May your days be merry and bright...

Hooray for December and Christmas season! But where did November go? Time goes so fast--I can't believe we are almost to the end of 2010. November was a fun month. Between my birthday (#29!) and Thanksgiving break, the month just flew by. Adam took me on a fun birthday date: dinner at Texas Roadhouse and laser tag at Trafalga. (We are trying to get our money's worth out of the Pass of All Passes, so we've frequented Trafalga more in the last 3 months than the rest of my ten years in Provo combined.) Celebrating with Ammon, Kate, and Anne-Marie:

The next weekend we got to go to a BYU football game--our first one in the last 2 seasons. It was so fun! The girls did great. Mini thinks that the football stadium is BYU, so she kept saying things like, "It's cold at BYU!" and "I love the hot chocolate at BYU."

For Thanksgiving we went to the condo in St. George for some warm weather. We packed ten adults and three kids into the condo, so it got a little cozy, but we had a great time. Here's the Snow Canyon hiking crew.

I just think that Southern Utah is so cool! A funny story from our hike: we saw some weird cactus-like plants with long spines growing out of them. I walked up to one and said, "What is that? Some sort of spine?" Adam quickly responded, "No, it's a long poky thing." We all got a good laugh out of it. I guess I should cut him some slack since he's tri-lingual!

And this is the girls dancing together. I love that as Emmy grows older, she and Mini play better (they also fight more, but it comes with the territory).

This year I've really focused on doing fun Christmas things. I guess because I am working overnight Christmas Eve, I'm trying to make sure the Christmas season is wonderful since Christmas itself is somewhat sabotaged by work. A couple of things so far have been the Festival of Trees

and the living nativity at the Provo Tabernacle. Emmy, who loves all animals, had no fear whatsoever of the camel and walked right up to pet him. My friend Naomi was holding her nine month old little girl Marianne (right behind me in the picture). Without Naomi even seeing the camel turned around and started trying to get his lips around Marianne's hair--maybe it looked like straw to him. It looked pretty funny!

Well, Merry Christmas to you! I'm excited to get together with family and friends, but will definitely miss those of you who we won't see this Christmas!