Christmas Celebrations

I love Christmas!  It's so nice to take a break from all the stress in the real world and remember the more important parts of life - the gospel and family.  This year we had a great family Christmas program on my side of the family.  Keeping with tradition, we acted out the Nativity together.  Michael, Jessica, and Asher played the main characters.

Spencer was a true angel that night!

Spencer's family had two Christmas parties, one a couple weeks beforehand with extended family (here is the only picture I have of the Hollingshead family Christmas party)...

... where Spencer's musically gifted family shared their talents and ended the party with a group sing of "O Holy Night." 

We also got together in Springville for Christmas Eve, where we had a great dinner and opened gifts together.

We drove down to Fillmore late Christmas Eve and opened presents with my family Christmas morning. 

We stayed a couple of days down there and just relaxed.  Adam's dog Kapuni found a sunny spot in the kitchen and showed us how to really relax.

Even Jack was in on the Christmas fun!  He loved his Christmas gift - a new bone to chew on!

 I hope everyone was able to enjoy Christmas as much as we did!

New Year's Eve

We hosted a New Year's game party with some of my extended family.  We played everything from Monopoly...

...to some old-school Nintendo 64...

...and of course, our family favorite, JEOPARDY!

 

The little ones watched a movie in the other room...

...and most of us made it to midnight.

Overall, a great night filled with family, fun, and lots of food.  Happy New Year!

O Tannenbaum

Behold, our glorious 12 foot Christmas tree!

I love it.  It is so fragrant!  I feel like we have a little forest in our living room.  It reminds me of the children's book "Harold and the Purple Crayon."  There's a part in that book where Harold draws a forest, but he only draws one tree so he won't get lost.  That's the type of forest we have in our living room.  (There's the 1st grade teacher coming out in me, relating my life to children's books!)


We drove down to Fillmore last weekend and cut it down with the help of my dad (who found the tree) and my sister-in-law Jessica (who kept me company in the car when we got too cold to walk around hunting for trees).

As soon as we put the tree up, I felt like the Christmas season had begun.  Now I just need to get my Christmas cards ready to send out!

New baby

My little brother and his wife just had their first baby, and luckily we live so close and could go visit them at the hospital the day little Asher was born.


What a cute little boy! He will be so spoiled as the first grandchild on both his parents' sides of the family!

Congratulations Michael and Jessica!

I have an excuse...

Actually, I have a few excuses for waiting this long to post our Halloween fun. The morning after Halloween I took a shower and was about to get ready for stake conference, when I immediately started feeling really sick. I was nauseous, achey, tired, the whole bit. I laid on the couch all day and even called in sick for school on Monday (which I almost NEVER do, sub plans are the worst!)

By Tuesday morning I was feeling well enough to go to school, which was a very good thing since I had Parent Teacher Conferences to get ready for on Wednesday and Thursday evening. Unfortunately, staying at school from 7:00 in the morning to after 7:00 in the evening two days in a row leaves very little time for blogging.

As if two excuses are not enough, during my final parent conference yesterday (Thursday), I started to feel sick again. By the time I made the drive home, I could barely walk from the car to the couch to lay down. And of course, it's a different sick than last time. Now it's my throat mostly, I'm guessing strep. Luckily I did not have school on Friday because of conferences, so I have been laying on the couch all day again. I'm starting to be bored out of my mind right now, and feeling just well enough to prop up the laptop and get these photos on the blog before Thanksgiving. So here you go.

Spencer and I went as Thing 1 and Thing 2 for Halloween. It was a good costume to wear for school and for Spencer's Halloween band party.

Speaking of the band, Spencer and his buddies have a little rock band and they planned a great Halloween concert/party to show off their skills. They played a variety of music, from Poison to Bon Jovi, and even a little number from the movie Music and Lyrics.


The party was on Halloween eve. On Halloween day we helped Michael and Jessica move into their new place, and then drove up American Fork Canyon with some of the family to enjoy the sights. Most of the leaves were gone, but the scenery was still amazing.

Same Ol'

I think this is the longest I've gone between blog posts! I can't tell if it's because we haven't had anything exciting going on or if we've been too busy to blog. Maybe it's a little bit of both. But since today is Saturday and I have some spare time on my hands, let me share a few pictures that I just downloaded from my camera to the computer.

Let's start with a delicious dinner Spencer cooked for me a while ago.

bacon-wrapped tenderloin, potatoes, and green beans -- yummy!

We traveled out to the golf course near Grantsville to play 9 holes with Jeff and Cristian, our brother and sister-in-law. Not the prettiest course ever, but we had a lot of fun!

For some reason, I did not get any pictures on the course, so enjoy the great parking lot view!

And, of course, more pictures of American Fork Canyon. We drove up for an evening and went on a quick little hike.

Jack almost caught a squirrel! (not really, but he sure loves to try!)

There, I've updated my blog. That wasn't so hard!

More Camping

I've noticed that many of our blog posts are about camping. Here's another one!

We went up American Fork Canyon for Friday night and Saturday of Labor Day weekend. Just like before, I am just amazed at how beautiful the scenery is! I have decided that we need to live in a cabin in the woods somewhere. Maybe someday...

Spencer found a great camp spot off the main road and tucked between a few tall trees. It was very secluded and sheltered from potential wind and rain.

The trailer is to the right of the 4Runner. You can see the top of it over the bushes.

We did end up getting some rain on Saturday, but that's pretty typical when we go camping. Luckily we were able to go an a nice hike before the rain started. Then we took a nap during the rainstorm.

We came across this sign during our hike. We were just 2 miles from Deer Creek, and could see it at one spot of the trail.

On Friday evening, we were walking around near our camp spot and heard an owl hooting. The owl never made itself visible, but we did see some wildlife here and there (mostly bugs!).

I think these were both dead. Weird that they died together!

busy bumblebee

What a strange-looking caterpillar!

We also saw some deer, a raptor of some sort (the bird, not the dinosaur), and plenty of squirrels and chipmunks. Jack loved chasing the squirrels when we were on our hike!

"Is that another squirrel I hear?"

One of my favorite parts of the trip was eating Cheetohs. I'm so addicted to Cheetohs, we can never buy them except for special occasions because I will eat the entire bag in one sitting! But we got Cheetohs for the trip, and I managed not to eat the whole bag at once.

I always designate two fingers for eating Cheetohs, so not all of my fingers end up with the delicious orange cheese dust.

I took a lot of pictures of the scenery.

I hope we can get out at least one more time before the weather gets too cold.