December Dinners & More

For a few years I have invited my Dad and his sister, Coral, to come to my ward choir's Christmas program and then I would have dinner afterward. It had almost started to become a Christmas tradition. This year, I participated in our ward choir performance, but I'm just a member of the choir and not the director anymore. While I have missed it, I must say that it was a lot calmer and less hectic today and we decided to go ahead with the dinner anyway. My siblings and spouses joined us for the dinner. It was nice to get together. Dad loves his new tractor lawn mower! We bought this gently used lawn mower from one of my clients. Their house closed on Friday, so we had to get it out of their garage. The most pratical storage solution for now was to haul it up to Hilary and Adam's garage. Lately, we've been hauling quite a bit of stuff to their basement and garage, but this time Adam is NOT complaining. He's got a pretty big back yard. I'm guessing that he won't mind storing this piece of equipment for awhile.

I've had a lot going on with work lately so my brother Steve came to give me a hand with some cleaning and Christmas decorating. I should post a picture of the tree he decorated for us. He used all the same old decorations, but it is the prettiest tree we've ever had. Some people, namely Steve, just have talent for those things. Thanks, Steve. We love it!

Thanks to Libbie, we got to go to the Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert. It featured guest artists Natalie Cole and David McCullough. It was fabulous. We took our friends, the Bells, (no pun intended). It was gorgeous strolling through the lights on Temple Square. The weather was pretty balmy too. What a great evening!

The night before we were in Idaho to see the grandkids in their Tavaci concert. Tanner, Brinley, Jantzen and Anna all did an excellent job in their performance. We felt so blessed that we could travel in mostly good weather and spend some time with them. It was such a treat to watch them perform. They knew all the words and actions and did a super job! Thanks, kids.

Here they are enjoying a supper break just prior to the final dress rehearsal with Papa.

We've had a couple of parties to attend this season also. Here I am with my real estate broker group. The food and decor is always exceptional at this party. Steve hated missing this one, but he was at the Tomahawk training center in cold and snowy Wisconsin.

Last night we attended the Century Christmas Party. This is one of Steve's dealers that has included us for years. We kind of expected that we would not be included this year since Steve's position with Case is different. However, they are used to having us I guess so they invited us again. I really think that they needed some volunteers for the entertainment after the dinner. They scheduled a hypnotist and Steve vowed he wouldn't be a volunteer. I guess we should have left early, because we both ended up among the 6 people who got very relaxed and sleepy and then proceeded to respond to all sorts of crazy commands. The hypnotist got some laughs on us but mostly he got the other 4 to do the wild stuff. It was an interesting experience and really got us relaxed in the end. We slept well last night.