Holiday Highlights

Here are a few of the things that have kept us busy in the month of December:

Our ward Christmas party was a breakfast this year.  Santa visited us, but only Bronson was willing to sit on his lap.

For the second year in a row, we won the ticket lottery and went to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Christmas Concert.  Dave took the two girls by himself this year and I stayed home with the boys.

The guest performers were Santino Fontana (Prince Hans in Frozen) and the Sesame Street Muppets.  They were amazing, I'm told!  THE perfect concert for kids.  I wish Josh cold have gone, but it was past his bedtime.

The girls LOVED it, though!  They had a great time and told me ALL about it the next morning.

On the last day of school before Christmas break, Josh came into the kitchen while I was packing lunches and said, "Mom, look!  I had some hairs that wouldn't go down, so I cut them off!"  I think he honestly thought I'd be proud of him for his ingenuity.  Bless him.  Luckily, it wasn't too bad and luckily it was Santa-hat-day in kindergarten because I didn't have time to try to fix it until later that afternoon.

On the 21st, my parents took all their family (that could attend) to the Utah Symphony's Christmas concert.  This year, it was held at Weber State University.  It is SO MUCH FUN! 

Smiths to the right of me (Starting with Kristin, smiling at me WAY down there: Then, Megan's eye and Nicole in the turquoise.  McKenna's thick hair is next to Katie S, who is sitting next to Jenny.  Next to Jen is Paige, then Ali but you can't really see them.  Then, Grandpa Smith and Grandma Smith.  Payton is closest to the camera.  He's showing Josh how to play a game on my tablet, but you can't see Josh.)

To the the left of me were Scotty S (not pictured) Brian, Katie, Adam, and Scot.  It was pretty amazing that Adam came.  He loves music, so we all hoped he'd like it.  He did very well, until about half way through.  Then, he bolted for the door.  Katie was hot on his heels and Scot was not far behind them.  We discovered later that they enjoyed the whole concert from the stairwell.   Adam was perfectly happy out there!

After the concert, David brought our two little boys up and met us at Jim's Burgers.  We took up half the restaurant!  This table looks like trouble, doesn't it? 

Katie's family knew I was taking this picture - they're just too "cool" to look at me.

Girl cousins are the BEST!

Cute man!  

Just visiting while we wait for our food...

Quinton playing with a ketchup packet.

We LOVED having Paige come over a few times while she was visiting from Chicago.  She is so much fun!!!  The three girls spent hours working on a play, which they performed for Dave, Jenny, and the rest of us on Christmas Eve afternoon.

It was a compelling story of a chicken who started out being very selfish, but learned to be nice.

We have some real performers in our family!  I saw a lot of potential.

This was amazing to me!  One morning at the end of the month, we woke up to about seven inches of powdery snow.  The next day was very windy.  If you looked at the mountains, it looked like they had low clouds hanging over them...

But it wasn't clouds.  It was blowing snow!  I've never seen anything like it before.  It must have been 30 feet or more up at the top of the mountains.  Pretty awesome!