Sunday, December 30, 2007

Christmas Day

This is the Christmas picture we sent out. We ran out of time to do a decent picture, so I used photoshop to make it. It's horrible, but you get the idea. :-) Our friend Kim took the pic after church - so we were tired and STARVING!
It was a lot of fun! My mom and little sister came over. Sarah brought her boyfriend. Cute kid. We had more presents under the tree than we knew what to do with. My favorite gift was the one I gave Jeff. For the past two years he has been learning to play the electric guitar. Secretly it drives me nuts because it's so loud. I had given him an electric set up for his birthday a couple of years ago. It was time for a new one (not a beginner) so I bought him an Ibanez electric/acoustic guitar. He loves it. I was so excited. I was worried because it was acoustic, but it was exactly what he wanted.


We had a wonderful day. We were so blessed to recieve so much!!!

Christmas Baskets!

Like most people, Christmas and Thanksgiving is our favorite time of year. This year was a little more hectic than usual. We decided along with sending Christmas cards to quite a few clients, we were going to make "treat" boxes. I had no idea when we decided to do it that it would take up so much time. I always make a ton of treats at Christmas, but to make so many was just consuming my life. The problem was, they had to be fresh. We were going to make boxes for a great deal of of bigger clients, but trimmed back to a SMALL amount of clients we really REALLY like. But even then, it required hundreds of chocolate covered pretzels, hundreds of cookies, bon-bons, peanut butter cups, rice Krissie's etc. On the day I was supposed to finish (which I had barely scratched the surface!) my visiting teachers came. I LOVE when they come. That particular day I was secretly dreading it because I had so much to do. On of my VT brought over a pumpkin loaf. I was SO thankful to her. Not only did we get a treat (that I didn't have to make!) but she inspired me to do that! So in the boxes (they were such cute boxes!) we put in half a dozen candles from Candle Wishes (best candles in the world!) for ladies of the different offices, which took up room but then the pumpkin loaf. Which also took up a big chunk of room. So instead of having to make 50 bon bons for each basket, I only had to put in a small bag because there wasn't any more room. Thank you Mary Ellen!!! I am so grateful to you!!!

We also delivered a couple of boxes to people in the ward we especially care about. We decided to deliver the baskets in the middle of an ice storm that forced us to drive about 5 miles an hour. On the way we stopped to help the YM president tow his truck because he got stuck on the ice. The miles we drove were probably less than 15 but it took us about 3 hours. Since it was so cold we had the heater blasting. Dan, a member of the Bishopric, is a friend we took one to. Jeff was with Dan in the clerks office the next day working on their computer and Dan kept commenting on the pumpkin bread being so wonderful since it was "fresh and hot -right out of the oven". Jeff kept laughing when he was saying this because I had made them the night before - so they were not so fresh. But Dan kept insisting. So Jeff finally asked him if the chocolates were melted... He told Dan that the boxes were in the back of the van and the heater must have been blowing right on them. LOL -I'm not sure if Dan believes him or not. :-)

3rd Trimester!

Yeah! I'm finally in the third half of my pregnancy. It seems like time moves like a turtle but also like a rabbit at times. This last few months will seem like forever since the holidays are over. We start the pre-baby classes next week. Yeah! That should be fun. (Jeff thinks not so much). YW stuff will just have to keep me busy. We have New Beginnings coming up, class presidency training for the girls and then in-service for the leaders. Work should also keep me busy. We are hiring a new guy (Tommy) and getting him prepared and trained will consume a lot of time. Getting all of the tax paperwork done before the baby comes will also be a time filler. I'm looking for all kinds of things to keep me busy.