Christmas Reflections...

Well another Christmas has come and gone, and this year has given me a lot to reflect on and think about as we head into 2009. Its been a Christmas of ups and downs... and I think I've learned a lot about myself and my family this holiday season.

Firstly, I've definitely learned to appreciate all of the hard work that goes into preparing Christmas dinners and events. Heidi and I have been going pretty much non-stop since the 9th and its definitely taken its toll on our energy levels. Today is the first day we've had to pretty much sit and do nothing in almost three weeks.

Still, I wouldn't trade any of the events over the last three weeks for extra rest or relaxation. For the first year in a long time we've been in a position to have dinners, buy nice gifts, and have a wonderful home to entertain in. 2008 has definitely been a year of blessings for me and my wife. I got to experience a lot of joy just having family and friends around, and how exciting it was seeing the children enjoy the holidays.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and that the good times continue in 2009!

Tragedy!

Well... I must say this didn't come as a huge shock. It is with great sadness that I report the failure of Hatemonger University to defend the Fantasy Football championship. For the third time this year I couldn't quite cut it against Effie and went down 57-77 in the championship round. Given my regular season record of 7-6-1 I wasn't expecting to get this far, but I had a lot of fun this season.

So until next August, Hate U will sit quietly by and plot their revenge!

Sibling Christmas Dinner!

With all that we've been able to do this Christmas, we thought it would be a great new tradition to start having a 'sibling Christmas' dinner. Our idea was to have a nice Christmas night with just the kids - myself, my sister and her husband, her kids, and my foster sisters. I also wanted to invite my good friend Jeff and his family since we've been friends since third grade and he's more a brother to me than a friend.

Dinner, I must say, was excellent. We had a glazed ham, yams, green bean casserole, jello, and some tasty rolls. Heidi also wanted to take a shot at making her grandma's sweat mustard sauce for the ham. Everything turned out perfect, although space was pretty tight during dinner.

After dinner we had a small present exchange and then it was time to break out the band! We had a great time rocking out in small groups and even the children were able to get into the act thanks to what we've deemed "Guitar Hero Retard Mode." I guess we could have named it "Child Mode" but it just didn't have the same ring - besides, Jeff could only hack it on the drums at that skill level, so "Retard Mode" seemed a lot more fitting.

While we were busy rocking out, the children took shifts decorating sugar cookies. This sounds like a disaster in the making, I know, but I had the foresight to cover the entire kitchen floor with tablecloths! I'm glad I did because sprinkles were EVERYWHERE!

HOT PIX!!!

Karek and Jackson discuss their haul. Four year olds
reading packaging is a little scary...

Kian thrashes on the guitar. He was averaging over
90% notes hit every time.

Kiera impresses her new boyfriend, Karek, with her
mad drumming skills. She's even got the headbang down.

Jackson and Kian hard at work on the sugar cookies
while Heather supervises.

Cookies manufactured by my beloved niece.
(yes, there are cookies in there somewhere)

The boys at about 1:00am. Too bad we didn't have
any chalk to outline them with lol

The Christmas Sweater

Tonight my wife and I attended the Fathom Events showing of Glenn Beck's "The Christmas Sweater" which is based on the book by the same name (obviously)

The story focuses on a 12 year old boy named Eddie and a Christmas where what he wanted more than anything else in the world was a bike. His mother, like many others, was in a difficult financial position and was only able to make a handmade sweater for his only gift. Its not until his mother dies in a horrible car accident driving home from their grandparents that Christmas night that the story truly begins.

What follows is a story of anger, guilt, sorrow and sadness... whereby Eddie learns the true meaning of Christmas. In the end, this story is really about the storms that all of us face in life, and about finding the courage to push through the storm and keep on living.

The stage show production was excellent. Glenn provided the narration and acting, and was accompanied by an orchestra and gospel singer. I really thought it was a great story... even though the first act was really quite sad. My wife's only complaint was the gospel rendition of "God be with You til we Meet Again" as she was under the impression that it was a "Mormon song" - whatever that means - and shouldn't have been sung the way it was. Even after I reminded my wife that it was actually a Christian song, she still objected to it.

What can I say... my wife is a dirty racist. I myself had a great time, and I'm convinced that these Fathom Events are totally the way to go if you want to see a play or stage show. Tickets are a lot cheaper and you get a much, MUCH better view than you would from any seat in the theater its being performed in.

A Candlelight Christmas

On the way to work this morning, I saw a billboard for A Candlelight Christmas being held at This is the Place Heritage Park. Having never been to this before I thought it would be something fun that my wife and I could enjoy. Even though it was very, very cold, we braved the trek up 8th South to check it out. I also thought this would be an awesome opportunity to test out my new camera!

The idea of the display is how Christmas would have been back in the days of the pioneers. Odd, I thought.. here all this time I've been thinking the pioneers didn't have electricity.. but I digress.


Our first stop was their recreation of the Nativity, complete with the Star and bed in a manger, or in this case a barn. Have I mentioned how awesome I think my new camera is? I must admit I had a difficult time getting the right shutter speed so that it didn't look like these pictures were taken in the middle of the day with flash grenades going off in front of you, but once I got it down I think they turned out great.


Another really neat thing they did was pioneer type crafts. With your admission, you got to build any three crafts of your choosing, and the different crafts were scattered throughout the many buildings of the park. We built a paper Nativity, made a copy of the first commercial Christmas card using a printing press, and made our own jingle bells. It was pretty cool to see how all these things were done 'back in the day.'


Speaking of the printing press, as we were walking through the printing building, I took out my camera to take a picture of a printing machine. I didn't notice until after I'd taken the picture that a slight amount of fog had built up on my lens due to coming into the warm building from the frozen tundra. I think it turned out pretty awesome with the fog effect.


One final thing that caught my eye is we were leaving was a candy display in the window of an old original ZCMI building. It occurred to me that a lot of the children walking around probably wouldn't even realize that the display is something that was a tradition in Salt Lake City for hundreds of years, only to be brought to a dead stop thanks to Macy's purchasing ZCMI a few years ago. Brought back a lot of memories of my brothers and sisters going downtown to see the beautiful candy displays at ZCMI during the holidays.