Utah Fans

Derek and his friends are big Utah fans. The grins on their faces show their joy in victory!

Megan looks so pretty in her ballet costume!

Megan looked so cute at her dance recital. I am glad Natalie took pictures because we had another engagement and couldn't be there.

Two Christmas Parties

We met together with the McKell family last night at our home. We had fun visiting, eating, and opening gifts.

My cousin Sharalyn gave by far the most creative gifts. For the men, she gave each a hard-bound booklet of U.S quarters. The state quarters are displayed in the booklet in the order that the states entered the Union. For the ladies, Sharalyn had made a variety of attractive beaded watches, and we chose the one that we liked the best. What a thoughtful cousin!

Paul picked up my dad in Spanish Fork and brought him to our home in Draper. Dad had been invited to three parties last night! He was going to my brother Kent's party after Paul took him home. My dad is truly amazing--his energy, his alert mind, his enthusiasm for life.

Where are the pictures of the other party, the Moore gang? A week ago we met at Paul's son's house to celebrate Christmas. I took lots of pictures. I transported the memory card to my computer, and the photos didn't appear. The printer said "memory card error". These same photos would appear in the camera, however. So, I thought I would put the memory card in a safe place and then take it to Inkley's on Monday. Well, where is that carefully-thought-out safe place which is hiding the card? Hopefully, I can eventually unwind my mind and remember its hiding place.

At the Moore party we had a wonderful Mexican buffet--chicken enchiladas, tamales, spicy rice, etc. Our daughter-in-law Char always decorates her home beautifully for Christmas and is such a gracious hostess.

Anyway, we enjoyed two great parties (photos of party #1 to hopefully follow soon).

December 16th Birthdays - Bryce and Keaton

Cousins Bryce Ferguson and Keaton Moore share the same birthday - December 16th. Bryce turned 15 and Keaton is now six.

Bryce is a 9th grader at West Jordan Middle School. He is an excellent student and also a good athlete. Bryce and his whole family are fans of the University of Utah, whether it is football or basketball. A favorite hobby of the family is boating. Bryce is a very good water skier.

Six year old Keaton lives in Oregon. He is in kindergarten this year and loves his school. His class is a Spanish immersion program. Only Spanish is spoken by the teacher and the students. Keaton loves transformers and playing his guitar. Now that the birthday party is over, Keaton is aniticipating his next big day, Christmas!

I am lucky to be the grandma to these two handsome boys!

Cute Little Girls

The girls didn't like wearing look-alike dresses or having their hair short. Oh, well! I think that Natalie is four years old here, and Melanie is one. We were living in Selma, Alabama. Guy was in the Air Force teaching new recruits how to fly. We lived in on-base housing.

Thanksgiving Day, Year 2000

Bryce, Lucy, and Nicole are sitting at the kids' table.
I love this picture of Paul. He is an expert carver of turkey.
Mike and Patti came from Oregon to visit the family.
Lisa was celebrating her birthday as well as Thanksgiving.
Lucy looked so cute in this red coat.

It is fun to look back in time when the grandchildren were very young. This is the year 2000 in our home in Sandy.
We met with my family at my cousin Sharalyn's home yesterday. I forgot to bring the camera, but Natalie didn't, so I will hopefully steal some from her to put on a future blog.

A Thanksgiving a Long Time Ago

My first Thanksgiving away from home (Utah) is one I will always remember. I was 24 years old. Guy and I were living in Laredo, Texas, while he was going through pilot training for the Air Force. Natalie was only a few months old.

The temperature outside was in the 90's; It certainly didn't feel like the Thanksgivings of my childhood. We lived in a trailer at the time. The airconditioning was going full blast to try to keep up with the heat outside.

Here we were, very homesick and far from home. We decided to invite some other couples we had met in Laredo to share our Thanksgiving Day. They all came around noon with their food contributions for the dinner.

I was in charge of cooking the turkey. Well, I had never cooked a turkey in my life. Basically, I just stuck it in the oven. No one had told me I needed to remove the sack inside the turkey containing the neck and other assorted gross parts . Also, no one had told me that I needed a lot of time to defrost the turkey. So, it pretty much went into the oven frozen.

Dinner was supposed to start at 1:00 P.M. Every half hour or so, I would check the turkey to see if it was done. While waiting, we were all feeling the effects of the one window airconditioner we had which tried to combat the heat coming from the oven and outside.

Finally, we all gave up the waiting game and ate a turkey-less Thanksgiving dinner. I think the turkey was finally done around 10:00 that evening. Needless to say, this was a very disappointing Thanksgiving, as well as a pretty embarrassing one!