I just realized.

It's a good thing there are holidays, or I would never take pictures, and never have reason to blog.

Christmas 2011

We had a really fun Christmas this year. Spencer was home, and we decided to go cut down our tree from a farm in Alpine. They only had Blue spruce trees, at least that's all we saw. Have you ever tried to cut down/carry/put in a stand/decorate/water/undecorate/get rid of a Blue Spruce? I'm not sure how long it will take for the rash we all got from the prickly needles to go away, but even Spencer says it's the best tree we ever had. It was huge, and really beautiful!

We made gingerbread houses on Family Night right after Thanksgiving. Tara and Spencer each had a friend join us, and that was it. A pretty small group this year, but fun all the same. Tara later invited the Single's Ward to make houses, and that was a bit more rambunctious. No pictures, though.

Tara and Joe

Spencer and Sarah

Jeny's house and some lady holding it up.

I love all the pensive looks.

Christmas eve was spent here with the kids and the Galloway family. We did our usual cold cuts and french onion soup, and the Galloway's added some Cinnamon Rolls and Wassail. Yummy! We did not have our usual program. I guess Tara and Spencer have decided that only traditions that make Jeny work hard are worth keeping. Instead we sang Christmas carols with Mark, Joe and David playing guitars. That was really pretty fun, especially when we got to "Blue Christmas" and everyone's Elvis came out. We watched Spencer's Christmas program compilation, read the Christmas story and watched the Bishop's Wife. Good times! Of course, I got no pictures. Bummer.

Christmas Morning

This is the only picture I got of people on Christmas morning. I had to wake them all up - again. Maybe my grandkids will be excited enough to get up before me. Sigh.

The End of 2011

New Years Day Right after our New Years celebrations.

Church starts at 9am now, so we decided to break up the houses right after the new year began, at about 1:30am.

Spencer's favorite is to drop the real gingerbread house. He's been doing this since he was about 3.

The mess - cleaned up by all these great smashers. I didn't have to do a thing!

From left to right, Kelsey (Grierson) Long, Joe Galloway, Tara, Sarah Ogden and Spencer.