Gingerbread Houses

Every holiday we love building and decorating gingerbread houses.  This year Cal and Elden had some friends over to do houses.  Later that evening a friend of ours and her daughter came to do gingerbread houses with all of us. 


The scrap pile is used a lot!


Normally I put out bowls of candy.  This year I divided it all out which I think I may do again next year.  We all had plenty of candy to decorate!




Cal with his friend Isaac, and Elden with his friends Kale and Michael.


Gingerbread house construction round two!








Our friend Rachel.














Of course we went skiing again!  Clark and Lee did a ski lesson together, which was good.  Clark was not interested in skiing, but no way was he giving up yet.  After the lesson with Lee, Clark was good to go!








We had a special church Sacrament-only Sunday meeting on December 23rd for Christmas. It was my favorite church Christmas yet.  The congregation sung a few songs, there were a few musical numbers, one short testimony and one regular talk about Joy to the World and how it's a song about the second coming and not Christmas.  One of my favorite parts was listening to a music professor from the other ward sing O Holy Night. He did such a magnificent job! I hope they have him sing every year. In the Marshall Branch in Minnesota Brother Suzuki would sing that every Christmas season as well at church--a favorite memory of mine.

After church we stayed for the first part of our friend Lincoln Briscoe's baptism.  We were able to visit with them at our friend's house, the Liskeys, on Friday night and have dinner. They started talking about eating over cooked chicken bones during dinner. Also about grinding them up and freezing them.  I completely lost my appetite and couldn't eat for a little while.

Once we saw him be baptized we slipped out and drove up to Pennsylvania to celebrate my dad's birthday. His birthday is on Christmas Eve, so we celebrated a day early. My friend gave me this yummy treat at church!