Festivities!

December is party time! It always starts off early in December with the annual Dean family Granddaughters' Luncheon, hosted by Chris' grandmother Pearl. We get to enjoy a whole afternoon in her beautiful home, where we are treated like royalty. There is always a delicious lunch where we sit at a gorgeously decorated table while she serves us. We always have a fun little gift at each of our places. And Grandmommy will come in and give us little lessons on caring for our linens or silver or other lessons of refinement. It is a treat that we look forward to every year. Did I mention she is in her nineties?? She is an amazing woman! I want to be just like her.



Here she is with all the girl cousins at the Dean family party (everyone gets invited to this one!)

It is such a fun tradition. The kids have a blast playing with all of their cousins. There are about four ride on cars that are being driven recklessly at all times. So far no casualites! And we always have a big jumper.

Of course it's not all fun and games. We have our Christmas program, with the traditional nativity.

Some like the program more than others...

And on to the next party.

Owen and Ethan at our ward Christmas party. They managed to have snow for us! The kids loved it.

I hope the Sorensons don't mind, but I had to put this in to show their holiday spirit. They were part of the Christmas parade - they looked great!




And of course Holiday Open House at the School... where we get to do all kinds of fun things. Owen was a little shy to sit on Santa's actual lap. This was our compromise...poor santa!



Lots of singing and performing.




And more singing and performing!



We don't have many more years left of this so I am trying to tell myself to enjoy it while it lasts!

Nice Job Smartie Pants!

Hooray for Shelby!! She made the honor roll with all 5s (a "5" is an "A"). We are so proud of her. Here she is at Friday Flag receiving her award.

The Halls are Decked!

We love Christmas! It is so exciting to pull down all of those boxes from the attic and be in a crazy mess for a few days. Just ask Chris! He did a great job putting up the lights (braving the second story for the second year in a row- my hero!).

And the band played on

Lindsay had a band performance in Old Town (love the vest and bowtie Linds!). We sat outside in the pouring rain but they played their Christmas music enthusiastically. Luckily Dad saved the day by running across the street for Starbucks hot chocolate to warm our cold hands. On the way back through Old Town we stumbled across SNOW! There were huge mounds of snow piled up behind the children's museum (leftovers from their Winter wonderland party the night before.)

It made for a very fun, very impromptu snowball fight.

Christmas Card Photo Shoot

What a perfect place to take Christmas card pictures! We love Coronado and the Hotel Del. We hurried down after church where we met our Photographers aka Jenni and Rob. We only had about an hour of daylight so we ran around snapping tons of pictures. As a bonus, our photographers invited us back to their house for dinner. What a deal!
We're definitely using them again next year!







And the winner is...

Turkey Turkey Day

A family tradition we have established is to eat not one, but two fabulous Thanksgiving meals on Thanksgiving Day. It actually isn't as hard as it may sound. Lunch with the Watsons at noon and then on down to feast with the Keelers for dinner. It takes a little bit of self-restraint not to stuff yourself at the first meal, but we've been in training for a few years now. A few before dinner pics at Grandma and Grandpas.

Go Padres!

Owen started T-Ball this fall. It has been perfect for him (and me!) because they meet on Saturdays for an hour for a game/practice. He has loved it! It has been hillarious to watch the games. Most of the kids are younger than Owen, so they are pretty much clueless. The first week he fielded a ball and then was actually tackled by a teammate. The kid took the ball from him and then just stood there. Owen just looked at us so confused.



Playing catch with Dad.



Killing time in the outfield.



Power hitter at bat.



The team.