Enjoying the Christmas Season
End of November - December 15th, 2007

(Happy 22nd birthday to my sister Laura today!!!)

On November 29th I was able to attend our annual Relief Society Christmas dinner. The Relief Society is the name of the women's organization in our church. It is actually a world-wide organization, and I believe the largest women's organization in the world. Here I am sitting next to my good friend Susan Gregory. She has always got something funny to say, and she is one of the women I always like to see each Sunday in church. She is a hoot!

Here I am also sitting next to Julie Cornwell. She is also a dear friend of mine who drops by to visit at least once a month. She also gives me frequent phone calls to see how I'm doing. Believe it or not, she was pregnant in this picture, and a few weeks away from delivering her baby! I was only three months along here and I was bigger than she was!

We enjoyed a very elegant meal and then a women's singing group came in to perform. They have come before to our holiday dinner, and they always do a great job. It was a very nice night, especially since I didn't have to cook dinner! Plus, at the end of the night we got a cute little box of homemade chocolates. It was really great!

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of what happened after this dinner. Brian and I went to a live play of A Cristmas Carol. My friend from Ricks College, Dave Burton, was one of the actors. He played Bob Cratchett and did an excellent job. I had just barely run into him the week before and he offered me and Brian tickets to the show. He is shown above with his fiancee Natalie. They were married a few weeks later on December 12th.

Moving into December....

On December 1st, Brian and Vaughn and I went to pick out a Christmas tree. We always get a fresh one because we LOVE the smell and the look of them. There is nothing quite like the smell of fresh pine. We got the tree all set up, and left it until Sunday to decorate, for reasons described in our last blog entry. On Sunday Vaughn took an eager interest in helping, so we let him at the bottom half of the tree.

Vaughn is a very meticulous little boy. He had to make sure the hook was on the bulb just right, and that he was holding it just right before he would put it on the tree.

Vaughn wound up covering the bottom half of the tree with most of our bulbs. We of course waited until after he had gone asleep to re-arrange his handywork. What a cutie!!! It was so great to get our tree up. We always wait until after Thanksgiving, just to make sure we don't overlook the Thanksgiving Holiday. And once our tree is up, we finally feel like the Christmas season has begun!

The following Saturday seemed to solidify our feelings when we woke up to find a thick blanket of snow on the ground. It snowed all day. Vaughn insisted on going out to play, and we couldn't resist him. He walked out of his room holding his boots with a pleading look on his face! It was too cute! So Brian offered to take him out and play, and I had to get a few shots of the two of them together. Brian looks like he's trying to throw a snowball at the camera!
Vaughn spent most of his time walking through the snow. He liked the boot prints he left behind.

However, for one lucky second he paused and I was able to get him looking up at me. My little snow man!

As cold as it gets out here in Utah, Brian always has a way of heating things back up! Wow baby, what a hottie!

That evening we were glad to attend our ward (church) Christmas dinner and celebration. We had a great dinner with ham, potatoes, salad, rolls, desserts and so on. It was so dang good! After dinner we had the Heber Valley Bell Choir perform for us. I've never seen anything like it! They rang bells of course, but it was one of the coolest performances ever! They also performed a song where they sang and rang the bells at the same time, and it looked so difficult!

I think Vaughn had the most fun out of anybody there. He spent the entire performance playing with another little boy and laughing his guts out! We've never seen him make friends so quickly, and have as much fun as he did with a kid he's never met before. We were glad that he felt comfortable enough to break out of his shell for a while! (PS..he looks a little weird here doesn't he?)
And finally we come to the end of this entry! Above is the family picture we took on December 15th. Brian's dad and brother Robert came over to our house and helped us with lighting and a background, as well as keeping Vaughn's attention while they took the photos. Eventually we ended up with a very nice family photo, and I'm so grateful! This is a tradition we have every year, and it will be fun in years to come to see how much our family has changed and grown!

And here's one for the road...

(Vaughn's 2-year picture)

Love, Lisa