Christmas Part 3

Today we celebrated Christmas with my family.  We decided to celebrate on Monday because it made better sense with everyone's schedules. We had our traditional brunch and the kids got even more presents.  It was crazy but a good time.  After having such a great relaxing day yesterday we had a crazy busy day today.

Quent and I stopped at several stores on the way home looking for a good buy on Christmas clearance.  We didn't find much which was ok.  We hope everyone had a great holiday season!

Dickens Festival

We had the opportunity to go to the Dickens Festival this past weekend.  Morgan and Alyssa were dancing at the festival and I've always had a great time looking around the festival at all the random items being sold. 

We were able to finish up our Christmas shopping at the festival and enjoy the season.  We hit up Red Iguana after the festival for dinner.  Oh how I love some good mexican food. 

A trip to the Blue Bird

I have wanted to go to the Blue Bird since moving to Mantua.  The Blue Bird is a throw-back restaurant in Logan complete with soda fountains and homemade candy.  Friday night we had my faculty Christmas party and it happened to be at the Blue Bird. 

We had a great time (and the food was great) at the party, it's always fun to see the coworkers away from school.  We had a fun white-elephant exchange which at one point I had an amazing Gene Simmons doll.  Unfortunately for me, I didn't get to keep it for very long.

It was a pretty quiet weekend for us, next weekend is action packed with more holiday fun.  It's a good thing the holiday's only come once a year!

Annual Gingerbread House Party

My family celebrated my mom's birthday, Quent's birthday and Melissa's birthday at the annual gingerbread house party.  Everyone got into action this year building their gingerbread houses.  We had a great time with the family and are already planning what we're going to do next year.

Let Freedom Ring

I was just reading what I posted from last year's fourth of July holiday and I guess I can say "DITTO" from last year. Quent worked, my parents came up, we went to the town breakfast and the Brigham City fireworks.  If you want to keep reading here are the details:

We started the weekend off by heading down to Perry City's fireworks on Friday night, although once we were down there we found out it was Saturday night.  OOPS, I guess I read the paper wrong.

So on Saturday we did go to the Perry fireworks, it was fun to get out and celebrate the day.  Sunday my parents came up for dinner, it was fun to visit with them as we haven't seen them since Memorial Day weekend.

Today we went to the town breakfast, yummy pancakes, ham and eggs and Quent worked all day (as he did all weekend).  We are contemplating going to the Brigham City fireworks tonight but after not getting a lot of sleep last night we might not making -- oh and did I mention that the wind is blowing like CRAZY?  If that doesn't stop I'm guessing no fireworks.

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness.  You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.  ~ Erma Bombeck 

Here are a few pictures I took at the fireworks show tonight in Brigham City.  (Note the picture from above is NOT my picture).  The pictures were not taken with a tripod, I was experimenting with taking pictures of fireworks for the first time, a tripod would have been excellent but you gotta make do with what you have!

Happy New Year!!!

Quent and I had a pretty quiet New Years Eve/New Years.  Friday night we went to dinner in Logan and hit both Walmarts in Cache Valley looking for Christmas clearance stuff. We ran into an old friend of Quent's and I expect him to be visiting us at the hatchery real soon.

We watched the ball drop, or was it Snookie?, on MTV at 9:59 our time, that was good enough for Quent as he was off to bed not long after.  I stayed up a bit longer watched the local and national (prerecorded) NYE festivities while dozing in the Lazy Boy.  I woke up at 11:59 just in time to see the fireworks display in Salt Lake on TV and then it was back to sleep!

Today we hit the Brigham City Walmart and scoured the clearance toy section for birthday gifts later in the year and managed to find a BBQ on sale for a great price.  Our grill died a few months ago and it's been all indoor cooking ever since.  We're going to try out the new grill tomorrow afternoon in what we hope will be double-digit temperatures (our high today was about 10). We did go to a movie (Little Fockers), it was funny and  it was good day out.

We hope everyone has a great 2011.  We had a great time in 2010, a few laughs, a few tears, a loss or two and a lot of gains.  We hope everyone is looking forward to a happy and healthy 2011.

Christmas Day

The day didn't start out as early as I had thought it would. We were at Joe's house and the kids didn't get up until well after 7 a.m. It was fun to see the kids open their presents and see how excited they were for each and every gift. The best part of the morning came when Joe and Joy both gave each other a popcorn maker.

We went to my mom and dad's for brunch later that morning and spent time with the entire family (Dale's family excluded) eating, eating and eating and opening more presents.

After we let my mom's house we stopped by and visited Joyce and Kerry on the way home and made it home by 5 p.m. It was a busy weekend but we wouldn't have it any other way. The holidays are meant to be spent with family and that's exactly what we did.

As for Quent and I we bought a new camera as our present to ourselves.  We "unwrapped" it before all the festivities began! 

 Stop taking pictures Aunt Cindy, I've got presents to open

 Morgan's "iPod" and TJ's Leapster

 Morgan was excited to see her dad open a present

 Popcorn anyone?

 The aftermath at Joe and Joy's house -- and Yes that is TJ's Cow Pillow Pet

 Morgan and Alyssa got a stencil set from Grandma and Grandpa

 TJ & Patrick got really cool trucks from Grandma and Grandpa

 Alyssa opening presents

Morgan and Alyssa got digital camera's from Aunt Cindy & Uncle Quent. (They were the hit of the day)

Video of Morgan and TJ opening their Santa presents

Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve with Quent's family -- just as we have done since 2006.  We went to Christmas Eve Mass in Layton and then out to eat.  We went to Red Robin this year which was a change from past years but I love Red Robin so it was a welcome change.  We went from dinner back to Joyce's house to open presents and to talk to Nancy and her family via Skype.  After we opened presents we went to my brother Joe's house so we would be there to watch the kids open their presents Christmas morning.

Busy Weekend Ahead

Christmas will be away from home this year as Quent is not tied to the hatchery this year.  We will head south to Quent's mom's house for Christmas Eve and will spend Christmas morning with my family.  We'll be back home Christmas night.  We hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday and that you may remember the reason for the season!
 

Fun in Vegas

In and out in under 48 hours, in my opinion that's the perfect time frame for Vegas. We took my parents to the Las Vegas Bowl (Utah vs. Boise State) for their Christmas present from all the kids.  Jim and Melissa, Rick and Ashley, Quent and myself joined my parents on the trip.  We stayed at the Rio, hit up the famous Las Vegas Strip, a couple of buffets and of course the Coke store.  What more could you want?  Well a big ol' win over Boise State would have been the icing on the cake.  But you can't have everything right?  The game was not so good but the rain let up so we weren't soaked.  A bit muddy walking through the parking lot but dry.  The forecast was for rain all day Tuesday, all day Wednesday and was supposed to clear up on Thursday.  Lucky for us it stopped raining cats and dogs around 3 p.m. and sprinkled a little bit at kick-off at 5 p.m. the rest of the game was dry.

Thursday we stopped at the Paris Casino for breakfast and then it was go time.  Due to some road repair work from flash flooding in southern Utah we were delayed a bit coming home.  All-in-all a successful trip!

Here are a couple of pictures from the trip.

A polar bear made from carnations (the workers were replacing the bad carnations.)

Quent might be a True Blue Aggie, but he sure does look good in Utah Red!