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Pre-Christmas Parties

Festival of Trees 2014 and Baby Johnny's Tree

Another favorite thing to do at Christmas time is go to the Festival of Trees. It is so overthetop with Christmas trees loaded from top to bottom with decorations and gifts of all kinds, fancy playhouses, detailed gingerbread houses- you think it might be a worldly place for a Christmas kind of place. But when you think about how every bit of it is donated, every minute of time spent getting it ready is volunteered, all the food, the performers EVERYthing is given to the festival so that every bit of the proceeds can to go to the Primary Children's Hospital, then it all makes sense... Here are some of our favorites:

The coolest thing, was that we finally got our Baby Johnny tree put together and ready to donate! We had a lot of fun the last two years collecting the tree, the games and all the ornaments to create an I Spy tree- all the most random decorations we could find that would still look classy on the tree...

We wrote up a poem, I Spy style, so people could actually play I Spy with it. Even a Minion made it on the tree! Big Thanks to Lauren, Breta and Min for helping Mom and I get it to look just right...

And, it even sold the first day. We didn't get to see how much it sold for but there was nothing there cheaper that $200- and those were the tiny trees and wreathes...

Love you Baby Johnny!

Salt Lake Trips at Christmas time

So, this summer we got to take the boys to a Mormon Tabernacle concert with Santino Fontana- it was FABulous. He's the guy that does the voice for Prince Hans in Frozen, but he's really nice in real life. Anyway, the MoTab invited him back for the Christmas concert WITH the Sesame Street muppets. Hello?! What's not to love about that? So, I tried with all my might to get tickets to the concert- no luck. I worked all my connections- still no luck. Finally, we decided to go up on Sunday morning for Music and the Spoken Word and see if we could get in stand-by. The line was crazy long, we didn't get into the Tabernacle BUT we got to watch the whole thing (they had the Spoken Word for half an hour and then a 'mini' concert with the guests-which was actually another hour and a half, so NOT so mini) from the Tabernacle. Works for me! Next time I'll bring the girls so they can see it too! Anyway, it was such a fun concert and the Muppets were great. I'd do it again anyday.

Waiting in the Tabernacle

Crossing the road and taking selfies at the same time? Probably not smart...

The next week, we took the whole family up to see the lights on Temple Square- it had been quite a while since we had that chance!

Afton liked the candy Christmas windows

I love the reflecting pond with the lights and nativity...

Just beautiful.

Not so beautiful but we love him anyway...

We went in the Joseph Smith Memorial building to warm up and see the sights and stopped for a picture at the family history library- Zach was not thrilled but I thought it was classy. Kind of.

This building is always beautiful, but especially at Christmas!

Christmas Time is Grand!

Weston Birthday Boy!

This little dude is 9 years old! I don't know what it would be like to have people always think you are little, even when you aren't. The problem is that Hyrum is so big that Weston SEEMS little...even though he is taller than average for his age... ANYway, getting back to the birthday time:

Lexi slept over (as tradition states) and helped us celebrate the day. A treasure hunt to start the morning...

and having balloons fall out of the closet on your face (it was a lot better the night before when DADDY opened the closet to put something away. In the dark. And all the balloons fell on him. Classic!)

And opened presents- he got the last HP: #5 movie that we needed for our collection, a marble run, some books, a helicopter, and other such stuffs... Then, we spent the day playing, eating German pancakes, ice skating,

Arby's for lunch, watching the movie, shopping at ToyRUs, and then meeting Maama, Pa, Wendy, and Grandpa Largey at Maria Bonita's for dinner. Their little mariachi band (who didn't ACTually play any instruments) came out to sing happy birthday. It was great.