Opening presents ...

Wendy with her stash ...

Dennis ... staked out his spot on the floor.

Ryan, Alisa and Owen ... with presents all around ...

Ruthie in her spot ... close to the fire. We have had the tree in the living room for years ... and this year were able to move it to the family room ... and it was so much nicer ... and WARMER!!

Christmas morning ...

Owen woke up before his parents ... at 7 a.m. (what a good boy!). When I took him in to them he got so excited ... and gave them both hugs!

Then we went out and got him a bottle before we had Christmas!

Here's Daddy Ryan ... with Owen ... excited to get at the presents!

Owen hugging his first 'build a bear' that Santa brought.

The Christmas Tree ... after Santa!

This was the picture Santa took ... look at all those presents

Another picture of the pretty presents and the fancy bows!

Our Nativity

Alisa and Ryan were Mary and Joseph ... and Owen was our official 'baby Jesus' (and he stayed in his manger all through the play!)

Abby, Brenna, Debra and Wendy were our angels ...

Sandie, Diane and Matthew were the shepherds.

Here is our total cast ... Mukesk is a friend of Wendy's and he was our 'wiseman' from the east! Dennis was the narrator and I was the director. Good job (and good sports) everyone!

Owen's 1st Birthday

We had a Christmas Eve 'morning' breakfast for Owen's 1st Birthday. Here's Amy with Owen and Spencer ... and Seth.

Alisa created a do-nut cake for him ... and after we sang to him he 'went at it' ... and literally 'face planted' into the icing ... one of the best 1st birthday activities I've ever seen!! Good job Owen!

Here he is with his Dad and Mom ... and attempting another face plant.

Isn't he beautiful? Gotta love this sticky little boy. Happy Birthday Owen!

The "BIG" storm!!!

This is our courtyard lamp ... totally covered with snow!! What a storm! LOVED IT!!!! Yes, it's beginning to look A LOT like Christmas!

Monday and Tuesday of this week we got snowed on ... and the totals were over 25" ... this is a look at our back deck ... and how it had piled up. It was very wet, heavy snow ... and we were glad we had a snowblower AND a quad to help push the snow back.

This is Alisa's parents car that we had parked in our driveway waiting for them to come so they can drive it ... and it got 'buried'!!

Look in the center and you can see our birdhouse ... with more than a foot of snow piled on it. (Poor birds ... they need some food!!)

Our December snow ... and THAW!!

During the past week we had a couple of mornings of snow ... actually we had about 8" ... and so I took this picture of the snow Saturday morning in our front yard ... so I could record the snow ... as there isn't much forecast in December!

And then ... this is what it looked like today ... 24 hours later ... and after a day of mostly rain and 45+ degree weather!! What a difference a day makes in Utah ... we miss the snow!

Remembering Ruth Ann's Grandma 'Babe'

My Grandmother, Ruth C. Moore, was an amazing lady. She was born in 1902 and so she lived through some pretty challenging times, financially. She is my father's step-mother and she didn't ever have biological children of her own ... but she lived next door to our family growing up, so she was definitely part of our family. For Christmas she was officially 'Santa's helper' and we had presents that were wrapped more beautifully than any department store ever dreamed of!

This year I decided that I wanted to re-create some of Grandma Babe's decorations ... using modern supplies ... so we could remember her and the magic she supplied for us each Christmas morning! (Grandma made her bows with Elmer's glue, satin ribbon, glitter, pieces of wrapping paper, aluminum foil, drinking straws, and anything else she could think of using, and they took hours to create ... Oh how she would of LOVED wired ribbon, a glue gun and all of the ribbon textures we have availiable!)

Here are a few of the packages I created. I am pretty excited about how they turned out because it has allowed me to think in a more creative way and to realize, in a small part, what Grandma must of done to make Christmas so magical. We didn't realize that not everyone had the same Christmas morning experience that we did ... and because picture taking wasn't done much back then (poor quality cameras and prints cost a lot) we don't have many pictures ... just the ones in our memories!

This blog post is a tribute to Grandma Babe ... and her creative talents (that all of us commented we wish we inherited!) Thanks for the memories ... they are beautiful!

David and Jen's kids piano concert!

Kelly has been taking lessons the longest, and she is quite talented! This is at their Christmas Piano concert in Orem. They all did a great job!! Way to go kids!!

Here is Jacob ... he did a great job too! They all played Christmas songs, so we really enjoyed listening to them!1

And here is Miss Peyton ... she played well too!1

And finally Sydney "Lou" (as Grandpa calls her) ... with her solo time at the piano. We are proud of all of them. Keep up the good work.

Seth and Grandma at the Dinosaur Museum!

Seth and I have been wanting to go to the Museum of Natural History at Thanksgiving Point for quite a while ... and since Dave is out of town on business ... and Amy needed to get some presents wrapped, we decided on today ... and it ended up being a PERFECT day to do it! (As you can see, there aren't many kids there!) Seth had a ball showing me around. This is an area where they have sand and water (and palm trees and little dinosaurs) and you can dam up the water, make islands, create waterways, etc. Very fun (very much like being at the beach with that wonderful wet sand) ... and aparently it is ususally very crowded. We probably stayed at this spot about 45 min., he enjoyed it so much. Thanks Seth for spending the afternoon with me!!

Seth and Spencer (and Amy) came for a visit!

Amy brought the boys down while they were getting new carpet at their house. (Dave is home supervising the carpet) Because they were coming we got a gingerbread house kit and Grandpa and Seth put it together. They did quite a good job of it!!

Here is Seth with his finished house!

Spencer was playing with Grandpa ... this is Grandpa taking away his binkie ... and Spencer laughing!! Cute boys!

A quick trip to Henderson, NV

Tanner ... smiling for the camera. He was on the computer chatting with some of his friends!.

Talmage and McKay watching TV.

The Bakery ... freshly painted and looking great!

The Leishman Christmas Tree ... in their living room downstairs.