My 52nd Birthday

The highlight for me on my birthday was getting a family photo with all our kids and grandkiddies. I asked Karrissa to take it with her new camera and told everyone to dress casual in denim and neutrals. It was so painless and over in 10 minutes and I have this great photo right in our very own backyard:

The Richard and Janet Rife Family
December 31, 2009
We even got both dogs, Annie and the Hammer's new puppy, Boston

This is a funny one of the process

Rich gave me ice skates for my birthday. I haven't had my own ice skates since I was 7. I got them for Christmas that year and fell and broke my arm before my 8th birthday and couldn't get baptized for six weeks til I got my cast off.

We had a fun New Year's Eve party with all the Parsons and Rifes; I love that there's always a party on my birthday!

New Windows

The old windows with the nine mini snowmen that Alan and Connor built

Between Christmas and my Birthday/New Year's we got new windows in our home. It was a good chance for me to get the Christmas decorations put away. I love Christmas decorations, but the minute Christmas is over they all become messy junk to me and I just want everything put away and the house clean and back to normal.

It's crazy to look through the windows with no glass!

It was a cold day to have the windows out. But by the end of the day all the new windows were in and looking great. I've been wanting new windows for years and I'm so happy to finally have them. It's so much brighter and warmer in our home now.

Christmas Morning 2009

The Christmas Morning lineup

Michael and his new wheels

Laura is happy about her Project Life gift

Rich totally spoiled me. I gave him some gift ideas and he got me ALL of them. Plus he took the girls shopping at Nordstrom for clothes for me - so fun! I'm a lucky girl to have such a generous and loving husband!

Christmas Eve 2009

Gram reading to Sophie and McKinley

Christmas Eve we had our yummy ham dinner and then our program. Everyone performs and receives a wrapped box of cereal from G & G and we finish with the nativity story read by Gramps and acted out by the great-grandkids. It's awesome that we now have enough great-grandchildren to act out the story. We had a dry spell there for a few years when the grandchildren were too old.

Laura and Mary singing "Mary's Lullaby" by Kurt Bestor - a Christmas Eve tradition

The Buchanan family performing their song

All the Great-Grandkiddies singing


Joseph and Mary with baby Jesus

Shepherd Andrew

Annie represents the animals at the birth,
Uncle Keith as the star,
McKinley as the angel,
Andrew and Kylie as shepherds.


Ayden and Connor join as wisemen

December 16-23, 2009

TODD'S BIRTHDAY & BUCHANAN'S ARRIVAL IN UTAH

Uncle Toddy with Andrew and Ayden

Our December family celebrations started on December 16th - Todd's 23rd birthday and the arrival of Laura and her three cute kiddies from NY. (Alan flew in a couple of days later) We all went to the airport and then to dinner in Salt Lake and it was great to have everyone together. We had so many people that we had to have a "boys" and a "girls" table. Connor and Ayden were the best of friends again immediately, and so were Sophie and Abby. Just makes a Nana's heart happy to see her grandchildren enjoying each other!

Jenny and Laura just happened to be wearing the same shirt when Laura arrived

KURT BESTOR CONCERT

Rich spoiled us with tickets to Kurt Bestor's Christmas Concert. The only time we could all go was to the concert in Ogden, so Mary and Logan graciously offered to have dinner at their house before and got a babysitter to stay with the kiddies at their house. We had a lovely evening of wonderful Christmas music.

CHRISTMAS JAMMIES

The next event was on Sunday, December 20th when we were all together for Sunday dinner. And since we weren't able to all be together at the same time on Christmas Eve/Day (due to those pesky in-laws - just kidding, my daughters have wonderful in-laws and I'm happy to share!) we decided to open the Christmas jammies that night. I got all the gkiddies the same striped zip-up pjs and they loved them. They called themselves the

"Zip-Up Team"

The girlie-cues in their new Christmas jammies
(I couldn't manage to get the six boys together in their jammies)

HCT'S A CHRISTMAS CAROL

We continued our annual tradition of going to the Hale Center Theater production of "A Christmas Carol." This year we got to add Abby to the group. (4 is the magic age) We had a wonderful time. I never get tired of seeing Ebeneezer Scrooge change from a miserly grump into a generous and loving man ~ gives me hope for my own weaknesses!

THE POLAR EXPRESS
aka Heber Creeper

Papa was excited to take the "zip-up team" and their Moms on the Polar Express this year. It was a fun evening and we all enjoyed the train ride and seeing Santa. To complete the theme for the evening we had dinner at Dairy Keen in Heber - the home of the train

Heading for the train

Sophie Lynn

Andrew Rife

Papa and Abby

Ayden, Connor, and Abby

Papa and Andrew

Sophie singing a solo for the train

Connor singing a solo for the train, with "Rudy" our reindeer hostess

The Moms
GINGERBREAD (GRAHAM CRACKER) HOUSES

Laura glued houses together out of graham crackers for the kids to decorate. I couldn't resist posting all these darling pictures:

I wonder if Connor ate any of the icing?:)

Abby is happy, Papa is eating pinenuts, and Sophie?

Good Morning

I spent this morning with him:

Here:

Attending two weddings; one for a ward member and one for one of our missionaries.

Which made me think about a morning I spent with him here:

Thirty-three years and one month ago today.

That was a good morning!
And so many good mornings since then because of that one.
And so many good mornings to look forward to.

It's All Good!

Hurray! It's Time To Ski Again!

I went skiing today for the first time this season. It was great! The first time is a little scary since I haven't done this for nine months, but the snow was good and it was wonderful to be back on my skis.

There are still some leaves on the trees, it's kind of like skiing in the fall?

I'm going to use my other blog - which is my gardening journal in the summer, to record my skiing stats for this season.

Christmas Parties

The beautiful table setting at the dinner party

Friday night we had a lovely evening. We were invited to a Christmas party for Rich's work. The company was great, the food was delicious, I mean REALLY delicious, (it was catered by Marvelous Catering) and the music just made the evening. While we were eating a strings double quartet of BYU students played classical and Christmas music. After dinner we played pictionary, women vs. men. I was quite proud when I beat Rich in drawing "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." Then later in the evening we met in a lovely library and enjoyed the vocal talents of 9 BYU singers singing Christmas songs in amazing harmony. And we received yummy gift baskets of holiday treats and the pretty flower arrangments on the table as we left for home It was just a lovely evening!

These lovely arrangements were our placecards

This picture does not do justice to the beauty of the arrangment!

All our gift goodies

Then Saturday morning was our Ward Christmas Party. We had another delicious meal ~ French toast from Magleby's, ham and hashbrowns.

Santa came and all the children lined up to get their treats

The Primary children sang and played chimes

Even the Bishop got to sit on Santa's knee!