2007 Already!

Here it is two weeks into the new year and I haven't posted anything yet this year. We had a wonderful Christmas. We went down to Karen & Kent's after sacrament meeting. Since our meetings started at 1:00pm that is all we stayed for. Shani & Jon here in IF and my mother in American Fork, UT only had sacrament meeting scheduled that day but Karen & Kent and we had all meetings scheduled. I decided that the stake presidents must have had an option. Anyway we got down there between 3:00 and 3:30. We had some of their left over primerib. It was delicious. We just visited for awhile. Kent's parents were there as well as Shani & Jon and Wes, Brittany's finacé. We didn't know about that until we got down there. They had been officially engaged since Friday morning. We suspected he would be giving her a ring but didn't know exactly when. We fixed the creme burlée French toast and put it out in the car and then made the clam chowder for supper. We left it simmering while we had our Christmas Eve program. It was very nice. We sang C is for the Christ Child with Wes playing his guitar and me on the piano. Shani, Brittany, Kylie, Wes and I all took turns on the piano as we sang the Christmas carols. When I think that I used to play all of them it wears me out. I'm glad they are willing to take a turn also. Karen and her three daughters sang Mary's Lullaby from the Children's Song Book and I accompanied them. Shani & Kylie sang alto and Karen and Brittany sang saprano. We practiced a couple of times with Kylie doing the descant which was just beautiful but she didn't feel comfortable enough to try it with everyone sitting there looking at her so she just did the alto all the way thro'. It was so beautiful. All of them have such nice voices. Jon gave the tho't. I asked him a head of time. (Two years ago we just put his name on the program to give the opening prayer and didn't ask him ahead of time so to get even with us he said it in Portugese.) I told him I was giving him a heads up on it so he could do it in English. He said he would. It would be boring but he would do it that way. Karl sang O Holy Night with me accompamying him. I had practiced it a few times but he hadn't gone thro' it since last Chirstmas Eve. I asked him if he wanted to go thro' it but he said no. So....he stubled a few times and had to stop a couple of times and see where he was because he forgot the words and went to the wrong verse in one spot. It was casual so I guess it didn't make that much difference but he has such a beautiful voice and I didn't want anything to detract from it. Oh well. He also did Star of the East. I had asked Kylie last year if she would sing the duet with him at the last last year but she didn't feel comfortable enough to do that. This year she has had two summers of voice lessons and now sings in the a cappella choir she said she would try it. I went thro' it with her a couple of times. They didn't do it together however until the program. Their voices sound soooo nice together. She even did the whole second verse with him all the way thro' after coming in on the duet on the first verse. We of course did He Sent His Son and Let There Be Peace On Earth accompained by me. I think they both fit in so well at Christmas time. After the program we exchanged gifts from each other because Shani, Jon and Macie were going back to IF afterwards to have their own Christmas morning just the three of them. Then they were going to go Chuggs for the rest of the day. Kylie showed Macie how to open her first present. How to tear the paper etc. She really enjoyed that. She went after all the gifts she could see. She didn't care what was inside; she just enjoyed tearing the paper off. Everyone really liked the calendars we gave them with the family pictures on each month taken at the family reunion and at other visits. I wish I had put December 2006 on it too then I could have put the picture of Chris holding Jason entitled "Our oldest and youngest grandsons". I was thrilled with the way they turned out. That was the hardest secret I kept. I couldn't tell anyone close to me because I wanted it to be a surprise. Afterwards, we ate our clam chowder and Shani & Jon left to come back to IF. Karen was coming down with a gigantic cold and informed us that Santa was coming early and no one could go into the living room again until the next morning. She went to bed early. Karl and Kent went to bed too. Kylie and I watch the first half of Polar Express before gave up and went to bed. Chirstmas morning we all slept in until 7:00--the first time ever. Brittany's phone alarm went off at 6:30 or so and woke us all up. She denied setting it. When she looked at it, she had put "Christmas" on it when she programed it in October when she first got it. She didn't realize that it would go off that day or that early. Wes stayed over night with us. We all got many lovely things and enjoyed opening our gifts. Karen, Kent and girls gave me two beautiful sweaters that fit me. The two I've been wearing they gave me three years ago and were way too big. I got a sweat suit, a skirt and a pair of pants as well as stockings from Karl. Of course I knew about them. The only thing I didn't know about was a package of batteries that he got me. Since my computer requires batteries and the digital camera does too, I've really gone thro' them since last June. About noon he and Brittany left to meet his ex-wife in Utah to get his three children and bring them back to Idaho for the week. He grew up in Moreland there west of Blackfoot and his parents still live there. They got back to the house about 8:30 pm with Alex, she's almost nine, Shay, seven, Skylar, 5, and Wyatt, 3. They are cute kids. They opened gifts there and played a game there then went out to see their Grandma & Grandpa Carlson, Wes's folks. We went to bed fairly early that night too. We played a couple of games that afternoon. What's Christmas if you don't play games? We left Tuesday morning to come back home. They were getting ready to go up to Island Park, (Karen, Kent & Kylie as well as Shani, Jon & Macie and Brittany, Wes and his children.) We came home and washed our clothes and repacked and left for Utah the next morning. We stopped in Roy and Stan & Kathy's place to see Mom and see how she was doing. She had fallen Thanksgiving time and broken her leg and couldn't put any weight on it at all so needed to stay with someone. We are so thankful that Stan & Kathy could and would take care of her. She looked good and said she's been feeling good. She has since been to the doctor and she can now put slight weight on it and use a walker. She will be there until the end of this month at least. We got to Kim & Kimberly's about 5:15 or so. It was good to see them and the children. They have clam chowder for Christmas Eve also so we had their left over chowder for supper. It was also very good. (Of course he used my recipe with his modifications.) Thursday, we went over to American Fork and got Mama and brought her back over so she could see the children and play games with us. I wish that we had known Kim had Rook cards and we could have played Mormon Bridge. She would have enjoyed it much more than the Book of Mormon Battles game that we played. We gave that to the children as our gift to them. Nathaniel just loves it. I found it very gratifying to watch him play it. Grace and Alex enjoyed it too. Friday we spent the day at Michael & Tanya's. We mostly just visited but did get a game of Pinochol in with Karl & Michael against Natasha & me. It was fun. We also watched a movie that they got for Christmas. Now You See Him & Now You Don't. It's by Walt Disney starring Kurt Russell. We all enjoyed that. We ate both lunch and supper with them. We were thinking of coming home Saturday but I wanted to stay until Monday. I fell in Kim's bathtub Saturday morning and really bruised my back side. I couldn't have sat long enough to come home that day. It was bad enough Monday. I squirmed alot. Saturday morning we went over to visit Roy & Cindy and take them their Christmas presents that I had made them. We had a very nice visit with them. They had to leave tho'. Joy & Tom had gone down from Soda Springs and they were all meeting Bonnie & David at the Church History museum in Salt Lake City. Mama didn't tell me that she was invited too. We were going to visit with her after they left but....So we only saw her on Thursday afternoon. We did see her tho'. Cindy did invite us to join them but we would have to take our own car. The rest of them were going in Roy's SUV. I guess that was something.....Kim had said something about Roy being the favorite child. I denied it saying that he was the one that was there to help her and do things for her and so forth. But I had to agree somewhat when I tho't about it later. (My tho't was, "small wonder that I got the impression that Mama and Daddy loved my siblings more than they loved me because that type of thing happened all the time while I was growing up.) If we had only known, we could have stopped in Friday or maybe even planned on Sunday afternoon, since church started at 9:00 am. Oh well....We went to church with Kim & Kimberly and enjoyed the meetings very much. I am very impressed with their bishop. He talked about the temperature of the ward and how to improve it. He did very well. It was a combined meeting. I wondered what Bishop John talked about up here but haven't inquired. We played games with Grace and Alex while Kim, Kimberly and Nathaniel went to the youth fireside with President Hinckley at 6:00-7:30 that evening. We later watched it on KBYU. I'm glad I saw it. You could really feel the love that he has for the youth, for all of us. Sister Susan W. Tanner, general president of the Young Women and Elder Jeffrey R. Holland also spoke. We then finished watching Ice Age 2. We went to bed and the New Year came in anyway. We woke up about 4:30 or so to use the bathroom and couldn't go back to sleep so after 6:00 am we got up and got ready to leave. I left them a note on their table and we just left. As we were getting in the car, out came Kim in his bare feet. He said he didn't have time to put shoes on. We talked to him for a few minutes. We ran into hardly any traffic all the way home. Mama wanted to know why we didn't stop. I told her we tho't 7:30am was a little early to drop in unannounced. We stopped in McCammon for gas and a pit stop and then headed home. We got home before 12:30 pm. It was good traveling. Much better than it would have been on Saturday. We were glad to be home. It had been more than a week really since we had really been home. We were happy to visit our children. We would have liked to have been able to visit Bryan & Sandy and Richard & Téa too but...We are so blessed with our children and grandchildren and the lives they are living. We love them all very much and our lives are so enriched by them.