I've been looking forward to Christmas this year because I "shopped" for Christmas gifts out of my parents estate. I was able to give a little something to each of my kids that will remind them of their grandparents. It was sweet to then share these treasures with each of them. We delivered these grifts around on Christmas Adam...Dec. 23rd.
I have my Christmas light necklace on, and Adam his best Christmas sweater.
Our Christmas eve celebration always kicks off with extended Cole family breakfast at the Calls. We started this breakfast tradtition when I was a child and my parents worked at Cold Esq.... We get together and have a wonderful breakfast then have a white elephant gift exchange. We have been trading a yard decoration of Meer Cats for years. It just keeps coming back. The gift that keeps on giving. This year the big "hit" were prints by Addison of Pocahontas and his White christmas Sisters print. Swig and Cafe rio gift cards were also a big hit.
Poppa Wayne and Sophia
Guy, Preston and Angela
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Andrew, Alex and Landon
Casey, Becca and Jenna
Fernando, Rachel, Adam and Christine
Lexi and Tayla
Aaron and Melinda
Allison, Megan and Liz
We all take off for bowling around 11:00. For many of us this is the only time all year we bowl, so our scores are pretty low, but our spirits are always high.
Chris and Adam in his second costume of the day.....
Al and Liz are all lit up..... I told them this could be next years christmas card.
The only pic of the whole group was captured on Al's camera...so I took a picture of it. Hopefully a big one is on it's way.
I'm back with my CAROLS!!! 4th Christmas of performing this and still loving every moment of it. We are at WSU with new scenery, dresses, wigs and microphones.
We love Jim Christian and Kenny Plain for creating this show just for us. Or atleast it feels that way.
Kenny Plain-music director, Lindsea Garside as Ling Ling, me as Ms Q, MaurieTarbox as CaroleAnn, Jan Smith as Noisey, Julie Blatter as Kitty and Jim Christian as Director and creator
I had my greatest fans come to preview. It was a disaster in many ways but I'm just hoping the adage of lousy final dress awesome opening night comes true. Holly lives this show. She knows every line and remembers exactly what's coming next.
Alfie didn't know who I was. I sounded like MeeMa but that was it. Not one smile or acknowledgement came my way.
5 Carols for Christmas is underway (again) up at Weber State this year. I'm so thrilled I'm a part of this holiday tradition. Putting on Ms. Q. again and dusting off the harmonies with my fellow Carols makes me soooo happy.
We are getting new costumes and scenery this year and we will be performing in the Allred theatre at WSU where the first Carols show was premiered with Bre in the part of LingLing. She will always be THE Lingling for me.
It's actually so nostalgic for me to be on the Allred stage. It brings back my college days. I performed so many shows there..... Student Prince, The Boyfriend, Godspell, Sound of Music, Annie Get Your Gun, Pippin, The Abdication ...
Plus I have seen so many shows my Addison and Bre performed in on that stage. It's a great space.
I love my Carols. Maurie, Jan, Julie, Lindsey and myself just have so much fun together. We have even all taken up Pickleball and we are planning our own production of Nunsense this spring to perform in the Clearfield space.
My Christmas decorations are up. I really loved doing it this year because I could incorporate some of mom's stuff with mine.
Nostalgia tree.. all of the ornaments I made starting when I was ten years old up to what the kids have made for me and the cousins when we used to have an ornament exchange.
Mom's Fontini Jerusalem set/ Nativity on the baby grand piano in my living room....
Jesus tree. It gets simpler every year and I still love having baby Jesus actually asleep in the tree and my friend Paula's lovely calligraphied quotes and scriptures about the Savior.
Here is a little Living room tour
We have already had our first Christmas party with the extended Welch family. We had the live nativity with two Mary's and two baby Jesus'. Tayla was one of them.
Haylee as an angel, Holly as an angel and Abby as Mary with baby Jesus-Tayla
We also had our first ever family talent show and a white elephant gift exchange. So happy to be part of this wonderfully, loving family. Here is our lame talent...of the Christmas Singers and Wayne doing some magic.
Alfie is adorable and has us all wrapped around his finger. He can do no wrong. He says his full name Alfie Grandpa Lyle Welch...it's unbelievably darling!
With all of the change this year, I hosted Thanksgiving at my home for the first time ever. We moved furniture to the garage and brought in two church tables and set it all up for 29 people.
It was good to have most of the Cole side here. (We were missing Becca and Casey and Jordan's family) We had great turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, potatoes and dressing...4 variations of green bean casseroles, delicious creamed onions, carrots and cabbage and bacon Brussel sprouts. The rolls were dough balls with only the tops being done and the bottoms not cooked thanks to dad's faulty oven.
We had pies coming out of our eyes with the remnants of the Call's pie party. They had more pies and people than ever before. I called it the "pity pie party" since after all of the deaths this year everyone came to show their support. It was actually very nice. It was our family's 37th pie party. We recounted the history and how it all began....we used to always go to Grandma Butters the night before Thanksgiving to set the tables and mom would deliver her fresh baked pies that night and Grandpa Butters always wanted a piece of pie because it would taste better if he wasn't so full of turkey. He was right. Eventually all the family had a piece of pie the night before and then mom started inviting extended family and friends and had her famous one sliver of each kind of pie or a one of each... "Oneofitch" Russian serving...and eventually was featured in magazine articles in the early 90's. She was a pie party pioneer and now there are pie parties everywhere carrying on her legacy.
I passed around the Thankful journal and of course we went around the tables and said what/ who we are thankful for. We had Aisha Nalder and Fernando's sister Luz and brother in law as our guests. It's always good to share our blessings and abundance.
We all went down to mom's house after for a final grandkids go through of things and stuff and now everything left in the house will be taken to the DI.
We finished up with a movie-The Good Dinosaur. It's how we like to celebrate and have our dinner of popcorn and soda to end our day of gratitude.
