Christmas and New Years

A post better late than never. We had a great Christmas and New Year's this year and spent most of our time with Jason's family who were all in town for the holidays.

Holiday Highlights

Christmas Cookies

Christmas Eve Chimes

Temple Square Visitor Center--Julie with Brooklyn

1. Rasband cousin party at the DuPaix's home Fri. Dec. 23rd. It just doesn't seem like Christmas without seeing the cousins since seeing extended family has always been a part of the festivities since my childhood
2. Christmas Eve morning we went to Temple Square with the half of the Burninghams that were in town. We enjoyed seeing the sights in the visitor's center including the Christus statue, the "Plan of Happiness" presentation by the missionaries, and the replica of the interior of the Salt Lake Temple. Saturday morning there were hardly any visitors and I felt like we had the place to ourselves. We spent some time in the afternoon at Grandpa Richard's and then he treated us all to lunch at McDonalds. That evening we enjoyed hearing the Christmas Story read from the Bible and played Christmas songs on chimes.
3. Christmas Morning began early with lots of excited children waiting to see what Santa brought. Our big Christmas gift this year was a Kawaii digital piano that "Santa" delivered a few days early this year. I've wanted a piano for several years now and it's so nice to have one here in our apartment to play! We had a nice sacrament meeting in Alpine and then headed to my parents' home for a delicious dinner and time with my family. We enjoyed playing games with Katrina and Neal while their son Daniel was very engrossed with the new Wii he got for Christmas. I must say that I really did enjoy having Christmas on Sunday this year since it really helped me focus much more on the true meaning of Christmas.
4. Monday we were back in Alpine hanging out and playing games. That evening was the viewing for Jason's grandpa, Ross Burningham, who passed away the week before. At 91 years of age, his health has steadily declined this winter and he went into the hospital just before Thanksgiving. He was staying in a rehab center but his health was not improving. Jason and I visited in the rehab center the night before he passed away. We had a short, but good visit with him and I was grateful we were able to speak with him one last time before he passed away. Jason's parents and siblings went with him to the viewing while all the sisters-in-law stayed home and put the kids to bed. Jason said it was very nice.
5. Tuesday we attended the funeral. The arrangements were very nice and many people came to pay their respects. Jason's dad and his two living sisters spoke at the funeral. The great-grandchildren and some of the young grandchildren sang a primary song and I accompanied Jason's brothers and their wives singing "Because I Have Been Given Much." At the gravesite they had a touching military service and the ward provided a lovely lunch for our family afterwards. Later that evening we all attended a BYU basketball game in Provo.
6. Wednesday I went back to work for the rest of the week but Jason stayed with his family. His family had a neat opportunity to do sealings all together at the Mt. Timpanogos Temple with Grandpa Richards. They enjoyed a fun night of games after putting the kids to bed as well. Snorta and Bananagrams were probably the two most played games this Christmas along with Word on the Street.
7. Thursday they took everyone sledding somewhere up Big Cottonwood Canyon and I joined them to see the lights at Thanksgiving Point. (Note: To anyone who has never seen the lights at Thanksgiving Point I would say, I don't think it's worth it. It was somewhat cool but not worth the drive or the price for approximately 15 minutes of driving through some lights.)
8. Friday they watched the BYU bowl game and went out to Applebees. That night we all watched Kung Fu Panda 2, put kids to bed, and stayed up to play games.
9. New Year's Eve most of us went ice skating at Peaks Arena in Provo in the afternoon. Afterwards Jason and I met up with Reija, a high school friend of mine, and her husband who were visiting from California. Then we headed to another BYU basketball game and then over to Jason's brother Jeff's house in Provo for the rest of the night. We had good food and enjoyed dancing to Just Dance 3 with the X-Box Kinect before ringing in the new year with an interesting political and religious debate. --I could never see my family doing that. That's one difference between the Rogers and the Burninghams. :)

 My Christmas Present

Jason's Christmas

What Jason wishes he got :) j/k

Just Dance 3

BYU Basketball

Grandpa and Grandma Richards

Grandpa Burningham's funeral

Ice Skating

Ever Wonder?

Have you ever wondered what I do all day at work? What is an instructional designer anyway? Well for any of you who are curious to know, I'll give you a quick overview and then show you an example of my work.

Typical Work Tasks

• Determine the training needs/knowledge gaps of a company
• Gather and/or sort content needed to fill that gap
• Write up a formal design plan
• Script the content and activites using our custom software
• Record and edit professional and in-house audio talent
• Coordinate with artists to create all graphic elements including the interface,splash intros., and graphics
• Coordinate with programmers to create custom interactions, features, and wizzards 
• Work with clients in person or over the phone on a weekly basis to monitor the progress of the project
• Oversee other instructional designers and review all work for quality assurance

To see a short marketing demo and a few sample course pages for a program I designed for Talaris, follow this link: http://www.parentingcounts.org/professionals/preview-training-program.php and click on "Launch the Preview."

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.