Christmas Eve with The Denks

Every year my parents take the kids the night before Christmas Eve to give us a night and day to get ready. It is such a nice break!

During our "alone" (Jessie was in tow) we had lunch at Kneaders and Mike gave me my Christmas present... a new awesome Canon camera! This was the first picture I took!

So excited for this new photography era. I am off to a slow start! So much to learn!

With my parents the kids get new jammies and have fun with movies, lots of sugar and cousins! We all meet up again Christmas Eve for a yummy Mexican Dinner and festivities.

My dad reads aloud the story of the Savior's birth and the cousins act it out. This year's new costume was Katelyn as an angel in my mom's 1977 wedding dress!

A very wise man! Handsome too!

Three "wise" Men

Katie and Matt- 1st Christmas married

Christian patiently waiting to open gifts!

The cousins had seen this HUGE present wrapped and waiting and were so excited to know what it was and it belonged to Katelyn! It was a BYU chair!

Jessie got a shopping cart and a baby!

Amanda and Robbie's little baby Lily was loving all the boxes, bows and paper!

Jessie had her baby so Crayton wanted one too. Funny how he is mimicking his mom!

It was a great evening and we were excited to get home to sleep snug in our beds

and wait for St. Nicholas to arrive!

Christmas Jingle

Tyler was a part of the school choir again this year. He had four performances and did a great job.

This performance was outside infornt of the movie theatre in Farmington.

Amy also had been preparing a few numbers with the 4th grade. Everyone playing a recorder! It was great!

Merry Christmas from The Blacks!

HO! HO! HO!

Dec 6th we had our annual Ward Christmas Party. This year the Primary children did a live nativity while the YM/YW sang songs and read scriptures. The kids did a great job and Katelyn got to be Mary ( she is the oldest girl in Primary!).

The big man himself was there too! Christian wanted nothing to do with him! He cried when we even made him go in close proximity to get a candy cane from Santa's Helper.

"Tyler , were you good this year?"

Jessie hadn't wuite made up her mind about Sanata Claus.  We caught a glimpse of him in the hall before he went into the cultural hall and she was excited and even surprised me by saying his name. Then when we got closer she became afraid. I am sure next year she won't want to go near him.

We have a darling neighbor that was wanting all the kids to listen to his Christmas tie that played a little Christmas tune. The kids loved it!

Not a bad group !

Brigs is now SIX!!!

The festivities began in Vernal with the busting of his birthday pinata! Brigham loves a good pinata bashing and he wanted to share it with his bestest cousin Chandler so we took the Pirate Ship with us.



Brigham had an awesome sixth birthday! This was the first year he got to celebrate it at school and at home. At school he was treated like a king for the day and every person in his class wrote him a birthday note. He took his friends at school some candy to celebrate.

He requested a snake cake and this is what we came up with!

Lots of good presents- legos, Power Rangers outfit, sword, Nintendo Star Wars DS and Smurf Christmas movie!

Can't believe this kiddo is already 6 years old! It was awesome when he discovered that he has to use two hands now to tell people how old he is!

Beautiful Lights at Temple Square

For FHE, we met Mike at his work and rode the train to City Creek to look at the new ZCMI "candy windows". So glad Macy's decided to keep the tradition! So much candy and talent! It is great to see the kids eyes get so big seeing all that candy! For those of you that are big fans of the "blue crystal" there was tons of it!

Then we walked around Temple Square in awe at the lights and decorations!

I lent my camera out to budding photographers.

They took some great pictures!

These days we are too busy/fidgety to get the whole family in for a picture. Dang it!

JNB was so stinking naughty the entire time. We never really could remedy her so we cut out early.

Vernal

In the beginning of December, we headed over to Vernal for Preston's baby Blessing!

They did it!!

It was fun to see David and Ronni's new huge house, Dave's Walgreens store and their new stomping ground. Mike and I got to go to the Vernal Temple too.

We went out to visit the Dinosaur Quarry. Toured the Visitor's Center and watched a short film first before going to the quarry.

Jess playing with the dinosaurs.

Everyone was working on getting their Jr. Ranger certification.

They reused an old freight car from a train and made it into this bridge. Truth be told, it probably cost more money to recycle the train than it did to just make a new bridge, but we are happy to save the earth?! The boys and Jess enjoyed looking for treasures beneath it.

A little hike around looking for tracks and footprints to get our Jr Ranger badges!

At the "Quarry with Lori"

We learned it is the only dinosaur park where they have found a complete Allosaurus skull. There is an 80-foot long mural that shows the story of these animals and many others that lived in the Morrison environment during the late Jurassic. There were several places where we could touch real dinosaur fossils that were 149 million years old!

HUGE dinosaur bone that we touched!

Brigham got real sick so he and I stayed home from church and didn't get to go to the blessing. He wanted to celebrate his birthday with Choncho so he had brought his birthday Pinata from Bountiful, but didn't feel good enough to get up and take a swing at it. He was good to share and let everyone else do it for him.
It was good for these cousins to get together!

Thanks to Dave and Ronni for a yummy, fun weekend!