Whitney drove home for Christmas on Thursday, December 20. It was SO nice to have her home. We had a few days together to prepare for Christmas. First on the list was to go visit the Smith family for our annual making of gingerbread houses.
The gingerbread houses turned out awesome.
We had the Ward Christmas party on Saturday morning and then our ward Sacrament meeting program on Sunday. Whitney helped me get ready to host the Morris family for our Christmas Eve celebration. We served appetizers and desserts.
The Morris cousins, Whitney, Ryan and Rachel and Andrew
Tom, Steve, Michelle, Lucille and Charlie
Lucille, Omar, Maya, Charly, Suzy, Amanda, Alivia, and Amanda's boyfriend, Jason.
The talent show featuring Whitney!
Our very chubby Christmas tree
On Christmas morning, the "pickle" ornament is hidden in the tree. Whitney always finds it.
We got quite the surprise when our much anticipated call to Elder Morris occurred. We found out that he was in the hospital in the Dominican Republic and had been for the past 3 days fighting Dengue Fever. We got to talk to him several times during the morning and by the third time we talked to him his spirits were lifted. Thankfully he was released from the hospital the day after Christmas. We continue to pray for a very speedy recovery.
We invited Missy and Jedd and family over for Christmas dinner. We always do a "Christmas Around the World" theme and this year we had food from Holland because that is where Jedd served his mission. We had yummy split pea soup, mashed potatoes and carrots, cinnamon glazed carrots, fresh green beans with Hollandaise sauce, lemon shrimp and yummy cookies from Holland and icecream. We played games and had a wonderful time.
Thursday night we had our annual neighborhood progressive dinner with the Carr's, Manwaring's, and Hathaways. The Manwaring's had appetizer (Manwaring cheese and crackers), we had soup (borscht) and salad, the Hathaway's had main dish (grilled chicken thighs), and the Carr's had dessert (mint trifle) and games. It was a very fun evening. 
Whitney's friend Kubo, flew in on Thursday night just in time for the neighborhood party. On Friday we took him on an Idaho adventure. We drove up to Cascade and spent the night at our friend's cabin. On Saturday we went hotspringing including a very slippery climb down to the hotspring in which I ended up sliding my way down.
After the hotspring, we went snow shoeing and had an awesome picnic featuring Manwaring cheese. We rated it a 7.5 because it was about 15 degrees outside, but the company was superb!
We had a wonderful adventure and can't wait for Whitney to come back for some more fun and games. All in all it was a great Christmas week and we are very thankful that our missionary in the Dominican Republic is feeling better. Here's to a "dengue free" Christmas for 2013.
4 comments:
Looks like you guys had lots of fun. Wait a minute . . . I was there. We did have fun! In fact, now that I remember, we had copius amounts of fun. It was all just plain awesome! My advice to Taylor? "I've got a (Dengue) fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!!" Let's all pray for more cowbell.
Wow. Such a great post! Your Christmas Eve and Christmas Day food looks so yummy and fun! I wish Whitney had come to my house for Christmas. All that snow makes me kind of jealous, believe it or not. How come you didn't mention the hot naked nookie going on in the hot spring right next to you? Now THAT'S copious amounts of fun!!
Looks like you had a great Christmas except for Elder Morris - I am so sorry that he has been so ill! We will continue to pray for his speedy recovery! Your trip to the mountains and hot springs looks like a true adventure!
First, so sorry to hear about the Dengue fever - sure hope he's better now! You will probably remember last Christmas for a long time, not only because of this, but because of all of the great things the rest of your family did together. LOVE the pics, especially all of the cute ones of the Smiths. Everything looks and sounds so fun, except maybe the hot springs adventure! Yikes, you are so brave!
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