Spiritual Gifts of 2009

At the close of each year, we meet with the Johnson family and share "Spiritual Gifts" that we have received during that year.

Temple Lights

After the Christmas craziness was over, we decided to go see the lights at the temple.

The boys had fun with Aunt Sarah, Uncle Rob, Aunt Jami & of course little baby Olivia.

They just can't seem to get enough of her!

Back at the car, we enjoyed our thermos hot chocolate!

4 Peaks Ride

The day after Christmas, we all went on a ride through the desert.

We took turns driving the babies in the Ranger.

Beautiful country,

hardly any dust due to recent rains,

and blue skies made for a fun day.

the Day...

Marcus found Santa's Leftovers

We opened presents at home,

then went to the Martinsen's to open some more,



and to visit Great Grandma too of course.

Next stop: the Greats! (Grandma & Grandpa Heap)

Then, over to the Johnson's for fun with the cousins and playing Christmas songs with the bells.

One more trip back over to the Martinsen's to play some games with the adult children before calling it a day! Yes, we were tired!

the Eve...

Started off the evening with a candlelit appetizer dinner:

gyoza, ribs, cheeseball, , jalapeno poppers, Martinelli's, veggies & dip, to name a few.

Then we got into our Christmas jammies to read from Luke 2.

Had to cut the feet from Marcus's jammies to accommodate the cast.

Christmas Eve is great!

It's the only night of the year that the boys beg to get into bed.

Marcus got an early Christmas present this year.

His little foot was fractured from jumping on the trampoline.

Poor little guy has to have a cast for 3 weeks.

His brothers and I decided on a green one as Christmas is this weekend.

Here is is the next day sitting next to the trampoline.

He can't seem to understand why I won't let him back on.

Charlie Brown?

Real Christmas trees are great.

We decided that this year we would chop one down ourselves.

Haven't done that for years.

Because of the heavy snowfall, many of the roads into the "good" trees were closed. So, we settled for a Ponderosa Pine! Ryan was sure people were pointing and laughing at us as we drove down the mountain with a Ponderosa in the back of the truck. I think it's awesome. Looks like a giant Charlie Brown tree.

Gettin' Ready

We're drinking lots of cocoa,

making lots of threats ("Santa doesn't bring presents to Naughty boys"),

and

putting up the Christmas decor.

Utah Trip

We had a chilly picnic complete with fall leaves in Page, AZ...

a deer rammed our van near Panguich, UT...

(here's the deer hair in our headlights to prove it)

And we still made the trip to Provo in 10 1/2 hours.

Next day was spent with all the Moody gang.

With a last name of "Moody" it's easy to come up with some great ideas for reunion t-shirts.

Brainstorming ideas:

"Moody B****es for the girls and "Moody Dudes" for the boys.

Another favorite was, "Do you look as good as you feel?" (Grandpa Grant Moody's saying)

In the end we decided to go with just "Moody" on the front. Kind of boring, but appropriate!

Here are Margo and her siblings singing, "Sampson."
And, Grandpa Moody singing the Sunday School song with Uncle Greg as accompanist.

On Friday, we spent some time at Trafalga riding around.

Caleb kept scaring me by pretending he was riding into the walls and then turning at the last minute!

Then, we got a frantic call from Sarah saying that Grandma Martinsen had picked up the mail in Mesa and Sarah's mission call was there. We rushed back to Rob & Jami's to listen to the call read over the phone...

New Zealand Temple Visitor's Center!!!

Then, the ladies left the men to carve the leftover Halloween pumpkins while the ladies went to a movie (Twilight) and dinner at CPK.

On Saturday, we went to Salt Lake City to tour around with the Johnsons. We took the traditional picture at Seagull Monument,

looked at the beautiful temple,

wandered through the Church History Museum.

and ended up at the Conference Center.

Our favorite was the display of original works by Arnold Freeburg. The boys were very impressed with these Book of Mormon story paintings.

The last event of the trip was visiting with the Skinner family in Sandy. Ryan and Brad were mission companions and the four of us took a trip to Colombia when we were newlyweds. We hadn't seen them for years and if was so nice to catch up and watch parts of the ASU and BYU games.

11 Big Ones

Caleb was at school and Eli was at preschool,
so we celebrated over an ultra-romantic breakfast for 3 at Denny's!

Then, we rushed home to pack up for the loooong drive to Utah.