We have been so busy with school and Christmas preparations, we have hardly had time to keep up with our blog at all. We started out the month by buying a Christmas tree. It was fun to look at all the trees at the lot and pick out a small one for our apartment. We came home, stuck it in the tree stand we borrowed from my parents, and decorated it with lights and ornaments I have collected over time. We think it looks splendid.
I even got my cockatiel Boots to sit in the tree long enough for the picture. He is the yellow bird in the tree to the right of me that looks like it is about ready to fly off.
We have attended a couple of Christmas parties so far. The first was with our ward, and it included a white elephant gift exchange. Luckily, my parents let us use a hideous ceramic monkey on a surf board that they had received last year at a white elephant party. This lovely piece also could act as a bank. It turned out to be a popular item in the gift exchange and was traded until it could be traded no longer.
We also attened an AlphaGraphics work Christmas party last week. We went to Magelby's for dinner, and during the party, the owner, Larry gave away nice prizes. Larry would pick random questions and critera for winning gift certificates to various places. He asked us things like the capital of South Dakota, the greatest weight of one of the pressmen, the highest high school GPA, and the lowest high school GPA. I got a $30 gift certificate for the highest high school GPA. We also had an employee gift exchange, which was also fun. At the end, there was a drawing of sorts for 3 grand prizes: a digital camera, $100 to Chef's Table, and a large LCD flat screened TV.
Other than that, Nate has been busy with school, and we both have been working on making Christmas goodies for people, caroling, shopping for family and for each other, and looking forward to Christmas. We have tickets to fly to California this Thursday, where we will spend Christmas with Nate's family.
Penguins
Red Pandas
Graffias
Ostrich and Zebra
Chimpanzee
Lemur
Rebecca going down the slide in a park across the street from the zoo with our neice McKenzie.
We also visited the Jelly Belly Factory and In-n-Out Burger. We took a turn making dinner for the whole family and made some gingerbread cookies as well. My favorite holiday dessert though, was the Peppermint Dazzler. With a name like that, it's hard not to like. It's a frozen dessert with a graham cracker crust, followed by a layer of creamy chocolate, then a layer of whipped cream with marshmallows and finally a topping of crushed peppermint candies. Hmmm-mmmm!
Another fun part of Christmas this year was our gift giving trickery. We got my brother Timothy a computer game called Peggle that we really like. We wanted to get him excited about it and at least familiar with the game before Christmas day so he would understand what it was we were getting him. So, before Christmas day, we showed him the trial version of the game. He really liked it and even started hinting to us that it would be a good Christmas present. We pretended to be disappointed saying we had already gotten him a Christmas present. It worked better than we could have imagined. It was the most popular present that anyone got!
