Our New Year Holiday

On New Year's Eve, Wendy and I spent a quiet day at home.  We put away most of the Christmas decorations.  We shared a Cafe Rio burrito for dinner.  We even decided to call it a night after 10:00 p.m.  On New Year's Day, we packed an overnight bag and drove to Utah.  We stopped to visit with Mom and David at the Lodge in North Ogden.  It is now called Spring Gardens Senior Living.  We arrived just as they were getting their lunch and we were able to join them.  We had a nice visit, and Wendy gave them a New Year's Wreath to help them celebrate.  

We then drove to Caz and Ashley's home to stay the night.  We went with them to Chili's for dinner.  We returned home and Wendy realized she forgot her glasses, so I drove back to the restaurant and found the glasses.  On my way home I stopped at McDonalds for Hot Fudge Sundaes.  We stayed up to play a couple rounds of Quixx.  It's a fun dice game that they introduced us to during the Christmas holiday.

On Friday, January 2nd, we slept in and relaxed for most of the morning.  We drove to a furniture store called Living Spaces to browse, and we sat on several different sofas.  Most of them were expensive - between $2,000 and $3,000 each.  After leaving the store we drove to the Hill Aerospace Museum and walked through the exhibits for about an hour.  We stopped to get lunch at a grocery store and then returned home.  About 2:00 p.m. Wendy and I left for Salt Lake City.  We parked at the Conference Center underground lot, and then walked to the Church History Library.  We went to the FamilySearch Library first, before realizing we had gone the wrong direction.  We found the correct building and I went into the reading room to look at a diary that I had requested a few days ago.  It was the diary of William Bramall who had served as a missionary during the time my great-great-grandmother converted to the church.  I discovered that he was not the one who baptized her, but he was present when she boarded a ship in Liverpool to immigrate to the United States.   It was fun and challenging to read his book from 1862.  I thought it would be on microfilm, but they brought me the actual book instead.

We walked from the Church History Library to City Creek, and we ate at the Cheesecake Factory.  It was busy, but we managed to get a table after waiting for about 15 minutes.  While we were having dinner, Ashley and Wendy were texting back and forth about a couch and sofa for sale on Facebook Marketplace.  They were leather recliners and only about a year old.  Wendy contacted the seller and arranged an appointment for Saturday at 10:30 a.m. to look at them.  After dinner we took the Trax one stop to the Utah Symphony at Abravenel Hall.  Kevin and Kay had purchased tickets for us to attend "Star Wars:  The Empire Strikes Back in Concert".  We had great seats, and I was surprised that the hall was completely full with an enthusiastic audience.  I couldn't see an empty seat.  The theater went dark when the movie started and the orchestra began with the 20th Century Fox original intro.  The audience erupted with applause, and then everyone applauded again when the orchestra played the "Main Title", and then again when they played "The Imperial March".  It was fun watching the movie with a live orchestra.  The audience gave the orchestra a long standing ovation at the end.

We returned to Caz and Ashley's home with cheesecake for dessert.  On Saturday, January 3rd, we planned our furniture purchase.  I made a reservation for a 10 foot U-Haul truck in Clearfield.  Caz dropped me off, and I waited while Wendy, Ashley, Camden, and Caz drove to the home where the couch and sofa were for sale in North Ogden.  Wendy called me to say she wanted the furniture, so I rented the truck and drove to meet them.  Wendy had paid $1,000 for both sofas.  Caz helped me load the sofas into the truck.  We stopped for lunch at Wendy's restaurant, and then we all left for home.  Wendy drove the car while I drove the U-Haul.  The weather was fine and the roads were dry.  We arrived back in Pocatello a little after 2:00 p.m.  We spent the next few hours moving our old furniture out and the new in.  We cleaned and treated the leather on the new set, and it really made them shine.  It also made the living room floor slippery, and Jeffrey took a fall when he stepped on a really slippery spot.  He was OK, but we had to clean the floor to avoid any more slips.  We were pretty tired, and we relaxed the rest of the night on our new recliners.

Our Christmas Holiday

Tuesday morning, December 23rd, we worked on the final preparations for the holiday.  Janice and Lizzie cleaned the upstairs rooms.  I finished organizing and boxing up items in the garage.  Jeffrey set up the Ping-Pong table and delivered a few gifts to neighbors.  Wendy worked to clean and organize the downstairs and finalize the gifts.  Grandma Sims packed a few things and left with Karen to stay with them.  Our family started arriving in the afternoon.  Ashley, Caz, and Camden arrived and settled into their room downstairs.  Tyler, Jaylen, Baylor, and Murphy arrived and settled into their rooms upstairs.  At 3:00 p.m. Jeffrey took Wendy to a doctor's appointment, and then they picked up the Prime Rib.  About 4:30 p.m. we ordered three large pizzas from Bigfoot Pizza and then picked them up at 5:30 p.m.  Ryan, Megan, Cooper, and Beckham arrived after that, and they brought a salad.  We ate dinner and then played Minute to Win It style games that Wendy had prepared.  She had several prizes lined up as well.  Jeffrey took guesses for M&M bottles.  We also played Ping-Pong.  Ashley and Jaylen baked the potatoes for our Christmas Eve dinner.  

Wednesday morning, Christmas Eve, Wendy and I went to the Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor's office.  They said her nose is healing well.  Then we all met up in Blackfoot to watch a movie at the Blackfoot Movie Mill.  Ryan and Megan's family arrived earlier to watch Avatar.  We watched Zootopia 2.  The movies ended about the same time, and we managed to get a group photo.  

We got back home about 2:00 p.m. and the kids started preparing the dinner.  Kevin, Kay, and Kaleb arrived about 4:00 p.m. and checked into their room at the Holiday Inn Express.  We sat down for dinner about 6:00 p.m. and we enjoyed Prime Rib, Twice-Baked Potatoes, Seasoned Green Beans, Shrimp, Orange Jell-O Salad, and Geraldine Rolls.  It was excellent.  Wendy handed out gifts to the grandkids which included T-shirts and pajamas.  The young ones went to bed and then we did a White Elephant gift exchange.  The gifts we bought were based on some of our favorite things.  Then we got ready for Santa's arrival.  Wendy wrapped several presents, and it was getting late by the time we all got to bed.

Thursday, Christmas Day, we woke up a little after 7:00 a.m. and watched as the kids found their gifts from Santa.  Everyone seemed to enjoy it.  We started making breakfast about 8:00 a.m. and the entire family was able to be together for that.  We had Aebleskivers, bacon, hash browns, scrambled eggs, fresh fruit, orange juice and milk.  It was a great breakfast, except I was a little short on eggs.  The family gathered downstairs to open gifts, and we enjoyed that very much.  It was about 11:00 a.m. when the kids started preparing to leave.  We took one last family photo before starting to say our good-byes.  At 1:30 p.m. Wendy and I went with Kevin, Kay, and Kaleb to visit Grandma Sims at John and Karen's home.  We visited with them for about an hour and then returned home.  Kaleb, Jeffrey and I tried to swim at the hotel pool, but it was too cold to stay in for long.  We had leftovers for dinner along with crackers, chips, salsa, cheese, and all kinds of snacks.  I ate way too much.  We played games including Flip 7 and 5 Minute Dungeon that Jeffrey got for Christmas.

A Bad Fall and a Christmas Dinner

This morning Wendy had an appointment to have an MRI taken of her knee at the hospital.  She completed that and was taking some mail up to her office when she tripped on her right foot and fell flat on the hard floor.  Her cane may have helped break her fall, but it also cut her face in two places.  She called me from her cell phone, and I hurried to drive over there.  When I arrived on the scene there were about four or five people assisting her, trying to stop the bleeding, and getting her into a wheelchair.  We took her to the emergency room where they cleaned her up and used Dermabond to seal up the cut on her nose.  They also took CT scans and X-rays and determined that she had fractured her nose.  She will just have to let that heal on its own.  They gave her some pain medication which really took effect when we got back home.  She slept for the next three hours.  I wasn't sure if she would still want to host dinner this evening, but she felt much stronger when she woke up.  At 5:00 p.m. we had John and Karen at our home along with Grandma Sims.  We had a nice visit, and we enjoyed a dinner of Enchiladas, Salad, Chips and Salsa, a delicious Fruit Salad, and Brownies for dessert.  Jeffrey visited with us after dinner.  It was a really good evening.

Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert

We entered the lottery for concert tickets in November.  We had all of the kids enter their names as well to increase our odds, but I was the only one to have our name drawn.  This year the Tabernacle Choir decided to give four tickets to each name.  Wendy, Ashley, and I attended the concert last night while Caz stayed home with Camden.  We were hoping for a Friday or Saturday, but we were glad we had the opportunity to go even if it was on Thursday.  We left home for Utah after 3:00 p.m.  We picked up Ashley, and then we stopped to eat dinner at Warren's Restaurant.  We drove into Salt Lake City and met heavy traffic going towards the Conference Center.  I dropped Wendy and Ashley off at the curb and then drove down Quince Street.  I found a parking spot along the curb not far from where Mom used to live so many years ago.  Ashley and Wendy had found seats in the front row of Balcony 10 where I caught up with them.  The concert was very good.  It featured Stephanie Block and her husband Sebastian Arcelus.  One of my favorites was "What Child is This" sung by Stephanie Block.  The story they told was about the astronauts of Apollo 8 who were the first humans to orbit the moon.  It was on Christmas Eve and they took turns reading the Creation story from Genesis to the largest audience in history.  It is said that over a billion people heard the broadcast which at that time was 1 out of every 4 humans.  We enjoyed the concert very much.  We have not been able to keep going every year, which is OK.  We stayed the night at Ashley's and drove home the next morning.

Allegiant Stadium and Return Home

We slept in on Sunday, December 7th, and then packed our bags and checked out of the hotel.  We drove to the Welcome to Las Vegas sign south of the Strip and waited in line to take a picture.  After waiting for a while we asked a lady behind us to take our picture and we went to one side.  Then we continued south to a Smiths grocery store and bought some breakfast items.  We drove to the Allegiant Stadium and found our parking spot about a block away.  We walked to the stadium and went inside to find our seats.  It turned out to be quite a problem.  We took the elevator to the 200 level because Wendy was using her wheelchair, but the Suites on that level blocked us from reaching our section.  We were told to take the elevator to the 300 level, walk around, and talk a different elevator back down.  We tried that but none of the elevators were operating where we needed them to.  We finally ended up walking down a steep ramp to get back to the 200 level, and I had to hang on to the wheelchair firmly so Wendy wouldn't go flying down.  It took about half an hour to get to our seats, but we were happy with them when we finally found them.  We had so much room to ourselves, and we were right next to the box suites.  We were dressed in our Denver Broncos shirts, and I would guess that at least half of the stadium was wearing orange.  The game was fun to watch even though the Raiders never really did threaten to win.  The final score was 24 to 17 with Denver taking the win.  After the game we drove to St. George, Utah and found a room at a Hampton Inn to spend the night.  After checking into our room we drove to a Chili's Restaurant for dinner.  We shared a bowl of soup and a quesadilla, and then we topped it off with a warm chocolate chip cookie and vanilla ice cream.  We returned to the hotel and sat in the hot tub for a bit before going to bed.  It was a really nice day.

On Monday morning we ate breakfast at the hotel, filled up the car, and drove home.  The return trip seemed so much longer even though we covered a shorter distance.  We listened to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban going both ways, and we almost finished it on our drive home.  We managed to get home just before 4:00 p.m. when we had an appointment with Google Fiber to install our new modem and router and connect us to the box attached to our home.  The installer was already there when we arrived home waiting for us.  He only took about 30 minutes to get us up and running on Google Fiber.