December 19, 2005

December

For Family Home Evening the week after Tiffany's parents left, we decorated for Christmas. Tyler has a small tree that we put in his room. Brooke loved helping.

Decorating Tyler's Tree

Of course Tyler and Brooke had to help with the big tree too. They concentrated on the bottom half of the tree. Brooke loved to organize the ornaments by putting several of the same type of ornament on the same branch. Tiffany was nice enough to wait until after the kids went to bed to redecorate the tree.

Decorating the big tree

On the next Friday, we had a branch activity. Everyone thought Brooke and Tyler were so cute decorating the tree that they let them do most of it.

Decorating the church tree

As part of the activity, we made matchbox nativity ornaments. We then took them home to add to our tree.

Christmas Arts and Crafts

The second week in December, we had our church meetings at the Mount of Beatitudes. We were fortunate that it was a beautiful day. It was wonderful to listen to the speakers and look out over the Sea of Galilee. Kym Child from our ward in Oregon was on a business trip and he came with us.

Mount of Beatitudes

After our meetings, Tiffany took the kids home and Scott and Kym stayed to tour around the Sea of Galilee. Scott took Kym to Capernaum, Tabgha and St. Peter's primacy. At St. Peter's primacy, they ran into some of Scott's co-workers on a business trip from Costa Rica. Before heading home they decided to stop at the 2000 year old boat that was discovered in 1986 when the level of water in the Sea of Galilee dropped. It has been treated to preserve it and put on display.

2000 year old boat

On the third Saturday of December, we had district conference and a Christmas program at the BYU Jerusalem Center. Tiffany sang a Christmas song in Hebrew with two of her young women and Ann Hansen.

Jerusalem Center Musical number

The children acted out the nativity, but Yulia, who was supposed to be Mary, got stage fright. Everyone else already had a role, so Brooke got put in as Mary. She brought the house down with laughter as she wandered around the stage and examined the doll that was supposed to be Baby Jesus.

Brooke as Mary

Here we are posing for a family Christmas portrait.

Christmas portrait

On December 19th we celebrated Tiffany's birthday. We took her to the mall to go shopping and bought her a chocolate fudge cake.

Happy Birthday Tiffany

Tyler-isms:

"Sometimes I cough, sometimes I bless you" - After sneezing.
"I'm not percent sure." - Trying to imitate his father.

Brooke-isms:

"tree" - Christmas tree.
"hold you" - Pick me up.

Posted by sjbowden at December 19, 2005 5:58 PM