should have, but we made it.

Once we were there it was time to play. Evan, McKinley, and David played in the snow and then warmed up and dried out next to a roaring fire.
On Thanksgiving we spent a lot of the day cooking all the food. Mom and I were a great team in the kitchen with things flowing and timing out perfectly. Ethan came in and helped cut the potatoes with his new sword. It brought a smile to all our faces as he wacked and chopped the potatoes and put them in the pot.
Finally, everything was done and we were ready to eat. We ate buffet style with all the food on the sideboard. We filled out plates and our bellies and then watched football and movies all afternoon. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving.