Christmas Tradition

Thursday night we had our annual Christmas Date!  

We started out the evening with some acupuncture....Ha Ha.... that's a story for another day....

....then we got checked into our hotel.  We stayed at the Marriott just a few blocks from Temple Square.  We had some time to kill so we layed in bed and watched 'Beat Bobby Flay' on The Food Channel.  I love that show and since we don't watch TV at home it was kind of a fun treat.  Watching all that good food being made on the TV made us both hungry for dinner!

We got a window seat at The Five Alls and had a wonderful dinner.  A full five courses!  

After dinner we were SUPER full so it felt good to get back to the hotel, park our car and walk the few blocks to get to the Kurt Bestor Christmas Concert.  It was held in the Eccles Theatre on Main Street.  It is a beautiful venue and the concert was thrilling as it always is.

We love Kurt's Christmas music and is a tradition for us to listen to it throughout the holiday season in our home.

But I will say that it is such a thrill to hear it played LIVE.  

The band and orchestra are amazing, as is Kurt's wonderful piano and horn skills.

This year's special guest was Madilyn Paige.  She was a contender on The Voice.

Her voice was really beautiful.  My favorite was when she sang Kurt's "Prayer of the Children".  

It was spine tingling!

It was a very cold night out so we bundled up after the concert and made our way to the Macy's candy windows.  They did not disappoint.  How about that temple one??

Before heading back to the hotel for the night we stopped at a street cart for some hot chocolate.  As we started walking back to the hotel we passed a homeless woman on the street bedding down for the night.  We asked if she would like some hot chocolate.  She said she would so Rick stopped to get her some as well:)

It was delicious and warming to the soul!

Thanks, Sweetie for a wonderful date night!!

I love you!!

December Happenings

The last week had been busy with Christmas preparations.  A bit of shopping and wrapping, wrapping and more wrapping!  I took a day last week and turned on the fire, turned on a Christmas movie, and wrapped my little heart away.  Four hours later.....not kidding.....I finished.  When there are a lot of little ones in the family and lots of adults, there are A LOT of presents!  Anyhow, while I got them all wrapped I did not put bows on any of them.  Those came later.  At this point I am happy to say that the present are all wrapped WITH bows and they are all snug underneath our tree anxiously awaiting Christmas Eve when most of them will be opened!

On Friday I had the opportunity to tend Haivyn and Merik.  We dropped off a load at the DI, stopped at Applebees for lunch, and then made a run to Walmart for a few small items.  These kids are so cute and easy to tend.  Merik has learned to walk and loves to find his way to the stairs.  He can go up but I'm not sure he can come down very easily so I steered him away from those many times in the few hours I had him.  I love these little sweeties!

This last Sunday I had been asked to substitute in Primary.  I asked Rick if he wanted to join me.  We had such a fun time with these cuties!  They are the 3-4 year olds and are so smart!  Our lesson was on Following the Prophet.  Many times during the lesson we all stood up and said, "President Nelson is a prophet of God!"  We talked of things the prophet has recently asked us to do.  Namely, learn from the scriptures, serve others and attend Sacrament Meeting and Primary.  The children talked of how they try to follow the prophet.  Some answers were, "Help my mom do the dishes" and "Helped my brother pick up his toys."  So cute!

Here is Rick showing the kids a short video on President Nelson.  The kids got to hear his (President Nelson's not Rick's:) voice as they drew a picture of the prophet.

Henry has a crush on Ella.  He has told us that he is going to marry Ella.  They are good friends and play together at least a couple times a month.  During Sharing Time they were holding hands.  They also took turns laying their heads in each others laps.  (I did not see any of this because they were on the other side of Rick, but he filled me in on the details :)  What I did see was while I was teaching in class I looked over at Henry and he was trying to give Ella a smooch!  Super puckered up and trying to find her cheek!  Something I never thought I would hear myself say, "Henry, lets not kiss in class."  Haha!  

What a fun time Rick and I had.  I taught while he wrangled.....mostly Henry:)  

Hope we get this opportunity again!

Christmas Date with the Kids

On Thursday night we had a get together with our kids.  All were there except for Kaitlyn because of a class she could not miss.  We were sad about that but Gary brought his friend, Catalina and that was fun to have her there.

We began the night at our house at 5:00.  We had previously asked our kids to think of someone in each of their wards that we could go Christmas Caroling to.  We were going to just have the adults go caroling but Kendra mentioned earlier in the day that it would be fun to have the children along.  We made a slight change in plans and had the littles join us for the caroling portion on our night.  It was really fun!  I love when our family sings together.  Each of us can harmonize on the familiar hymns without the piano and I will be bold and say, "We sounded so good!"  We had four parts on most of the hymns!  ACAPELLA!  We sang two songs at each home.  A fun one that the children were able to choose and then a nice hymn from the hymn book.

We started with Don Takos and he was so sweet.  He started crying as we sang.  His wife passed away last year and is very lonely without her.  Rick and I will make it a point to get over to have a nice visit with him.  

Next we stopped at Rae Wooley's home.  She had a hard time getting her door open and we were wondering if she was going to answer.  She finally got it open and we got to sing:)

Next were two members in Brach and Kendra's ward.  Sister Brown, their neighbor and Sister Styka, who their family is close to because Brach serves in the Elders Quorum Presidency with her husband Brother Styka.  Sister Styka invited us in and also cried as we sang the first song.  She was really sweet.  She loves Rafe and Scout and Brady which makes me love her!

After caroling the kids dropped off their little ones to be babysat while we adults drove into SLC for a nice dinner at The Roof Restaurant.  We had such an enjoyable evening being together without the distraction of little children crying or fighting.  And what a delicious meal!  It was a wonderful occasion to get dressed up and be out for the evening.

During the dessert round we asked each of the kids a certain question.  i.e.....What does Christmas mean to you?  What was your favorite gift as a child?  What is your favorite holiday tradition? .....and so on.  It was nice hearing everyone's different thoughts and experiences.

After dinner we wandered around the temple admiring the lights.  It was all so beautiful!  Temple square always is at Christmas time.  It was a very cold night so we were out only for 30-40 minutes.  

What a wonderful evening with our family!

Bangkok, Thailand

We arrived in Bangkok on Friday evening.  As a group we were able to go to Asiatique, a big night market where we had dinner.  We had some good Thai food and got to see some cultural dancing.  It was all very nice.  What was funny was that we all hopped on the bus and drove TWO BLOCKS to get there.  There was one person in our group who had trouble walking so I'm sure that bus ride was for her benefit.  

After dinner we enjoyed doing a little souvenir shopping for the fam.

The next day we went to The Grand Palace.  It had some really beautiful buildings.  There were tons of people and we were constantly reminded to watch our belongings for the pickpockets.  I had been very excited to see the famous jade Buddha.  We took off our shoes to show respect before entering the building it was housed in.  For years I have been interested in seeing this huge buddha.  I thought it would be about twelve feet tall.  HaHa!!  The jokes on me.  It was just over two feet tall and was place on a high pyramid pedestal about twenty feet in the air.  It looked so small!  Not what I had been imagining after hearing about it so many years ago.  We were not allowed to take pictures so there are none.  But here are some pictures of The Grand Palace.

After visiting the palace we hopped on a boat to get to our lunch.  Just after we got onto the boat it started raining.  When we got to the restaurant it was absolutely pouring.  We each had to make a dash to the building and when we got inside we were all laughing because we were soaked!  Plus I was wearing a white shirt!  Oh boy!!  But we made a memory and had an awesome buffet lunch!

After lunch we got to walk through the flower market.  So many beautiful flowers and so inexpensive.
There were thousands and thousands of marigolds.  Come to find out marigolds are an offering the people give to buddha to bring them prosperity.  I didn't even take any pictures of the marigolds but all of the flowers were beautiful.

Beautiful fruit as well......

I loved all of the hanging paper lanterns.

That night we went to the night market again to finish up our souvenir shopping for the trip.  I had to find one more kimono.  I had purchased three the night before but needed one more.  We looked all over the market the night before and could not find any!  Finally after searching again we found what we needed.  I even bought a couple to bring home to DeeAnn and Kathy.  I bought a scarf for Ruth:)  Not sure if she would like a kimono.  

After getting some ice cream from Swenson's (so yummy) we walked home.  this sign caught my attention and we laughed and laughed about the "fried crap with curry sauce".  We took pictures and a video.  It just really caught us off guard and was so funny to us.  I thought it was supposed to be carp and they just spelled it backwards.We did talk to the young man in charge and asked about it.  He said, "Oh you know, you can have it in or out of the shell."  Then he found some pictures online and come to find out we realized it was supposed to be CRAB.  Oh. My. Gosh.  This just struck our funny bone.  It was late and had been a long day!

The next day we skipped the group tour and went to all three meetings of church.  Boy, did I need that.  We attended an international ward which was given in English.  It was the Primary Program and was so sweet and tender.  I cried through a lot of it.  The simple truths of the Gospel are so precious to me.  After seeing so many people worshipping idols in the last two weeks I was so thankful to be reminded, out of the mouths of babes, pure and simple truth.  What a blessing for me that day.

After church a sister from the ward offered to show us where the temple will be built.  It was just a few blocks away from the meetinghouse.  

What a blessing this temple will be for the Saints in Southeast Asia.

After church we had lunch and then took a nap.  The day was very low key and I was able to get caught up on my blog.  Later that night we took a ten minute round trip boat ride from our hotel to see the lights of the city scape.  We did not have our camera so no pictures of that.  

Our hotel room did look right over the river and so boats were constantly floating past.  Each boat was lit up so beautifully.  We had a nice view over the pool as well.   

The next morning was our departure day so we got up early and went for a quick dip in the pool.  We got our things packed up and started our long trip home.  We flew from Bangkok to Singapore.  From Singapore we flew back to LA and then on to home.  

What a wonderful opportunity for us to visit so many different places these last two weeks!  It is wonderful to see how Heavenly Father is so good to all of his people and loves each of us.  Even those who know nothing of Him.  He provides his children with so much.  This trip has made me realize that there is so much work to be done in gathering Israel.  I'm not sure how that is all going to happen but when President Nelson says to "take your vitamins because there is much more to come" that makes me excited for the future of the Church.  

So happy to be home and to experience the light and joy of the holidays!