Traditions

Christmas is always a wonderful time of year!

The holidays are full of family and traditions. 

My family has lots of wonderful traditions that make Christmas extra special!

Every year right before Christmas my family heads to see A Christmas Carol at Hale Center Theater.

For Christmas Eve my family heads to Temple Square to stuff our faces with yummy food from The Roof Restaurant. This is followed by walking around and seeing the lights on Temple Square.

Every Christmas morning we all have to sit on the steps and take a picture before we can head to open presents. The little ones were a little anxious and not too patient with having to take pictures.

Christmas breakfast is always breakfast pizza. We have this every Christmas and ONLY on Christmas!

This year was full of fun surprises and awesome presents. 

My sister Raye Ann and I both got a hand painted Santa from our trip to Russia. We both also got a pearl ring to go with the pearl set we got a few years ago.

I also got a very special present that is dear to my heart. My parents turned my London blog into a book, so now I have a book with all my posts and pictures from London!!

My dad is now the proud owners of the Green Bay Packers..... okay, he is one of the owners. 

Every year since I can remember my dad has worn a red bow tie on Christmas morning. 

Last year my dad bought all his sons and grandsons red bow ties. 

Look how handsome they are.

I love all of our family traditions! It just wouldn't be Christmas without them!

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas!!!

Christmas Break Adventures

The past week has been quite the continuous flow of adventure. 

There has been a trip to Rexburg for my sister Raye Ann's graduation, 

Three weddings:  

Morgan 

(my sister's freshman roommate and she lived at our house this past semester)

My cousin Diana

Welcome to the crazy Blauer family Cary Shane!

And my friend from high school, Marie!

Congratulations to you all!

For 5 days my cousins from Texas partied at our house. 

One of the days we took them sledding so they could play in the snow.

To bad the snow was all man made and the only snow to be found was on the sledding runs!

However Long and Hard the Road

Just a little something to help you get through finals week. 

(and all the other hard things we face in life)

"If your eyes are always on your shoelaces, if all you can see is this class or that test, this date or that roommate, this disappointment or that dilemma, then it really is quite easy to throw in the towel and stop the fight. But what if it is the fight of your life? Or more precisely what if it is the fight FOR your life, you ETERNAL life at that? What if beyond this class or that test, ... you really can see and can hope for all the best and right things that God has to offer? Oh, it may be blurred a bit by the perspiration running into your yes, and in a really difficult fight one of the eyes might even be closing a bit-, but faintly, dimly, and ever so far away you can see the object of it all. And you say it is worth it, you do want it, you will fight on." 

"But how, you ask, do you get this glimpse of the future that helps you to hang on? Well, for me that is one of the great gifts of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ... through the blood and the toil and tears and the sweat...it is out there. "

-Elder Jeffrey Holland, Devotional address 18 January 1983