Celebrate!

Celebrate is a good work for this particular Christmas season!  Since it's our first year to really be in our new house, we decided to celebrate with a big...and I mean really BIG Christmas tree!  We got a great deal on it off Craig's list.  We knew we needed large but we weren't quite expecting it to be that large!  The guys who sold it to us lives just around the corner in the next development and just happened to have a truck to deliver it for us. Are we happy to have Eli and Julie around to help with the decos!  It came with lights (approximately a million) and but the base alone weighs 200 pounds. You should have seen dad and I giggling as we tired to move all the furniture and drag it across the floor to the middle of the room without scratching the bamboo. We were on our backs, pulling it along inch by inch until we eased it into place.  It's pretty fun now that it's in place and "decked" a bit although we do have a few extra deep gouges in our floor from trying to get the tin star to say on the top...never could make it happen!  Sharing it with you who will be coming home for Christmas will be fun, but for those who aren't (Pothiers, Shumways, Tal and Charity here's peek, although pictures just don't do it justice and especially because I can't find time to figure out how to make blog pictures BIG! 

 

 

 

Next reason for celebration...finally...SNOW!  Looks like it's going to be a white Christmas! 

 

Definitely the best thing to celebrate this weekend was Jonah's graduation!   We are so proud of he who with the help of Aja and Craig Peterson at USU was finally able to grab ahold of that crazy diploma.  It was so great to see him "walk" albeit through the snow...kind of a family tradition for that family. Same thing happened on their wedding on March 10th!

 

 

Thank goodness for Eli (again) to represent the siblings! 

 

When Dad graduates, the whole family graduates! 

 

 

After eight years of "hard labor"!

It's always great to have cute little Grandma to celebrate with!

During the graduation, Ana accidentally dropped Aja's Iphone down this grate.  Luckily we were able to get it off and lower Ana down about five feet to retrieve it!  Never a dull moment!

 

After the ceremonies we celebrated at a new restaurant called Hamiltons that was fabulous!  Karen happened to be in town to visit Patrick and check on Grandma and Craig (who helped Jonah get in touch with the right people to walk this thing through) and his wife Maradee joined us as well!  So fun!

 

 

(Sorry, such bright light coming from those windows!)

It was great to have this adorable family with us for the weekend. On Friday I got to take care of Elsie while Jonah and Aja, Ana and Camden were treated to some ski instructions from Kevan.  A great time was had by all.  That night was our ward party so we got actually have kids with kids at a Christmas Party for the first time in years! 

Aniston was off on her own getting ready for the magic show!

This was truly the beginning of the Christmas season for us!  Eli and Dad went to a Jazz game last night and we had so much fun with them earlier in the week when we finally got to see their cute, spacious new apartment beautifully decorated with lots of class!  They're having a terrific year as well.  They have just decided to go ahead with the Imagine Learning Conference in January so we get to have Noah and Kristi stay on for a week after Christmas for that.  Are we lucky or what?!!  Can't wait to see many you in the next two weeks.  These holidays are truly days to celebrate!