Christmas December 2015

It seems a couple members of our family are trying to post more often, me included.  I decided I should get a January one out... mostly cuz I have some ramping up to Christmas pictures I thought I might share.

First our tree.  Amy and Sarah got us all tree permits so we all went out to cut them down.

Daisy is ready to go...

I didn't get any pictures of us out there, but here is our tree...

there is a bit of an optical illusion going on.. how big is the tree?

It was pretty big, Emily and I decided we wanted to go wide this year just because we could... The sheets were to catch the pitch dripping.

One Sunday Amy wanted family pictures (Shown in her Christmas letter and blog) so Emily and Aaron tried to get in on the action...

They are not very good at it.. :)

Different groups of us went down at different times to see the sights on Temple Square...

 Millie is Clark and Joanna's cute little girl.  Amy babysits her a few times a week..

 This was the candy display at Macy's... it was fun to look at but really we just wanted to eat it!

 Joseph Smith Memorial Building...

 Trying out the big chairs!

They have a pretty cool display of Creches around the world but I only got a couple pictures...

Told Gage to sing with them.

I think this picture is from Thanksgiving when we went down with Nathan and family... this is the only picture I took then.

This year Emily wanted to celebrate Hanukkah (fire!) so Aaron made us a nice Menorah.  I had been looking to buy a menorah but couldn't find a nice one quick enough and then it was Sunday... now we have our very own unique candle holder :)

Yes, Aaron and Ems were playing "Away in a Manger" in front of the Christmas tree standing over our Menorah.  We pride ourselves on our diversity.

Funny story, Hanukkah only lasted about 3 days in our house,.. then we skipped to the end.

Since Amy is the choir director, Emily said we needed to have a choir party and eat posole so I made posole out of our field corn which was way fun!

Next time though I won't pick off the tip of each individual corn seed.  It is supposed to help them "bloom" in the soup while they cook (pop open and spread out) but less than 50% did so. They taste the same bloomed or not so next time I won't bother.

It tasted awesome if I do say so myself :) Most choir people who tried it that night enjoyed it as well, along with the sour cream and cheese. Amy's rolls got et up too.

I didn't appreciate posole/hominy that much growing up. I know, New Mexican blasphemy! but I did grow to love it as an adult and now it tastes like home. Let me tell you, nothing tastes like posole from your own corn.

We also got quite a bit of snow leading up to the holidays which required breaking out the tractor to do tractory things.

 Two different days, same big tractor...

Now Jared has a log he attaches to the back and heads out to the field to push snow around.  It must be fun because he keeps doing it!  He also got the cub (the medium tractor) up and running so he could move it to the front yard and put lights on it.  It's still proudly sitting out where all can see!

I have a few Christmas pictures but I will change the title to this post and put those in the next post.