December Happenings

Some of the things we did during December:

Jared, Emily and I took a trip to SL to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert. It was fun to see Grandma and James singing! We gave the choir two thumbs up, and Natalie Cole was less than impressive...sorry Natalie! Here we are waiting in the freezing cold before the doors were opened.

Emily had her very first orchestra concert. She started playing the violin this school year, and she is picking it up so fast! She really has a lot of talent for music. She sure has learned a lot in 3 short months! It was neat to hear everyone play together - there were over 3o0 kids up there on that stage! An amazing logistical feat! I promise she's in this picture somewhere towards the right side!

We also went to see Santa Claus. Rachel has been completely fascinated with the concept of Santa, and talks about him like they're best friends! One day she told us all, with complete and utter excitement, "Ho Ho's getting happy at me!!" When it came time for the real thing, however, she was a bit more reserved!! Thankfully she didn't freak out, but you can tell she's nervous because she's chewing on her coat!

Caleb, who is Mr. Friendly, was more than happy to go sit on the lap of this strange man dressed in a very bright red suit with a fuzzy, shaggy thing hanging on his face! He was just as happy as could be the whole time, and even had a great big grin on his face! I wasn't able to capture any smiling, though, because I had nervous Rachel hanging on my leg!

And Emily and Josh were more than happy to tell one more person everything they wanted for Christmas, and to get a free candy cane for doing it!

We had an extended Ripplinger family Christmas, where Josh managed to get a goose egg on his head, and upon arriving home, Rachel was one big rash from head to toe! Never did figure out the cause, but thankfully it went away with a dose of Benadryl.

We also had a Larsen family Christmas party at Grandma and Grandpa Farnworth's house. It was fun to get together, but we missed not having Greg and his family there. Within 5 minutes, the kids had re-arranged all the Christmas presents into piles of presents that belonged to each child! We ate some delicious prime rib, and had fun playing in Grandma Farnworth's toys. Here are the kids dressed up in a wig that I remember playing with as a kid!

I made a promise to my mom that I would not post the picture of her posing with the wig on, and I intend to keep that promise! {but if you'd like to see, let me know and I'll email it to you!!}

We also made and decorated a gingerbread mansion! Jared almost burst into laughter when he saw how big the pieces of the house were! Hey - this is my first time ever making houses out of anything besides graham crackers! Cut me some slack! But seriously, it was huge!

And to wrap up the month, we saw a live nativity on Christmas Eve, opened a lot of presents on Christmas day, and reflected on just how thankful we are that our Savior came to earth as a precious baby all those years ago!

We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!!