Alex's Birthday Party

Tom and Amy and Melonie Christmas Party

Kristin and Rachel at the Christmas Party

Stevie, Andrew and Dan at the Christmas Party

Angie, Alex and Caleb at Christmas party

Samantha, Derid, Tayson and Stephen

at Christmas party

Deena and Deb, Chriatmas party

Christmas party

Christmas party

Christmas Day

Anniversay Family Dinner

I am finally updating my blog. A lot has happened the last two months. We had a birthday party for Alex on the 21st of November. Her birthday is the 23rd. We had most of the family that live around here there for the fun. She is 16 yrs old now and will be driving soon. We hope that she drives to our house often.

We had a great Thanksgiving feast with much of the family here for that. We have decided to have our celebration on the Saturday after Thanksgiving with the hope that less conflict with other family time will be better for all. It turned out to be a great idea and we will make that our tradition. We enjoyed the company of the Josh and Deena Callister family, the Dan and Angie Callister family, the Stephen and Deborah Skokos family, and the Tom and Amy Callister family. We ate good food, played some games and watched a bit of the Utah/BYU football game.

December brought us some additional visiters. The Derid and Rachel Ure family. Derid had graduated from Ortho school and will now be starting to work in Lubbock TX as an Orthodontist. We had the joy of spending some good time with them in December. Alex had the opportunity to sing in the chorus for the Christmas production of "The Forgotten Carols" . We went to see that at the Cottonwood High School, and it was very good. Loved to see Alex singing on stage. We had our annual Christmas party on the 12th this year. It worked out really well. We had 4 of our 6 children and their families there and would have had no one had we done it on Christmas Eve. So we are willing to break from tradition and have more of the family there...it is kinda what it's all about. We had the same people there as we did on Thanksgiving but added the Ure family and Kristin. Sooo much fun!!!!! The day started with a "Surprise" party for Derid. His family came down from Idaho and we met at the Macaroni Grill resturant for lunch. We told Derid that we wanted to take he and Rachel out for lunch to celebrate his graduation. When we got to the resturant, most of his family, and alot of ours were there to surprise him. After, we all came to our home and were able to bless their little baby Ellie. It worked out so nice to have all that family there together for that.

Our actual family party started with a trip to Grandma's Rehab to visit with her and to go caroling down the halls. It is fun to do and see the excitment on the faces of many of the residents. Some join us in their wheel chairs and walkers. Thanks to Dan for playing the guitar and getting the music together for that. We came back home and ate yummy food and played some traditonal Callister games......candy bar game, decorating gingerbread houses, What Were You Thinking (Christmas style), and of course the Chimes. We exchanged true white elephant gifts and all had a good laugh at those. Good time!!!!

Chritmas Eve Von and I went for a wonderful snowshoeing hike in Little Cottonwood Canyon on the Red and White pine trail. Amazingly beautiful!!!!! That evening we had Tom and Amy and family over for dinner and some games. Christmas day was fun because we had visits from Josh and family and Stephen and Deb. We played Apples to Apples ( a new kid favorite) and a new game that Stephen brought into the family "Bang".

On our Anniversary the 27th, we had family with us again. Family home evening with everyone in town but the Ure's...they were still in Idaho. But on the 29th we had a wonderful time in the Jordan River Temple as a celebration of our 35th anniversary. We (Josh, Deena, Stephen, Deb, Derid, Tom, Amy, Von, Maureen) did sealings as a family and that was a very special experience. A little side note to this is that Deborah wore my wedding dress in the Temple that night.

As you can tell the last 2 months have been awesome and blessed with lots of family time together. We know that everyone is busy, and we hope to see most of you in this year. Have a great 2010.