Monthly Archive

I wasn’t successful on the deer hunt this year, but I still had the cow elk hunt to look forward to. So with a lot of looking here:

and a lot of walking in this:

and a lot of looking like this:

I got one of these:

As a result our family will enjoy 174 lbs of some of the leanest, best tasting meat on earth (in my humble opinion). We just made some elk burritos this afternoon after church and they were fantastic, except I forgot to drain the grease out of the burger so it was a little…greasy (beef fat was added to the burger by the meat processor).

So, we’re lounging around the house on Thursday night, getting excited to watch the latest edition of “The Office”, when BriAnne gets a call on her cell phone from Amanda in our ward (whose daughter goes to the same preschool as Katelyn).  She’s wondering if we are planning on attending the Christmas program being put on by the preschool kids the next night (Friday night). Uh…what Christmas program??? Apparently, the kids have been practicing quite a while for this event, and Katelyn even had a part in it that she had to memorize lines for.  We had no idea! Somehow, we didn’t get the memo, and Katelyn never said anything about it (and if you know Katelyn, she talks about EVERYTHING with EVERYONE). When BriAnne asked Katelyn about it, her response was “um, I’m going to be feeling sick tomorrow night.”  “Well, why didn’t you say anything to us about it Katelyn, we’re really excited to go!” “I don’t know, I remember that I just forgot.”  After talking about how fun it is going to be, she changed her mind and decided she wanted to go. So, go we did and it was actually pretty entertaining – not really the program itself but watching a dozen or so 4 year olds wandering around aimlessly, screaming their lines, picking their noses, making faces, and anything and everything else 4 year olds do when they have a captive audience. Unfortunately, we thought our digital camera was in the diaper bag (where it usually is)…but it wasn’t.  So we had to make do with my crappy cell phone camera but here is Katelyn in her seat on the improvised “stage”:

 

 

Trying to keep Ethan contained when there were so many things to play on proved to be a BIG chore:

The program itself was maybe 1/2 hour and involved the kids singing some songs and some very basic skits. We got there extra early so we could take a tour of the place, which was kinda cool - the school is held in the same building as a gymnastics school (gymnastics for big people, that is) but they also have an area setup for little kids with tiny gymnastics rings and bar thingys which they get to use via a free once a week gymnastics lesson that was part of the deal.

Anyway, it was fun.  A special thanks to my parents (Grandma Deedee and Poppy) who came to support Katelyn as well.  It was also fun to bring Matt and Bonnie Park’s daughter with us who we were babysitting for the evening. Saturday proved to be fun with extra kids as well as we watched BriAnne’s sister’s daughter this morning and my brother’s little boy tonight.  All the kids were very good and it’s made for a fun weekend.

Our family is so excited for Christmas this year we are not quite sure we will make it another 25 days! I guess we have to though. Before we discuss that, I guess it’s best that Thanksgiving not be left out in the cold. We had a good one this year, with not one…not two…but three Thanksgiving dinners…four if you count leftovers on Sunday. Can you beat that??? We had an awesome get together on Thursday with my family at Grandma Baldwin’s house. Everyone was there except my brother McKay who had to work, so we had another dinner on Friday with my siblings at the folk’s place so we could enjoy one with McKay and Denene there. Then on Saturday we drove out to Tooele and had dinner with the McArthur’s and had a great time there as well and came home Sunday evening tired and stuffed. All that goodness, plus we are very grateful for everything we’ve been blessed with including good friends and family near and far. Ok, now on to Christmas…
After an invite from our friends the Harrison’s, we decided to get out into nature and CUT DOWN OUR OWN REAL TREE!! No 6 foot pre-lit fakey again this year! BriAnne and Lauren drove down to the ranger station a couple weeks ago and bought permits and then it was just a matter of keeping all the excitement contained until the big day, which turned out to be Saturday morning (before our trip to Tooele). We had breakfast and then headed out to Vernon, about 1.5 hours South Westerly-ish of Orem. We hiked around looking at this tree and that, trying to find just the right one for our little place. We were about an hour or so into the adventure when “Coconut” was spotted (we were informed by Katelyn that this is to be our tree’s name). This thing was a real beauty! Nice and full and a very good shape.

All in favor of finding a Christmas tree today?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All ready to go!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There it is!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, the tree looked a lot smaller in the wild….

When we got it home, it became evident pretty quickly that this tree needed a [much] more spacious and open livingroom to be fully appreciated.  We attempted to “thin it out” a little and realized that Coconut just wasn’t going to possess the same charm after I was done hacking it up trying to make it fit.  After Katelyn was able to spend a few minutes talking Coconut into it, we decided it would be best to offer the tree to BriAnne’s sister’s family in Spanish Fork who have a “Coconut” sized living room.  We drove it down to their place and judging by the excitement of my niece and nephew I think it will live a good life over the next month . So as not to have disappointed kids, we quickly drove home and set up old reliable, which really isn’t too bad but it sure isn’t a real tree.  We spent the rest of the night savoring the wonderful Christmas tree smell that Coconut provided for the hour it was here!!

Trying my best to make it work! (The couch was pushed all the way
into the hall so I could get “under Coconut’s hood” so to speak):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A happy ending for coconut at the Gardner home:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A happy ending at our house (under the circumstances):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And an end to the hot dog roasting fire:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks again to the Harrison’s for inviting us to participate in their family tradition! (next time we’re bringing a tape measure).