The Christmas season this year was magical and filled with wonderful service opportunities! With Ryan being the Stake President of our new Kingman Stake, we decided as a family to visit elderly and home bound stake members and play Christmas music for them! We hauled the piano keyboard, cellos, violins and music stands into church members home and played mini concerts for them. It was a wonderful opportunity for our children and we made wonderful connections and created bonds of love with the members we visited. Kingman is filled with wonderful, kind people!
We also performed at our first retirement home. We combined that with another family we love- the Wilcock's, and it was a great experience. I'm sad I have zero pictures of any of that.
We ended Christmas Eve with dinner at our favorite restaurant, The Gourmet Room. We go there every Christmas Eve. Its a tradition!
and Jace always orders the King Crab legs and Kjersti always gets their famous lime sorbet for dessert!
At home after dinner we read the account of the Christmas story from the bible and exchanged family gifts.
Then Santa came when the house was quiet.
This is Gracies haul.
Gracie's haul continued. Her surprise was a newer version of an iphone.
Kjersti's surprise was this darling light blue wool coat from Anthro. It came on sale and I was able to surprise her! She didn't put it on her list because it was over her budget, but I knew she loved it and looked darling in it!
She also started collecting Maileg bunnies this year. And of course JellyCat stuffed animals are a big thing.
Jaces life wouldn't be complete without another stuffed goose. Did I tell you my pet geese died this year? I'm still devastated. They got killed by predators.
Ryan and I got a few items of clothes and some books etc. Ryan also surprised me by having Robertson and Sons send me some nice violin bows to try, but I sent them all back. I could not select one.
Everyone needs the Hippee Funkee Monkee!
And of course life wouldn't be complete without without military grade night vision goggles. Also known as NVG's. Jaces hope is to upgrade one of the lenses for a "Thermal" lens. So you can also see heat at night. If the end of the world comes, find Jace. He's your man. With his bullet proof humvee and the NVTs and everything else he has, you'll be in good hands.
Did I tell you he's been living up in Rexburg, ID going to BYUI?
He's all grown up and working on mission papers. He's been praying about when to put them in, and he's thinking he'll go this summer. Wahhh! I'm not ready.
in the meantime, I do have to say--looking at the stars, even on a cloudy night--the NVG's were incredible!!!!
