Christmas

Tom & I rotate Christmas & Thanksgiving. This Christmas was my family's turn. We all met at my parents house. We've all scheduled our holidays so we are all home and away all at the same time. Its always a lot of fun to get together and see one another. We are a very close family and I feel very lucky to have them in my life! This picture is my entire family (including the dog "Duke") except my little brother Blake, who is on a mission in Kentucky! As usual I look adorable! Hehehe!
Probably one of the most exciting things we did was we all went to the Dinosaur museum and out to dinner at "Wingers" together. ( I love their wings....best I've ever had). My nephew loved it there, he is a dinosaur enthusiast. He's only 3, but he can tell you the names of a lot of dinosaurs already! What a little brain! This is a very small picture of Austin under the big dinosaur skeleton in the lobby of the museum! I couldn't get the whole skeleton in the picture and still see Austin at all! We got to see a video of people mining for bones & walked through the museum of all sorts of displays. Here's a picture of Tom in the kids section playing with toys & Tom & I in front of the wall of fossils.
Christmas Day we got to speak to Blakey! He's doing great! He's only got about 10 months to go before he comes home! Everyone on the family got to speak with him. I don't know how much he got out of his conversations with Austin & Kinsey though! He had us this year for Christmas and he got us a digital photo frame. I'm very excited to use it.
Our big Christmas present of the year was the last one we opened. Each couple got a box. We all opened it at the same time and each found a little toy boat in the box with "Cruise 2009" written on it. In about 1 year we will get to go on a 7 day cruise as a family! We are all very excited. Tom & I have wanted to go on a cruise for quite a while! Can't wait!

I had to put this picture of my neice Kinsey on this blog. Her Dad is in the background & her Mom's hand is to the right.

Christmas Party at Temple Square

Last night my company had our yearly Christmas party. This year we had it at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. It was nice as always. Last night was also our ward Christmas party. We picked my work one for a couple of reasons, I hard already RSVPed to my work for the party before they every announced the party for the ward & more importantly they were going to give me Prime Rib at my work party. I love Prime Rib! I don't eat a lot of beef, but I do love a good Prime Rib on occasion.

Dinner was pretty good. For dessert they gave us creme brulee. Tom & I tried this for the first time on our anniversary when we went to Log Haven, an amazing experience for those of you looking for a swanky dinner place in the Salt Lake Valley. The Creme Brulee we had at Log Haven was AMAZING! The one last night, not so much. They burnt the top of it unfortunatly. I scraped off the top and ate the custard underneath. When this dessert is well made it is delicious!

The dinner was at 6:30. Everyone was worried about being able to find parking because of the construction going on downtown and the big concert that was happening that same night at the conference center. Tom & I went down early to avoid this possibility. We parked our car at about 5:30 and spent the next hour walking around temple square. We had the added blessing of it being raining while we were there, which was great for my cold! But the lights were pretty as always. My favorite part was probably the international nativity scenes. I love different cultures! It fascinates me!

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas.
Aint We Cute!