Our Before Christmas Activities

1.  The Ward Party.  We took Father Christmas with us this time.  It hadn't been Christmas yet and maybe that's why it looks like Father Christmas hasn't eaten as many cookies as usual.

2.  The BYU Basketball Game with the whole family -- plus my grand niece Mia.

Most of us had more fun than this picture indicates.  BYU won!  And Collinsworth got another triple double.  Yay!  Mia was great.  She ate popcorn, talked to Trisa and Tia, and really wanted to see Cosmo the cougar up close.  She was disappointed that he never came to the nosebleed section to see her.  We rarely saw Travis.  He's not much of a sports fan -- he is just a good sport who's not too good at feigning interest in the game.  I'm guessing the highlight for him was either eating popcorn with Mia, or seeing his mission president in the hall.

3.  The Christensen Christmas Party, which I got no pictures of so ....

Imagine a group with around 50 very nice people, more than half of whom are children.  Imagine us eating lasagna in the church gym, playing games, having a program, playing more games, cleaning up, and then, more than three hours after we started, heading home.  Mia came with her parents Kelli and Jamie.  They were staying with us and so they were invited even though they are from my side of the family.  The more the merrier!  Their whole family participated in all of the activities, and Kelli even participated in the not too secret flash mob that sang Joy to the World at the beginning of the program.

4.  Kayli's Birthday Celebration -- which I'll cover in my next blog post.

5.  A trip to the BYU Museum of Art to see the Norman Rockwell exhibit.

This was Dan's Favorite

This is Travis' favorite.
Travis said he enjoyed the exhibit for 5 minutes.  I don't think he's a big art museum fan either.

I don't remember if anyone else chose a favorite.  We were all impressed by how many paintings he did, and how much preparation he took before making the final, finished painting.

The day after we went to the museum was Christmas Eve -- and I'll include that with Christmas.  My favorite thing was every time we managed to have the whole family together.  That is the best!