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!