12 Days of Christmas cont.

Here are the rest of the 12 Days of Christmas. We loved having these visitors come each night. We are so grateful for their friendship and prayers in our behalf and we have truly been blessed by their kindness and service this Christmas season.

Holiday Activities

The Christmas season is one of my favorite times of the year, but it can get pretty busy with all the holiday activities. Here are some of the notable ones we've participated in so far:

• Adult Christmas RS Dinner: I helped on the RS activities committee for this. We had a very nice dinner with a program of Christmas singers. In return for the nice dinner people signed up to bring parts of a nice Turkey or Ham dinner that we could take to the needy families in our neighborhood. People were very generous and we were able to assemble 13 dinners complete with a turkey or ham, potatoes, stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce, rolls, sprite, apple juice, and pie. I was in charge of collecting the food and boxing it that night to be delivered to the families.
• Ward Christmas Activity: The ward decided not to invite Santa to our ward Christmas party this year and instead we focused on the events leading up to and following Christ's birth. Jason and I were responsible for the "temple room" where we wrote a 5 minute script and invited a couple in our ward to be Mary and Joseph and another couple to be Anna and Simeon. Another ward member painted a large wall size version of the temple at Jerusalem from a picture we gave him. All the ward members came dressed as people from Bible times. It was a fun activity. The ward provided some dinner and we watched a re-enactment of the Christmas Story while the Bishop read Luke 2 from the Bible.
• Holiday Work Party: We have a yearly work party at Christmas where everyone participates in a White Elephant gift exchange. It gets intense at times and people really get into it. We had 60 people there this year and it took about an hour and a half just for the gift exchange. Before the gift exchange I sang in a small Acapella group from our office. It was a lot of fun and people seemed to really enjoy it. If you want to see some of the songs we sang you can look here on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JVWx17sNUI  and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmzx4BuSJyg
• Mormon Tabernacle Choir Concert: Friday Jason and I attended the MoTab Concert with Jason's parents and his brother Steve and wife Kirsten. I just stayed at work until they came and we met for dinner at the Macaroni Grill. I enjoyed the music, the lights, the scenery, and the company. The guests this year were Jane Seymour and Nathan Gunn. It was a very nice date night.

 I guess the other interesting happening of the month is that I got two new callings. Several weeks ago I was sustained as a ward organist for Sacrament Meetings. There are three other people with this calling as well so I will just play once a month. I played today and enjoyed playing the Christmas hymns. I don't know how to play the organ so I'm just playing the piano for now. Today I was also released as a primary teacher and sustained as the 2nd Counselor in the Primary Presidency. The Primary President is very organized and on top of things so I think I will enjoy working with her. This year has been a record number of callings for me. The bishopric has set me apart for 5 different callings this year not including an unofficial calling to help with the RS activities committee. Since we moved here last Fall I've served as a ward activities member, RS chorister, roadshow co-director, RS activity committee member, Primary teacher, Sacrament Mtg pianist, and now as Primary 2nd Counselor. It's been a busy year, but I'm happy to serve wherever I'm needed.

Twelve Days of Christmas

What fun! Someone decided to be our special Christmas friends and bring gifts to us each night for the Twelve Days of Christmas. They are all very clever and fun to get. I don't know who it is yet, but I am so grateful for their kindness and for something to look forward to each day. Here are the one's we've received so far.

Thanksgiving

Jason and I had a different Thanksgiving than usual this year. We weren't able to attend the feast of food with friends and family but since giving thanks is the most important part of Thanksgiving I still want to celebrate it by reminding myself of all the many things I've been blessed with.

What I'm grateful for:

• At the top of my list is the atonement of Jesus Christ closely followed by my membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 
• Close proximity to temples and church buildings and time to visit them often
• An incredibly kind, loving, and loyal husband
• Loving and concerned parents, parents-in-law, and siblings(-in-law)
• True friends
• Good health
• A challenging job that I enjoy most of the time and that provides well for our family
• Opportunities to serve others through church service
• An apartment that is clean and nice and in a good location
• A good education
• Reliable cars
• Ease of communication through phone and email
• Enough food, clothes, and necessities to take care of our needs
• Uninterrupted sleep at night
• Hot water, electricity, heater, stove, microwave, indoor plumbing, washer/dryer, and carpet
• Contact lenses
• A laptop and internet access
• Free time on evenings and weekends
• The ability to leave the house in less than 5 minutes whenever I want to
• Good books and movies
• Free public libraries
• Modern medicine and technology
• Warm sunny days
• Mountains that are close

There are many people in this world who have almost none of these blessings although many who will read this list could probably say they enjoy most of these too. It's good for me to remember that even many of these simple blessings are things to be appreciated and not entitlements.

Catching Up

So, I'm still recovering from a hard drive crash, which is part of the reason I haven't posted in a while. Last week my computer started acting really funny. Fortunately I was able to back it up with my external hard drive before it crashed for good. Instead of purchasing a new computer, we decided to just buy a new hard drive. I've since transferred my external hard drive info. back to the computer, but there are still some things that are lost and gone forever, mostly some of my research from my master's degree program and other information that was saved within applications I had downloaded from the internet.

So here are a few things that happened since I last wrote:

While Melody was here, the two of us went to Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point. Jason was invited by happy to pass on the experience since he had just gone a few weeks earlier with the YM/YW. Melody and I had a great time though. The weather was beautiful, maybe even a little on the warm side. Besides the traditional corn maze, Cornbelly's has a lot of other fun activities. We spent our time rock climbing on a rock wall, "caving" in the Speleo Cave, wandering through the themed corn maze (this year the theme was explorers and outer space), watching a live pig race, jumping on a jumping pillow, and finding great picture locations. We had access to the "scarey" events too, but we only went on one of the less scarey ones before we'd had enough. It was a lot of fun and we were both exhausted by the end.

For Halloween, we attended our ward Trunk-or-Treat and I dressed up for work Monday since it's a highly celebrated holiday at my company. We only have two company parties each year, one for Halloween and one for Christmas. Almost everyone at the company dressed up and there were some great costumes! Thanks to Keith and Kim for letting me borrow their costume.

I actually needed to pick up my computer from being repaired right after work and didn't have normal clothes to change into. I had some really funny looks and comments walking into the Apple Store at Gateway Mall wearing my very bright silver costume. It made me laugh and others as well.

Work has still been slower than usual for me. I've been working on several small projects, but I'm hoping things will start picking up again for me in the next few weeks. I did just give a company lunch break training on Learner Assessment yesterday. It was a 40 min. PowerPoint presentation. I was super nervous but it went really well and was well received by my co-workers and supervisors. What a blessing!

Jason is really close to taking his Calculus I final. This week he started Accounting 200 and he sent his formal request to the Post Baccalaureate Program for permission to take several classes from BYU starting Winter semester. He should find out whether or not he's accepted by next week so we're hoping for some good news.

Fall Activities

Here are a few pictures and activities we've done over the last month:

• Enjoyed watching General Conference
• Ate several yummy family dinner
• Made a classy decorative clock at a Relief Society activity
• Attended several institute forums with Jason
• Had dinner with friends in Provo from our married student ward
• Watched and listened to parts of several BYU football games

My sister Melody is in town for a short stay. It has been a lot of fun hanging out with her this past weekend. Saturday Melody came with Jason and I on a fun bike ride along the Jordan River Parkway. The weather was perfect and the bikes were great--(Thanks Mom and Dad B!) We stopped by Gardner's Village to see the Halloween decorations. It was pretty crazy busy there so we didn't stay long. My friend told me later that we picked the worst weekend to go because it was Witchapalooza weekend which is apparently always over crowded. The funny thing is that we couldn't figure out why there were so many people there because there didn't seem to any activities or entertainment going on.

My 4 1/2 yr. old twin nephews think we are twins too because we look so much alike that they get us confused.

Gardner's Village

My funny story for the week is about food storage, specifically 72-hr. kits. We made a couple of kits two years ago for a ward activity. We've been trying to rotate out some of the food every 6 - 12 months depending on how long we think the food will last. We decided to eat a package of Ramen noodles from the kit the other day and it kind of tasted funny so we took all the food out and put it away with our everyday food so it would get eaten. The next day Jason grabbed one of the peanut butter granola bars and took a big bite only to discover that it felt like a granola bar in his mouth but the only flavor he tasted was Irish Spring soap! He saved it for me to taste later when I got home from work and told me to try it. I only broke off a small little piece but as soon as I started chewing it I felt like I was eating soap. After I swallowed, it felt like I had just washed my mouth out with soap. When I told Melody about it she suggested that we keep the rest of the granola bars to give to our kids when they say bad words, that way we won't be accused of child abuse but it will still have the same effect. :)

Trip to Southern Utah

September is a great time of time of year to visit Zion's National Park. We decided to take one last little trip for the year to Southern Utah. Jason had never been to Zion's and it's been at 15 years or so since I had been last. It was kind of a "spontaneous" decision we made a month ago, and yes, a month ahead of time is considered spontaneous for me--our other trips this year were planned 5 and 7 months ahead of time.

We drove to Hurricane Wednesday night after I got home from work and stayed the night there. Thursday morning we hiked Hidden Canyon and the Emerald Pools trails and then drove on the Mt. Carmel Highway for several miles to see the upper plateau. Both the hikes were fun and the weather was gorgeous for us--not too hot or too cold. We packed a lunch for the day and ate it at the top of the Hidden Canyon trail just before you head back into the canyon. We sat on a high shaded rocky overhang overlooking the amazing red sandstone cliffs. It was awesome!

We saw more of a variety of wildlife than we were expecting on our trip. We had several lizards, a snake, and a tarantula cross our path on the various trails, as well as a family of deer off to the side of the road during the two days we were there.

We stayed in Hurricane that Thurs. night again and drove back into the park Friday morning to hike Angel's Landing. Neither of us had ever hiked Angel's Landing before and we totally loved it. It was such a cool hike with amazing views of the whole canyon. The last .6 miles of the hike is out on a steep, narrow, rocky ridge that has a series of poles and chains so that you don't fall of the edge of the cliff a few steps away on either side of you. It was so much fun and the view from the top was incredible! Again, the weather was so nice and we were able to hike in shade for most of the way to the top. We ate another picnic lunch while enjoying the incredible views. (Jason's commentary: Did Julie mention that she had us prepared with so much food that I had on my back the bulkiest backpack on of anyone in the park? That's not an exaggeration either. Lots of people had little camel packs with water and maybe some snacks. However, I was hauling around enough food and water to have a gourmet picnic lunch two days in a row at the top of cliffs. I never saw anyone carrying around as bulky of a backpack as me. Julie would have been a good boy scout--be prepared, right? I've told her before that she should be Scoutmaster rather than me : )

After Angel's Landing we walked along the Riverwalk trail to the base of the Narrows, but we didn't go into the water at all. It was pretty packed with people going into, coming out of, and just sitting around this area. Maybe another time we'll actually hike all the way into the Narrows, but that is an adventure for another day.

That evening we stayed in St. George. We ate at Brick Oven Pizza, hit the outlets and found some great deals on clothes, and then caught the 4th quarter of the BYU v. University of Central Florida football game on ESPN just before Florida fumbled the ball on a punt return and we scored a touchdown to take the lead of a tie game. It was a great 4th quarter!

Saturday morning we did a session at the St. George temple and took tours of the Brigham Young winter home and the Jacob Hamblin home in Santa Clara before heading back home. We tried to stop in Nephi for ice cream at Frost T Freeze where my family always stopped whenever we drove through Nephi on vacation, but it has since gone out of business.Too bad, I think I'll have to make the Culver's in Midvale our new tradition--their frozen custard is delicious!

Feel free to glance through the slide show of pictures at the bottom of the blog, but the pictures don't really do justice to the beautiful places we saw.