Christmas Recap

Kamryn with her cousin at our Shingleton Family gathering Christmas night.

My siblings all meet at my parent's house on Christmas night. We had an easy dinner of sub sandwiches and all sorts of yummy sides. Then the cousins exchanged their presents (we draw names every year) and then siblings exchanged their presents (we just rotate down each year) and then gave presents to our parents. It was a pretty mellow evening and we all enjoyed the visiting.

Taylor with his Nano iPod.
He received a combined birthday/Christmas present from his parents' this year. Now if we can just get our computer up to speed to recognize it. There's always a present that has problems.

Kamryn showing off her new princess nightgown.

Jared showing off his superheros jammies.

Taylor excited to open a present from his grandparents.
It was a basketball set for his room.

Jared showing off the cool football shirt he got in his stocking from Santa.

Taylor in his new "moon" chair that Santa brought.

Justin and Brooke on Christmas morning sitting by what Santa brought them.

We had a great Christmas. Everyone finally was up about 9:30 except for Justin and we all went down to wake him up. We always take our time on Christmas and spread out the opening for as long as possible. Each of the kids take turns opening what Santa brought them and then we move on to what each person got for members of the family.
Paul's parents and my parents joined us for brunch and some more present opening. And then Paul's sister's family joined us during the afternoon. It was a very kickback day and very enjoyable.
At 4:00 when we were getting ready to go over to my parents and loading up presents to take over there the kids noticed we still hadn't opened some big presents that were to our family from their dad. Everyone had a present to open and it was a new home theater system for our family room downstairs. It even included a big screen flat plasma tv. The kids were very excited about that and very surprised. We've enjoyed watching a few movies on it and the kids have fun playing their video games on the big screen. Paul really has been enjoying the new stereo and listening to good music and watching his favorite concerts.
The day after Christmas is my favorite - we stayed home all day and just enjoyed all the new toys. Most of us stayed in our jammies all day. I love just hanging out with the fam and spending time together. It was nice to be able to stay in all day while the snow piled up outside. We ended up getting over a foot of new snow.

Paul's Work Holiday Party

Paul and I at the Layton Company Holiday Party. It was at the SouthTowne Convention Center. We had a yummy dinner and enjoyed watching some people win the raffle prizes (not us this year) and then enjoyed an awesome concert by Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband.
(sorry about the picture quality, I really struggle with scanning photos.)

Kamryn's 1st Dance Recital

Kamryn had her first dance recital last week. It was at Taylorsville High School and her class was very first on the program. They did a tap dance to "Up on the Housetop". I took video with our regular video camera and haven't figured out how to get it on the computer (I'll have to have Paul do it).
She did a great job - better than I expected she would do. All those little girls looked so cute up there. Unfortunately I had to leave right after her class finished so I could make it to Paul's work party but Brooke and Jared stayed to watch it. Brooke said that after watching all the dances Jared said he wanted to take dance lessons.

Just waiting

So I was up late (2:45 this year as opposed to 4:00 last year, so it's getting better) and really wanted to sleep in but woke up at 7:00 and couldn't go back to sleep. I gave myself until 7:30 to get back to sleep or I was getting up. Well, I"m up. I had a shower and I've been on the computer working on a last minute gift. I'm not surprised that everyone has slept in, except maybe Taylor. So I'll work on updating some posts I've wanted to do until someone gets up.

9999

Kamryn and Jared on Christmas Eve

This was image number 9999 taken on my camera before it started over on the numbering.
Aren't they cute?

Merry Christmas

Christmas Eve 2008
Kamryn, Brooke, Taylor, Jared, Justin

Bath Time Conversation

I'm not sure if I should share this story online but I'm going to anyway.
Tonight while I was getting the bath filled up for Jared and Kamryn they were getting undressed. Jared was standing next to me, totally naked and playing with his "unit".
He said to me "girls don't have these."
I said, "No, they don't. Just boys do."
Then he said, "Kamryn's is in her bum."
I had to leave the bathroom to compose myself and then share the story with their dad and big brother who really laughed about it.

Family Talent Show

For the 2nd year in a row we had a family talent show with my family. We had a nice dinner first and then whoever wanted to participate in the talent show could. We started out with this cute number by Jake, Kyson, Kamryn and Jared. Thanks to Jenny for letting us borrow her bells.

Kamryn's 1st performance

For kamryn's first little dance performance her class did their Christmas dance at Macey's grocery store in West Jordan. It's a very crazy venue with customers being annoyed about the inconvience but Kamryn seemed oblivious to that, thank goodness. I really didn't expect her to do anything so I was pleasantly surprised when she did several parts of their cute little Christmas dance (to the music of Up on the House Top). Hopefully it helped prepare her for the big christmas recital this Friday at Taylorsville High School.

Christmas Luncheon

This is my great group of friends since 6th grade. We always get together for a Christmas party, sometimes at someone's home and sometimes at a restaurant. This year we met at The Garden Restaurant downtown for lunch. The food was delicious but the company was even better. It's always great talking with these friends about our lives, our families, our ups and downs. I owe so much to these great ladies and am so grateful to their friendships and positive influences in my life. Merry Christmas and much love to you all!

The Festival of Trees

Kamryn and Jared sitting on Santa's lap at the Festival of Trees. They were very excited to sit on his lap and talk to him. They both told him what they want - castles, a pink one for Kamryn and a blue one for Jared.

This is the famous "glass" tree that sold for $26,000. It was pretty amazing.

This is the tree that my cousins did. They've done one every year for over 10 years I think.

I usually go to see the trees with my sister but she had a baby the week before and wasn't up to it this year. So I just took my little buddies and went. We had a good time looking at all the pretty trees and talking to santa.

December Festivities

I was really going to try hard to keep up with posts during December but I've failed miserably. It's been a very busy month so far and this week is the busiest yet - we have some type of activity every night plus the regular activities of volleyball and basketball practices, piano and dance lessons.
I should be heading out to my sister's for the day (what I do every Tuesday in connection with Kamryn's dance lesson) but it's snowing pretty hard right now and Jared and Kamryn are still asleep so I thought I would take the time to catch up.
Some of our other activities that don't have pictures:

• Paul's birthday on the 7th - he didn't want us to get him anything so that's what we did. Jared gave him a wrapped box with nothing in it.
• Also on the 7th, we watched and enyoyed the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional.
• Our ward's Christmas party, which we attended for five minutes. We were very sad to have to miss it but had to host a group down from Paul's Idaho hospital project at the Jazz game. at least we got to sit in the suite and have a yummy dinner.
• On the 6th we attended an extended Shingleton family dinner at the Joseph smith Memorial Building. It was a yummy dinner and fun to visit with our cousins. It was crazy trying to get there with everything that was going on downtown that night.
• On the 15th, the Jones Family Christmas dinner. This year it was adults only and we gathered at the Lion House. It was fun talking to cousins again and especially hearing from Krystal, my 25 year old cousin who just spent the past 2 years serving in the Peace Corp in Senegal Africa. She assignment was to help the villagers where she was assigned to plant trees.

Bank Account

I received this email the other day and really liked it so I thought I'd share it.

YOUR BANK ACCOUNT

A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o'clock, with his hair fashionably combed and shaved perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. His wife of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready.
As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of his tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on his window.'I love it,' he stated with the enthusiasm of an eight- year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.
'Mr. Jones, you haven't seen the room. Just wait.
''That doesn't have anything to do with it,' he replied..'
Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged . It's how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it.
'It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice. I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.
Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I'll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I've stored away. Just for this time in my life.
Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw from what you've put in.So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories!

Christmas Music

So, now that it's the official Christmas season I've really been listening to my favorite Christmas music. I thought I'd share some of my favorites:

• Believe - Josh Groban
• A Baby Changes Everything - Faith Hill (new this year)
• The Best Gift - Barbra Streisand
• Don't Save It All For Christmas - Celine Dion
• Sending You a Little Christmas - Jim Brickman with Kristy Starling
• When Love Came Down - Point of Grace (I love the whole album, A Christmas Story)
• Song for a Winter's Night - Sarah McLachlan
• Christmas Children - SheDaisy (also love this album, Brand New Year)
• all of THE FORGOTTEN CAROLS
• The First Nowell from The Mormon Tabernacle Choir's album "Rejoice and Be Merry"