Christmas Aftermath!

So it's been a busy time.  Isn't it always busy?  Yes, I don't know how anyone could be bored when there is always so much to do and so little time in which to do it.

I am going to back track just a bit, first.  I somehow overlooked posting on Brian's birthday.  Here is a shot of that:

Opening presents.  We all love that!  You can see that Brian's birthday is around Thanksgiving by the pumpkin in the foreground and the Pilgrims on the little table.

Then December quickly rolled around and we got to go hear Tyson sing in the Choir at school.  Surrounded by pretty girls, of course! Then the pretty girls left and the boys all looked rather confused because they were not done singing yet.  The pretty girls brought out boutonnieres for all the male singers.

We also had a church Christmas breakfast.  We only had little Grayson and he sang in the Children's chorus.  So lots of Christmas music "events".

Then it was piano recital time!

And we had a Young Women's activity and my class, the Mia Maids were in charge.  They did a great party and it was an Italian pot luck and I would say we were pretty lucky.

And then comes Christmas Eve.  I have been trying to remember to always take a picture before the gifts are opened at which time it looks like a tornado ripped through.  Here is the calm before the storm.  Still couldn't get my dad to smile, though.  Have to work on that one.

Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus are happy to greet the shepherds.

Let the opening begin.  With this I close hoping you all had a wonderful Christmas and will have a very good New Year!

It's Beginning to Look a lot like....Christmas!

So today was our annual trip to the German Markts in the Salt Lake area.  We added a new place to our routine.  It was the "This is the Place" Christkindlmarkt.  Here you see gray petting a baby CAMEL!  He was taking a little snooze.  They sure are cuter when they are little! Haha!

The petting zoo was fun especially for Gray since he discovered we were across the street from the "real" zoo.  Brecklyn is joining in, too.

The bunny was pretty and soft to touch.

Nothing can wake this camel.  We must have our beauty sleep!

I think they all wanted a ride on the camel.  He attracted lots of attention.

Logan and Grayson having some fun!  It looks like a cute scene. And reminds me of a castle we visited in Germany somewhere and they had these and everyone looked like a prince, princess, king or queen.

Looks like Brecklyn has gained a bit of weight around the middle.  It must be the good German food we had for lunch at Siegfried's.

Earlier in the week we had a office Christmas Party hosted by Marion.  She does a fantastic German dinner yearly to ring in the Christmas Season and invites the B1 Library staff and missionaries to eat and enjoy.  And we did!

A little after dinner sing along of German and English carols.

Trudy leads the singers.  And does a pretty good job of it.  Our Japanese missionary sang a Japanese carol too.  He did really well!

Food, glorious food!!!

Always eating!  That's our motto!  Here are Sylvie and Heidi and myself at the department devotional and luncheon.  The devotional was fantastic and the lunch was really good, that is, if you don't mind gaining a few pounds...  Oh well back to the diet!!!!

It was so fun to be together again, the three of us AMIGAS!

These are the missionaries that joined us on the B1 table.  Close to the food!

It wouldn't be a great day without a little selfie or 2!

Then it was back to the cubes where it is also Christmasy, now!

So that was my week, and how was yours????  I hope it was a good one

And it wouldn't be Christmas without my office tree and a special Fritz "bucks" ornament left over from his balloon cubicle debacle. According to Fritz, the Fritz "buck" has gotten some good mileage around the office and if you are nice he might autograph one for you!

Grandma Sonja's Stuff: Sunny Days in St. George, UT.

Grandma Sonja's Stuff: Sunny Days in St. George, UT.: This past weekend was the Baseball Turkey Trot and we had reserved our hotel at St. George and I had taken the time off work.  But the Turke...

Sunny Days in St. George, UT.

This past weekend was the Baseball Turkey Trot and we had reserved our hotel at St. George and I had taken the time off work.  But the Turkey Trot didn't turn out for Tyson's former team and he is now playing high school baseball.  So rather than waste a good vacation and reservation I wanted to go anyway and convinced Spence that we should go and we did!

We drove down and the sky was blue, not a cloud in the sky and nice and warm, but certainly not hot as when we go in the summer months.

We first checked into the hotel and headed to the St. George temple.  Neither of us has ever been to a session, only to the "outside" and the visitor's center.  So it was time to go inside and that was what we did.  It was really nice to be in the first temple that was built in Utah.

This beautiful temple can be see easily from I-15 and is such a bright white that it is just amazing to see.

After we were done, we went and changed and drove to the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a terrible time in history that was a horrible event.

We found the site and here are some pictures.  There is a hill called Dan Sill Hill where there is a monument with the names of all those that died on that day.

It was getting late in the day and it was windy.  Can you tell I was getting cold???

The next day we went to Jacob Hamblin's home and here are some pictures of that.  We learned alot about Utah history on this trip.  Even Spencer learned some new things.

 This is the main entryway as you come in.

 This is the actual saddle Jacob Hamblin used.  It was quite uncomfortable the missionary explained to us.

 One of the main purposes that the Mormons colonized the St. George area was to plant cotton to make clothing.  Here is some cotton above.  The cold weather in the past days made it change colors.

 Here is the back entrance.  The house was built against a small hill and so you leave from what was the upstairs in the front to the main floor in the back.  Kind of interesting.  Jacob Hamblin's wives designed the house on their own as he was away most of the time.  He was a friend to the Indians and helped with the relationships between the Mormons and the Indians.

 Cool wagon, but I wouldn't want to take a trip in that for too long.  Because it took quite a while to get here from Salt Lake in this thing.

From this highway behind the sign, we left to go to a place on my St. George bucket list.  Spencer didn't really want to go.  I kind of REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to go.  It was to the petroglyphs of the Anasazi Indians that lived here and all around about the time of Christ.  2000+ years ago!  Can you believe it?  So that's why I have wanted to see it everytime I went down here.  And finally I did!

It was a total of 4 miles and we walked 2 uphill and 2 downhill.  It was quite a lot of walking.  Took a little while but we made it!

Here are the pictures.

 Starting up the mountain

 It was a somewhat rugged trail but we were real pioneers!

 Be careful where you step!

 Up the mountain we went!

Getting up there!

 The writings were on the faces of the rocks and etched in and scraping off the top layer of the rocks.

 These were big boulders at the top of the mountain.

 Isn't it cool?

 I guess there were a lot of goats and stuff like that.

 Yes, I made it, believe it or not.

 Not too far from the glyphs, was an excavation site that BYU had done and found remnants of a settlement here, pottery, and things like that.

 At the top, looking deep into the valley.  We were really high up there.  It's kind of hard to really tell from the pictures.  But it was quite a drop!

King of the hill!  So we conquered it, marked another item off my bucket list.

That was a fun day.  They we went Christmas shopping.  

The rest of the trip tomorrow!