For the past few years our Christmas Eve tradition has been: drive to Salt Lake and park at Temple Square, ride the Trax to a restaurant for dinner, and return on the Trax to Temple Square to see the lights, the nativities (my favorite), and the candlelit bags with words and pictures illuminated in different languages. (I thought Arabic was the prettiest.)
Marshall hitched a ride on Jim's shoulders keeping his hands on Jim's face for warmth.
Here we are on the Trax: the most memorable part each year. We sang Christmas carols (loudly) and many of the other passengers join in. This year there was a young couple who didn't make much eye contact, but the man "conducted" us with his finger on his lap while the woman smiled at us as tears streamed down her face. Everyone was touched and we loved the feeling. We were all very happy and at one point Mark (Mel's brother) broke out into a dance where he grabbed the side poles with each hand and his legs went crazy in the aisle. Very funny!! :-)
Here's Jess and Meg waiting for the Trax.
They realized that they matched: they were both wearing black coats and black boots.
We loved having Abby (holding Matt & Candice's baby Zach) & Paxton visit us from Texas. We had fun playing games... and let me just say.... Tiebreaker. My ego suffers from losing at Scrabble, so I guess I'll have to study my Scrabble dictionary now and pray I'll get a J, Q, X, or Z.
We had a (not so) surprise late birthday party for my mom. The big 60.
This is the tree in our front room that mom gets to decorate.
The famous Tree-Pee! Each child got to decorate one pole with the ornaments that they've gathered over the years. I saw the idea at Festival of Trees last year and came home and made my own with PVC pipe, lights & garland. The guys at Home Depot thought I was a little nuts.
For the past few years our Christmas Eve tradition has been: drive to Salt Lake and park at Temple Square, ride the Trax to a restaurant for dinner, and return on the Trax to Temple Square to see the lights, the nativities (my favorite), and the candlelit bags with words and pictures illuminated in different languages. (I thought Arabic was the prettiest.)
Marshall hitched a ride on Jim's shoulders keeping his hands on Jim's face for warmth.
Here we are on the Trax: the most memorable part each year. We sang Christmas carols (loudly) and many of the other passengers join in. This year there was a young couple who didn't make much eye contact, but the man "conducted" us with his finger on his lap while the woman smiled at us as tears streamed down her face. Everyone was touched and we loved the feeling. We were all very happy and at one point Mark (Mel's brother) broke out into a dance where he grabbed the side poles with each hand and his legs went crazy in the aisle. Very funny!! :-)
Here's Jess and Meg waiting for the Trax. 
