Christmas Past

Courtney's Christmas blog jogged my memory and I thought it would be fun to post some pictures of Christmas Past which bring better memories than they did for Scrooge.

Fred and my first Christmas after we were married was spent in Idaho with Fred's parents. One day we drove up to West Yellowstone and found my favorite place. Oh my, it was buried under snow! I guess you don't need ice cream when the snow is that deep. Maria's first Christmas--it is 1966 and we are in New Zealand in the middle of summer. Christmas trees were hard to even find. We decorated a round mirror as a Santa Claus face. His beard was a grass skirt. You can just see the "beard" in the background.

Laura was born the next year and we made the rocking horse for our two precious little girls. This rocking horse has been repainted several times and has brought please to many little ones. It now resides in our library, patiently waiting for great-grandchildren. Another year goes by and we see our two little "angels in the middle of their fellow angels in Temple View. Even at this young age, Maria was leading the music. This was the year Tanya pulled over the Christmas tree. No damage done! The trees in New Zealand are really flobby. We had the limbs tied up with fishing line. It still wasn't very pretty but it smelled good.By Christmas, 1972, David had joined our family. Aren't they the cutest kids ever.
A family tradition--making homemade chocolates--Martha Washingtons, nut clusters, turtles were among the favorites. Do you want one? Just in case you are wondering, the candies we gave to friends were made after the children went to bed!

Christmas in Sandy, Utah. Snow, what's that. These little Kiwis had never seen such a thing as snow much less known that it was cold.
Christmas of 1979 when Cheryl was a baby, Santa Claus came to our door on Christmas Eve. To this day we still don't know how he got there. What a sweet gift!
By Christmas of 1987, Maria and Stan were married, and a basketball game on Christmas day was part of the experience. What a blessing to live in Arizona where you can play ball outside in the winter but every once in a long while it will . . . .
SNOW! 1988 was perhaps the only time it snowed on Christmas Day in Safford, Arizona. Maybe it was special for our first grandchild's first Christmas. Isn't Courtney precious?!
By 1994 there were six grandchildren home for Christmas: (left to right) Samuel, Courtney, Miriam, Sierra, Seth and Christian. Then there were more and more and more grandchildren born over the years; twenty-two so far. Christmas hats!? We three kings or maybe three kings and two queens--crowns?! Who knows. Shepherds, yes, I suppose they could have been barefooted but most likely they wore sandels.

Another generation making Christmas chocolates. Starting in 2006, we decided to have a Christmas Gathering of family several weekends prior to Christmas. During these gatherings we have done such things as. . .

Make gingerbread houses. Some real creations were made. Built and shot off rockets. Boy, could they ever fly up high.

And we had car races. These spectators are getting ready to watch the "big race."

Christmas Past! What a blessing these years have been as we have celebrated the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

It Is a Delight to Be With Our Children and Grandchildren

Saturday, December 5, was our Fourth Annual Call Christmas Gathering. What a joy that was to have everyone here with the exception of Laura and Jonathan's family, who are far away in South Carolina; and Seth, Courtney and her husband, Daniel who are all away at college. Our first activity was to design and build a remote control car. We had six "design/build" teams with three members on each team.
Sierra, Isis and Maria chose to build a spiffy Chevy Corvette in Dungeon Black with a "GIRLZ RUL" license plate.
Merlin, Cindy and David (who unfortunately had to work this day, but joined us later) chose to build a Chevy Corvette but in Track Sting Yellow with black racing stripes.
Each team took time to think about which accessories they wanted to add to their cars. Did they want fancy wheels? Brayden, Christian and Stan are making the big decisions as to what to add to their Fang Green Dodge Viper.

"Get that on just right Uncle Ben!" Demetrius, Kevin and Ben are hard at work on their Dodge Challenger in Black Attack with Orange Racing Stripes.
It is time for those last finishing touches. Does our car need anything else? Then it is time to register our car and create a license plate. Cambrie, Callie and Tanya worked hard on designing their RZ Rascal in Punk Pink.

Now to show off our work! Addie, Charity and Cheryl are proud of their Mini Cooper in Laser Blue covered in hearts and flowers.


It was special to watch our teenage grandchildren be so kind and considerate of their younger cousins with this project. Way to go Kevin, Christian, Sierra, Charity and Callie!

After lunch, we had a Pentathalon in the park across from our home. The wheelbarrow race is about to begin. We also had an egg carry relay, shoe distance kick, marshmellow mouth stuffing, and the "saltine" whistling events.One of the looked forward to events of the afternoon was the car race with the cars they had build early in the day. Everyone got to compete in at least two races. The final race was between a mother and son. Brayden came in as grand champion in first place. Wow! Cheryl was in second place. We finished off the afternoon with six rotating games in teams of two/three. Sometimes the teams were competing with each other and sometimes were cooperating for team points.

We finished off a full day with skits, pizza, and the movie "Elf". What a special day! Thanks children and grandchildren for making the effort to come and spend this day with us.

A Few Days in Escondido, California

We spent a few days in Escondido at the Lawrence Welk timeshare. I think you needed gray hair or a bald head to stay there because most of the guests fit into that catagory. I really knew it must be the setting for the retired generation when I went into a little boutique store there and all the clothes were for older women--I mean older than me! Anyway we had a relaxing time and because Escondido is close to Temecula we were able to spend some time with Maria and her family. We always enjoy visiting farmers' markets and this one was right at the resort. There were lots of fresh fruits and vegetables as well as some exotic foods from foreign lands.

Sierra is starting to play the organ for sacrament meetings in her ward. In the picture she is practicing with Maria leading to help her get the timing right. We were thrilled to attend sacrament meeting and hear Sierra play. She also accompanied about 50 young women, including Callie, who sang in that meeting. She really is gifted with her piano and organ playing.

Maria was recently called as a counselor in the Relief Society Presidency. They had their Christmas program and dinner while I was there.

It was fun to spend some time working on some sewing projects with Maria. She is so clever at decorating ideas for valences, beds, decorative pillows, etc. One night we went to a musical version of "A Christmas Carol". It was quite well done and we enjoyed being together. There is a small theater at the resort. Here we are with Mr. Welk himself.
We enjoyed playing games with Sierra and Callie. One of our favorite games is a version of Scrabble called "Take Two". Here we just had fun making long words.

If you been wondering where Fred was in all these pictures--he was behind the camera. Stan was on a business trip.

Time for Trips with Grandchildren Again

We are trying to take each of our grandchildren on a trip someplace in the world when he/she is about 14 years old. So far we have taken seven grandchildren to places like London, Madrid, Paris, Yucatan Pennisula in Mexico, and Costa Rica. Within the next seven months we will take another grandchild to London (one of our favorite places to go in all the world) and another to Canada and Alaska. That will be nine down and thirteen to go! Our purpose is to show them a part of the world they have never visited before and more importantly to spend quality time with them. What a special time this is for us as grandparents!
The day after Christmas, we are taking Joseph (Laura and Jonathan's son) to London for a week. A highlight of that trip will be to see the play, "Wicked" as well as the Tower of London, the British Museum and other famous London spots. We are looking forward to that. Joseph is pictured here with his new baby brother, Caleb. We will be taking Charity (David and Cindy's daughter) on a cruise up the Inside Passage to Alaska the end of May. We have never been on a real cruise so we are really looking forward to this experience. Charity is fascinated with sealife so this should be a real adventure for her. This picture was taken on her last birthday when she turned 13.

Entertainment Center in the Retreat

I was reminded I didn't include a full picture of the entertainment center in my last post. So here it is. The green paint color in this picture is not the true color!

Grandchildrens' Retreat at Grandma and Grandpa's Home!

Our grandchildren are getting older so we have converted our little kid's retreat into an "older" grandkids' retreat. So grandchildren when you come to visit, things have changed. First of all . . . Smile It's a new room with . . . guess what?!Play Station 3 and best of all it plays Blu-ray movies. We love the high definition. We have games and two remote controllers. We have a new wide screen TV and surround sound.

Little Big Planet and Katamari Forever are fun games! Grandpa and I even play them.

Just remember, Grandma and Grandpa Love You Forever and Always!

Another Bad Day for Fred

Fred when to the orthopedic specialist about his shoulder yesterday. He has three choices: physical therapy, cortisone shot, and/or surgery in that order. He'll start the physical therapy soon. Hopefully that works. After the doctor visit, he stopped at Walmart to check out prices on tires (we need four new ones--now that is depressing) and while there had a diabetic reaction. When his recovered from that episode and was on his way home, he had a tooth crack and a big chunk fell off. He was feeling pretty down when he got home.