New Year's Eve 2019

Happy New Year! Can't believe another year has come and gone! There was a Stake party at Schnepf Farms but it was cold and wet, so we stayed home. The Riggs family down the street invited us over for to watch fireworks. It was mostly their family, but it was fun to visit and get to know new people. They started the night with burning TONS of Christmas trees! They had a huge horse trailer full of them and they burned them all. Then they turned on some festive music and started the fireworks. I thought it was going to be a little display of fireworks, but it wasn't! These were the full on huge stadium kind of fireworks and lots of them. It was so awesome! We were able to get on their roof and watch from there, but it was a little too close for comfort. Haha! It was amazing and the perfect setting to ring in 2019!

Christmas Day

I think this was the first year, that I wasn't up until the wee hours of the night wrapping presents. Thanks to Maizey! Also this was the first year that we actually got to sleep in!! Woohoo! I think we got up around 8am! That in itself was a Christmas presents. I guess that's kinda sad in a way that Christmas has lost it's magic! Good thing there's grandchildren to help with that. :) We opened up all our presents and then I cooked our Christmas annual breakfast of Butterbraid's and ham and cheese puffs and sausage rolls. Yum! Bentley and Cal came over and Kami and Tim and had some breakfast with us. Then we waited for Noah to call. He called us at 11am, because Maizey and Caleb both had to work on Christmas day. They get time and a half, so no complaints from them. But Maizey had to leave first, so she talked with first. It was so good to see him and hear him. He looked and sounded so good. You can see the change and growth in him. He loves his mission and his companion. we all talked with him. We got to talk with for an hour. Grandma Clark even facetime us and got to talk with Noah too. The family that Noah was with had texted me a few days earlier and had asked what his favorite Christmas food and dessert was. I told her how to make sausage pinwheels and grandma Porter's cinnamon streusel cake. I thought that was so sweet of her to ask what he liked for Christmas. Especially with him not being out very long. Talking with your missionary on Christmas is the BEST Christmas present EVER!

Glasgow, Reeds and Severtson...Oh my!!

This was the year for us to host not one or two Christmas parties, but 3 Christmas parties in a row!I guess we are the party house now. Haha! I was even paid a compliment by my nieces that I was the "Uncle Dale" of the family. Haha! My uncle had a nice big home with a big back yard and we would have family parties and reunions over there all the time. Saturday night we had the Glasgow Christmas party. Thank goodness we had great weather this weekend. It was in the low 70's durning the day and the 50's by night. We had everything set up outside. We brought in tables and chairs for the back patio. We had a fire pit and gas lamp heating going on. We even set up our big screen to watch Christmas movies on. We had a pot luck and ate outside. Afterwards we watched 2 video's of the Nativity. Then we all crammed inside the living room for the talent show. We had singing, dancing, guitar and accordion playing. Grandma Glasgow gave out her candy and $2 bills for everyone. I also had everyone get together and sing Happy Birthday to Noah since it was his birthday.

Sunday we had the Reed family party. We weren't expecting very many to show up since we live way out in Queen Creek, boy were we wrong! We had more people than expected, which was awesome. We left tables and chairs outside and did the fire pit and heat lamp. We watched more Christmas movies. This time Santa came! Last Sunday we were talking with Toby's cousin Brian Reed in our ward. He talked about being Santa for the Spanish branch and the thought came to me to ask him to be our Santa. I thought it would be perfect since he was a cousin to all the aunts and uncles. It was a great surprise when he showed up. They were all happy to see him. He even had his own suit and real beard to match! All the kids were excited too.

Monday night Christmas Eve we had the Severtson family Christmas party. We had yummy Mexican food for dinner. We used the tables and chairs and fire pit and watched movies too. Then we had the family gift exchange. All the cousin exchange names and brother and sister just got something for each family. I also had everyone sing "We wish you a Merry Christmas" to Noah and Jacob.

After everyone left we had the Sevark Christmas party. All the kids exchanged names and they opened their gifts. Then we called it a night. So grateful to belong to such amazing families.

Early Christmas present

Christmas came early for Toby this year. He got new garage cabinets! I've never seen him more excited about anything. Haha! The garage pile up was making us both crazy, so glad we got these. Toby spent a couple days getting it all organized. (Then I messed it all up when Christmas came down) :

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