What happened this past month (December):
December has been full of Joy.
The first two weeks of December Joy was participating in the church musical "Savior of the World:His Birth and Resurrection". (For more info see http://www.lds.org or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savior_of_the_World) There were nine performances in total, which kept her very busy. Meanwhile, Nathan was lost without Joy, but he seemed to manage ok.
The third week we spent time wrapping whatever presents we hadn't wrapped in November, and packing our bags to go to Utah to spend time with Joy's family. Once of favorite wrappings were the White Elephants - items sitting around the house were wrapped in white tissue paper and stuffed into a canning jar. This jar then had a white twist tie taped to the bottom, an elephant head stuck to the top (carved from computer packing foam), and four legs (empty toilet paper rolls spray painted white) taped to one side.
On the 21st of Dec Fran and Don Jerret took us out to dinner at Captain Jack's, which was very nice of them. Joy had the prime rib and Nathan had the lobster & steak.
On the 22nd of Dec we drove up to Utah. Poor Nathan had a cold, but he was better on the second or third day there.
We had lots of fun playing games with James III, Suzanna, and April. James' latest hobby / game is Magic (the one with White, Red, Blue, Green, & Black). We played that, Boggle, Apples to Apples, and Settlers of Catan. That evening we went to Cafe Rio, one of our favorite restaurants.
On Sunday we went to church with Mommy & Daddy. We also visited the Jolleys & watched a nice movie with them called "The Ultimate Gift". I hope we can raise our children with a sense of all the gifts they mention in that movie: work, friends, family, time, money, laughter, etc.
We made gingerbread houses on Christmas Eve. We also all opened one present. On Christmas day we spent 3 1/2 hours opening presents, partially because we had "super wrapped" some presents (That's where you wrap it over and over again, so it looks huge).
After that we had a nice Christmas lunch. Then we had Christmas dinner at Nathan's Sister's house. It was delicious.
The rest of the week we played games (some new ones, like Diamant, which April got for Christmas, or St. Petersburg, which Suz got for Christmas.), and visited friends & family (Uncle Dick & Aunt Vivian, and Aileen and Rob Hampton, who just had their first baby.), and went shopping. We bought some cards for next Christmas.
For Joy's Birthday we went out to eat at Los Hermanos - they have the best salsa. I got a cheese enchilada as usual. We forgot to take a picture there.
On Saturday and Sunday (29 & 30 Dec) Nathan started coming down with another cold. Then on Monday he decided to share it with Joy on our drive back to California.
On New Years Day we both went to the doctor to make sure our illnesses weren't serious. Fortunately we didn't have strep, so we've just had to wait out our colds.
For her birthday Joy got the following: a Star Trek Christmas Ornament, a hummingbird feeder, laundary detergent (we were running low), a Costco gift card, and $100 (grocery money).
Joy has read Agatha Christie's book entitled, Black Coffee. Next I'm going to read At Home With Books, which April gave me for Christmas this year. I have been watching that book on eBay for years hoping I could find an inexpensive one, so I'm so excited to finally have it.
Joy has been lazy about updating her database of books (see link below).
Happy New Year!
Below are pictures of our month.
