It’s the first of a new year. We had a lovely Christmas. We went down to Karen & Kent’s about 2:30 pm Christmas Eve Day. Shani & Jon and children as well as Kylie were already there. Jon is doing sooo good!! It is good to see him able to walk and move without difficulty. He talks well but when he’s trying to explain something you can see him thinking of how he wants to say it. I remember doing that too. Brittany & Wes came a little later. My husband’s mother was there by the time we got there too. One of her young neighbors and his family has in-laws just down the road from Karen & Kent and so he went right past their place so he dropped her off and then picked her up the day after Christmas. She really enjoyed being there and we enjoyed having her. She would have spent Christmas alone or we would have had to go get her and take her back otherwise. It worked out really well that way. We got another five generation picture on Christmas Eve; one with Porter in this time too and Macie a little older. The others weren’t to excited about getting it but were compliant especially since I was so adamant in getting it. Who knows how many more opportunities we will have to do this. It really doesn’t happen that often.
We fixed our Crème Burlée French Toast while we were waiting for others to get there.

Karen and Shani told us what Macie was doing earlier with her little play cell phone: Macie was going around handing her phone to people she handed it to me and said it is your mom she had Kylie talk to Brittany and she had shani talk to a friend than she handed the phone to Kent and said here Papa it's for you and he took the phone and said who is it and without hesitating she said it's Jesus and Kent the look on his face was priceless he wasn't so sure he was ready to talk to him. We all had a good chuckle over that.

We had prime rib for dinner that night. Kent does a really good job of cooking it. That and Dutch oven potatoes. It was all very luscious. One of their neighbors, Bob came and also Kent’s parents were there too. Bob and Kent parents left before we had our Christmas Eve program. Jon and Brittany had a thumb fight while we were waiting to start. Jon did very well. Brittany said, “I wish I could say I was letting him win, but I’m not!” We didn’t read the Christmas Story in the scriptures this year. Macie, who is three, was there and so we did things a few things differently. Karen had some figurines of the nativity so Shani put each individually in a lunch bag with a piece of paper explaining the character, Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, a camel, a donkey, the three wise men, shepherds, etc. it also had a Christmas Carol and the page number it is found on on it. Brittany, Shani, Kylie, Wes and I all took turns playing the piano. We’ve never had so many players before! I used to have to do all of it. It was nice to be able to sing the carols instead of just playing them.

Christmas Day Kylie knocked on our door at 7:10 am. We needed to get started because Kylie had to be back to Kimberly by Twin Falls to go to work by 2:00 pm. it was blowing and snowing. It took us a couple of hours to open all of the gifts that were there. Brittany & Wes spent the night since Julie (the children’s mother) had their children. They left about 10:00 to meet Julie in Tremonton to bring the children back to Idaho. Brittany called after going thro’ Malad Pass and told us it really should have been closed because there were so many cars on the road; but they made it thro’ and then made it back. We were thankful for that. Karen had checked on the internet and found out that the freeway between Pocatello and American Falls was closed because of blizzard conditions. We weren’t really surprised. They left about 9:30 with Kent driving Kylie and Karen following in their suburban, and drove her to Massacre Rocks beyond American Falls taking the old Highway 39 that runs right passed their house. Karen said she had never driven in such bad weather and she hoped to never again.
Karl, Mom and I went down stairs and watch a DVD about Gordon B. Hinckley’s life. It was very interesting. Karen & Kent got back about 2 or 2:30. Brittany & Wes and children got there about 4:00 or so. It was good to see the kids again.

As we looked at the blowing snow I was glad that we always stay until the day after Christmas. We have done that for ten years or so since we ran into black ice and wrecked coming home after dark on Christmas Day. Staying until the day after makes it possible for us to spend the whole Christmas Day there. We play the games usually after it gets dark and that’s part of the most fun.

We left around noon the day after after Cameron Williams and his family stopped and picked up Mom to take her back home. When we got back to IF we could tell that they had had snow here but not nearly as much as there was in Blackfoot.

We had a very quiet New Years Day. We didn’t really celebrate New Years Eve either. We did put up our Christmas decorations. (The big room still looks kind of empty without the tree.) It pretty much took us all day. Karl said he thinks he made at least 16 trips down and up the stairs getting the empty boxes them taking them back down. I’d guess even more than that because we had more than eight boxes up here.

We went to the center for the first time in two weeks on the 3rd of January. I really didn’t think we would have any patrons come in but I helped at least five myself so there were many more than I tho’t there would be. We cleared over 800 ordinances that day. Counting the ones cleared the day before over 1,000 were cleared. So the work is going on and this year is starting out with a bang. We cleared many more ordinances last year than we did the year before…thousands more. We are on the down side of our mission but if things keep going well, I and I hope we will extend again.