December fun - Gaige #14 and lots more fun!

December has not been as busy as it usually is for me since I actually did most of my Christmas shopping during the summer this year...a first!  We have been busy with YSA and finishing up neighbor/friend shopping and visiting.  

This is our final FHE of the year at YSA.  We went caroling at the Season's Assisted Living home.  I'm not much of a fan of it sometimes...just don't feel overly comfortable in that scene, but it went really well.  And the thing that made it more personal to me was seeing an old ward member/friend that we had lost touch with there.  Kind of sad seeing him there because he seems too young, but I was glad we tried to visit with him after the singing.  Afterwards we went to the church for chili and nachos and a crazy white elephant party.  I love spending time with these young adults.  They are amazing people and this has been a calling that we have really enjoyed...which was a surprise to me.  

And other fun things have been a part of the month so far.  Lou and Bryan were down with Afton and Joel and invited us to go and enjoy the lights at the Desert Garden.  Afterwards we had hot chocolate and donuts.  

Gaige turned 14.  His folks were out of town at on the day of and we knew we might not be available to go to his late celebration, so we took our gifts by that night!

Kaebri called up invited us to her school orchestra concert.  I had been wanting to go to a Christmas concert and this was a good one. So glad she invited us.

One Saturday we took Anna Lou over to Page to meet Ross so he could take her home with him to spend Christmas with them.  One the way home we took the long way going through Jacob Lake and Zion Park and we stopped by Lee's Ferry where we enjoyed the Balancing Rocks and the Paria Riffles along the Colorado River.  

One more fun outing I didn't take pics of was going to get our Christmas tree.  We just went for a drive up to Brian Head thinking there would be no place we could pull off to get out and get a tree because the snow was too deep...and it was and the road was closed right after Brian Head because the road hadn't been cleared.  But on the way back we saw some people stopped at a little pull out and they had loaded up some fresh cut Christmas trees.  We stopped and asked where and they pointed out a path they had just stomped down to get their trees.  It was just a little off the road and we walked down and found several good prospects of fir trees there.  We decided on one and Paul sawed it down and we had done the deed in record time amazingly!  It was a very unexpected harvest.