Jan 8, 2010

Out with old, in with the New Year!





David and I don't normally exchange presents. Although I did get him an MP3 this year, Mackenzie helped me by putting some of his favorite music on it and we presented it to him. David and the kids always asks me what I would like and they know my pat answer is: peace and harmony and us just being together. Honestly that's all I want. I have no wants. I have no other joy, than to be with my family. I love us just hanging out and talking and laughing. My adult kids love to tell me things they use to do when they were younger because they know I can't do anything about it. Sometimes I plug my ears and start singing la la la la. Cecelia will want to chime in and share, but then I will warn her kiddingly "hey you still live at home I can still ground you". LOl. Pretty soon she too will leave the nest. But until then I can still enjoy having her home. We thoroughly enjoyed Chloe. She is getting so big. We have found out that she loves men. She was not shy at all when she got reacquainted with David, she climbed right on his lap and settled in. It took a few minutes before you got use to me. It didn't take long. Christmas eve night she allowed me to sing and rock her to sleep. I think I sang Eensy weensy spider and Your are my Sunshine at least 20 times. Grandchildren are Grandparents rewards for not killing their kids. It is all worth it.

White Christmas





If they can't bring Christmas to us, we will bring Christmas to them, and that's what we did. Of course that was the plan anyways. All I wanted for Christmas was to have the whole famly together. We left at 4:15am December 24th- Christmas Eve for our destination, Lehi Utah. We decided to take Hwy 80 instead of the 50 route thru Carson City, and it was actually quicker to my surprise. After an uneventful trek, we rolled into Cheri and Chris's home at 3:15pm. After all hugs and kisses especially to little Chloe, Luke and Maya showed up and some of us got back into the car and ran up to Walmart to do our Christmas eve dinner shopping. I love being with my kids, they are still my kids. They always ask when I come visit, "are you shopping like Grandma Joan?" the answer is yes. They know they can throw anything in the cart and mom will get it. We got enough food for the eve and the next few days along with some other sundries and what nots. We piled back in the car, got back to Cheri's and Luke and I started preparing our dinner. We did it easy, a couple of rotissorie chickens, fixins for a green salad, mash potatoes, potato salad, (Maya likes this salad), fixins for gravy and forgot what else. I brought my homemade fudge from California and some other candy. After dinner it was time for the"Games". Our family loves to play games. The game we played was a new one called "the game of Things". Someone picks a card and reads the statement like: what you think it would be that would keep you out of heaven. Everyone writes an answer and throws it in a bow. There are no wrong answers. They can be outrageous, made up answers or serious ones. What you want to do is write an answer that no one will know it is you. Then someone reads the answers and everyone but the reader tries to guess who wrote what. It can get pretty crazy. My son-in-law later we found out, wrote killing kittens. We never guessed him, because we never thought he would write such a statement. Luke and Maya left to go home late that night and we headed off to bed. Christmas morning was nice because we all took our time getting up, showering and eating breakfast. The most enjoyable part was watching Chloe open her presents.

Since Cheri and Chris were going to his parents for Christmas dinner, David, Mackenzie, Cece and I headed for Luke and Maya's in Park City. We took our leftovers and ate lunch with Luke. Maya was working. He hung out and took it easy. Later after Maya got off work we all walked around Park City, everything was open and stopped into Main St Pizza and had our Christmas dinner. I don't know about you, but I loved it. No cooking, no dishes, just pure enjoyment. It was bustling with business and everyone there was in a festive mood. After dinner we walked up to "Cows" and had sundaes and hot chocolate. I could get use to this.

Brand New Year



A quiet New Years Eve dinner.....