Christmas 2008

Here is a quick slide show of 51 pictures of our Christmas.

Christmas Cookies

My friend Tara has made sugar cookie dough for the kids to bake and decorate every Christmas since we moved to Utah. She uses her grandma's recipe and they are delicious!

Mallory's friend and soccer/basketball teammate, Carly and her mom, my friend, Shayla also took part in the fun this year. We made fudge and chocolate covered pretzels too.

Marcus participated only long enough to put about a pound of frosting on one cookie and then beat a path out of the kitchen...too much estrogen in there for him! :-)

Holiday Happenings

After our 6-hour ride home from Las Vegas, we had to get spiffed up and head up to Temple Square for Morgan's choir performance. She is an alto in The Riverton Children's Choir. They had their first performance in Assembly Hall, which is a beautiful little church that sits on the grounds of the LDS Temple in Salt Lake City. The lights in the Square made a nice backdrop for our smiling girl.

We had a good time listening to Christmas music, eating cookies, and decorating our tree. It is always fun to look at all the ornaments that the kids have made and received over the years. They like to make fun of each other's preschool "works of art" and how "funny" they look in their "Baby's 1st Christmas" ornaments.

Sandy bought kits to make root beer and birch beer. Marcus and Mallory really enjoyed this process. Morgan really enjoyed drinking the finished product. They all thought that is was kind of gross that the "little yeast animals" were a necessary part of the product.


Morgan and I went to the Gateway Children's Museum on her first off-track day. Tori's (Morgan's friend pictured with her below) mom(Liz) organized the trip for moms and their off-track kids. It was really cool! The girls especially enjoyed making their own news broadcast, sending message flags back and forth on cables across the building , and playing in the water tables.


Finally, last night we attended the middle school's Winter Concert. Mallory plays the clarinet in the beginning band. The jazz band, percussion ensemble, concert band, and symphonic band also played. Everyone enjoyed the festive performance.

Las Vegas Thanksgiving 2008

We traveled to Las Vegas over Thanksgiving. Our family stayed with Terri Leitch, her husband Mark, and daughter Sarah. We cooked a delicious Thanksgiving meal. I really enjoyed visiting with my friend. We have been buddies since second grade. She is a surgical nurse for the Air Force. Last Thanksgiving she was on-call and was called in several times. This year she was was not scheduled for work and was able to go to some of the soccer games and activities with us. She was also quite helpful in locating the hidden wine stores. ;-) I am grateful to have such a wonderful life-long friend like Terri. Sarah had not seen the movie Twilight. So even though Mallory and her teammate Breanna had already seen it, they wanted to see it with Sarah. Because, as Mallory says, "It's the best movie I have ever seen in my life!" I was glad to hear that the movie lived up to the book, since she loved that too. Mark was a good sport (or maybe he just really wanted to see the movie himself ;-) ) and took Marcus and Morgan to see Madagascar 2. Everyone seemed to enjoy this one as much as the original. To the right are pics of the girls and me with Terri at our favorite breakfast place in Vegas, Blueberry Hill. Besides visiting our friends, we were in Vegas because Mallory's soccer team was playing in the Las Vegas Turkey Shoot. We had a lot of fun watching some competitive soccer and hanging out with the soccer team families. They are a great bunch and we always have a lot of laughs. Mallory's team, the Utah Soccer Alliance All-Stars, won three of their four games, and just to clarify, they only lost to the NUMBER TWO TEAM IN THE NATION, as did everyone else...those games were just plain ugly. The All-Stars played some of their best games to date. Mallory scored five goals in three games. The last two pics are of Mallory in the game and the team with Coach Karen.