Christmas Time in Utah

We had the opportunity to make a trip out to Utah to see some of the children and grandchildren.  We stayed with Nathanael and his family in South Jordan.  Joshua and his family drove down from Pocatello and stayed at Nathanael's home also.  And one day Tianna and Jim and their two youngest flew down and visited for the day.  Amery who is now living in Utah came by also.

 The first thing we did was take a tour of Temple Square.  We saw some of the Visitors Centers, toured the Conference Center, and went to the old Tabernacle.  This is a picture of Elliott, Hannah, Jacob and me in tabernacle where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir used to play from.

 We took a metro bus to tour a hotel that had decorated window displays inside and a large gingerbread house that was life size.

 We had a large crowd at Nathanael's house with all the grandchildren.  In this picture you can see Jonathan, Jacob, Christian, Agnes, Ethan, Asher and Hannah.

 Agnes got so drowsy she fell asleep in her chair.

 One of the days we went to watch Jacob play basketball at their Rec. Center.  He even scored a goal.

 At one of the malls they had some Harry Potter shops the kids liked looking in.

 Jonathan and I ready for church on Sunday.

The last thing we saw was a Christmas light display, the Tree of Life at Drapper, Utah.  We had a nice time.  It was too bad it couldn't last a little longer.

The Days Before Christmas

We had several activities we were involved in leading up to Christmas.  December is a fun time of the year. 

 We posed for a manger scene with Malachi and his family.  Andrew is a wise man, Mallory and Jacquelyn are angels, Spencer and I are shepherds, and Malachi and Layne are Joseph and Mary.

 One day we went out to a nativity display at the Tacoma Stake Center on Pearl Street.  They had hundreds of Nativity displays.  Andrew's favorite was this one with zoo animals.

 Mallory's favorite was the one with mermaids and mermen.

 Spencer liked the rubics cube nativity the best.  We saw a lot of nice displays and they had a small program.

 One day Jacquelyn and I went to the Victorian Christmas at the fair grounds.  Besides all the Victorian costumes we saw the city tree lighting ceremony for the Puyallup Christmas Tree.  It was bigger and more magnificent than it looks in this picture.  The lights were strung from the Extreme Scream ride and those are fireworks going off around it.

 They had reindeer there too.  Did you know Santa's reindeer had to be an all female team.  Male reindeer shed their antlers for the winter and the reindeer shown pulling Santa's sled always have lots of antlers.

 And one day we went to the Seattle temple.

 This is the life size nativity scene on the temple grounds.

 Afterwards we went to the Snow Flake Parade in downtown Bellevue.

 Besides the floats they had lots of dancing and singing and people interacting with the crowd.

 This is one of the floats.

We also went to Spencer's pre-school Christmas Program.  He didn't sing much, (he wasn't feeling well) but I think he enjoyed it anyway.

Also we've been doing the "Light the World" activity.  This is the second year our church has had this program - where everyone does something nice for someone else each day of December leading up to Christmas.  It does a lot of good for people and also gets us into the true spirit of Christmas.  Which is remembering the birth of Jesus and how he taught us to help and love one another.

Here's a link where you can check it out:    https://www.lds.org/?lang=eng