Opening Night

 
Opening night at Festival of Trees is for auctioning off the trees. All money collected goes directly to help kids at Primary Children's Medical Center.  We usually go to dinner with our husbands while the auction is going on and then after its over, we are invited as decorators, to attend the official lighting ceremony which kicks off the week long event where the public can come and view the trees.

This year we went to Ruby River and enjoyed a delicious steak and good conversation.  We then walked across the street (parking is crazy) to see our tree lit.

Our tree sold this year! Yea. Secretly, that is my greatest fear that our tree won't sell.  Every year there are a few trees that still have the dreaded 'for sale' sign.  But ours turned out beautiful again this year!

Festival of Trees Delivery Day

Yea! Its finally here. We delivered the tree to the South Towne Expo Center today.  We got a ton of snow over the weekend.  Luckily, it has stopped snowing this morning. And hopefully, they will get the roads plowed before we head down the hill with the tree.

We rent a U-Haul truck to deliver the tree. And the UHaul guy called this morning, and said "It snowed!  It will be awhile before I can dig out your truck."  True, True.  But he said it, like it was a surprise. Like he got to work and it had only snowed in the UHaul lot, not all over the valley for two days. Shocking! It snowed all over the valley AND on the Uhaul lot.  You would have thought he would be a little bit better prepared.

You can see some of the Craziness that goes on during Decorating Day.  Some decorators come and spend the whole day - bring their lunch and decorate their tree there at the Expo Center. We prefer to break it up and have it all done before that day.

Eventually,  we did get the truck and down the hill and all set up. Pretty fast too!  The FOT helpers helped us get our tree stand in, and the re-bar down the middle of the trunk.
So set up went really fast! yea!

 We added our picture on the back of the Gingerbread house in the gingerbread ornament! Surprise!

All Done!!!

Big Snow!

Well, it looks like we are getting ready for Christmas.  We probably had a little over 8-9"  of snow over the weekend.  Lots of shoveling to do!

But since it is still early in the year, the boys
(Randy included) are still eager to shovel. And make lots of snow creatures!

It is so deep, it covered our Candy Cane lights!

It sure looks pretty with the Christmas Lights on!!!

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, Grandma B and the Buskirks came over.  It was really fun to get together with everyone.  The cousins had a great time together! and we enjoyed a great meal and delicious desserts.

The kids had a great time making their own place mats for dinner. Thanks Grandma.

The day after Thanksgiving we got up at 4 am to shop.

 No really... Not Allen. But yikes!! It is early!!!

Everything we got up early for was gone by the time we got to the stores. By 5:30, we decided there were too many people and not enough good deals to stand in line. So, we went to breakfast at IHOP and back home to bed!

Later in the day, we met up with the Buskirks to go see Tangled.  It was a great movie!! loved it!! especially the horse!

Topher's First Scout Campout

Topher had the unique opportunity to go camping with the Boy Scouts while only being 11 years old.  Provided, of course, that Dad went with him.  So Topher went with the Deacons - which includes Brett. So it was a lot of fun for the boys to go together!



They brought cake for dessert ( in the dutch ovens) and the Boys were responsible for making breakfast the next morning. No problem for my boys!

Topher is soooo excited to go!!  They were planning to launch rockets on Saturday. But it was too windy to launch rockets. Bummer.  The boys had worked hard on building their rockets and  getting ready  to launch them.



Too windy to hand out in the West Desert for ANY reason.  Too much sand... Blowing sand... ick.  But overall, a very fun trip!!

Preparing for FOT

It is time again for the Festival of Trees which benefits Primary Children's Medical Center.  We applied for and got a spot over the summer, then in October we have to officially register and name our tree.  That is really hard to do when you have no idea what type of items will be for sale come Christmas time.

So we named our tree " Christmas Magic."





We have been doing lots of shopping and decided to do a Gingerbread Theme.  We got together at my house to pre-decorate the tree. So on "decorating day" (the Monday after Thanksgiving) all we have to do is deliver our tree to the Sotuh Townes Exoo Center.

The Decorators - Gwen, Shauna and Cortney.

Yea! what fun!!

We also made a gingerbread house- to go with our gingerbread people.  Gotta love power tools!!

We Love our Tree! Gotta take lots of pictures!

National Honor Society

Congrats to Rob, who was inducted into the National Honor Society today.  He had to have excellent grades,  do community service, and apply and then  be accepted.  Yea Rob!!

 Great Job, Rob!!

The School had a nice ceremony to induct the new members and acknowledge their great work!