Joy +, Alex spoke at Stake Conference, and it's our 29th anniversary

A few pictures from Andrew from Christmas break when they were in Mesa:

at the zoo

So Ryan and Eric made it back safely to BYU-Idaho after Christmas break and have started school again.  School here is now in full swing, too.

Alex and Glen just got back from the annual Utah Theatre Conference trip last night. This was the first time I haven't gone with Glen since 2001 (when Alex was 3 months old).

This was Alex's first time going. Glen had 18 other students there. Besides going to workshops, they saw 2 musicals: Tarzan and Curtains. They really loved Curtains. They say I do a better Tarzan yell than the actor who played Tarzan. Well, I've had more years of practice, so I'm not surprised they think that. Ask me to yell for you sometime, and if I'm not laughing too hard, I'll give it a try.

We had Stake Conference today at church. That happens 2 times a year where the wards of our stake (I believe we have 7-8) gather for one big meeting. So I don't know...maybe 1,000 people were there. It was a fabulous meeting today. Alex had been asked to give a 5 minute talk. He nailed it. I told him that if he weren't my son, I would want him to date my daughter.

Notes I took from his talk (which don't really do his talk justice, but you'll get the gist):

He was asked to speak on putting Christ first in our lives (which was the theme for this weekend's conference). He said his first thought was scripture study. Sometimes at night he feels exhausted but when he chooses to read the scriptures anyway, he feels the spirit and his sense of gratitude is increased. He said if we choose to read and reach toward God, we will be blessed.

His second thought on the topic was Sabbath day observance. He said there is a greater sense of peace and love when we observe the Sabbath. As we attempt to draw near to Him, He will draw near to us (Doctrine and Covenants 88:63 and James 4:8). The Lord's arm is always stretched forth and when we stretch to Him, He will stretch more to us. (he remembers his brother teaching that after recently returning from his mission).

Great job Alex!

And yesterday marked 30 years since Glen and I met. He got me a lovely bouquet of flowers for that. And today we are celebrating our 29th wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary Sweetheart!

Caroling, Christmas, Oregon, New Year's, Hannah's year in review

Caroling happened late this year as we were waiting for everyone to be home that could be home. I thought it was funny/sweet that, when we divided up into different cars to go out, Alex chose to go with Glen and me...but it turned out he was choosing to go with the twenty one pilots cd that he had in our car. We might have been the only car rocking out to twenty one pilots instead of Christmas music. It was a blast though. And the weather wasn't too cold. Pizza and doughnuts at grandma and grandpa's afterwards. Great evening.

If you can access facebook, then you should be able to access the music happening in the car Hannah was in:
 https://www.facebook.com/michael.j.perazzo/videos/10214557791329122/


Christmas!

Breakfast was an egg and sausage casserole and a new-to-us strudel recipe (looks like a mummy...might have to adapt that for a Halloween treat).

Present time!

Eric, once again, is the pickle finder, so he got to pass out the first present

Danny, Sam, and Hannah reading their letters from Gma and Gpa P

Eric and Ryan doing the same

Danny and Sam opening their gifts from Hannah...soda (I usually don't buy it)

Alex

Glen and me opening our gift from Alan...

...which is a beautiful Christus statue! Thanks Alan!

The neatest gift to Glen was a family history center. Hannah bought a new computer, wireless keyboard and mouse, and fixed up half of the office to be Glen's special place for research. She even build the bookcase for it (with Glen unwittingly helping to make his own present). Truly awesome. Ryan came up with the idea to make the wall look like the FamilySearch logo and Eric painted the tree trunk. Glen has been making very good use of it.

What was my best gift this year? Everyone pitched in to give me a 2 year subscription to Rosetta Stone to learn Mandarin! 谢谢 everyone!

So the day after Christmas, Hannah and I drove up to Oregon to my parents' place since my brother, Kyle, and his girlfriend, Melissa, were coming from New Hampshire. We had a wonderful few days together. It was so nice to finally meet Melissa! She is terrific! We didn't do too much...and it drizzled almost the entire time we were there. The sun was out for maybe 5 minutes total (but that's not why we were there, so it's okay).

Went to see the sunset at the beach the first night there. Gorgeous.

The next night we went to see the Festival of Lights at Azalea Park. It was AMAZING.

We played the card game 3 to 13 several times and even got my dad to join us! And we went to some thrift stores. It was short and sweet and we are so glad that we were able to go. We are just sad that Denise couldn't join us. However, we hope to see each other in a few months at Denise's.

I do not have any photos of us to post as when we took a photo my dad said, "I'd better not see this posted on your blog." I told him I would post it with a bar over his eyes so no one would recognize him...but I don't know how to do that. And Melissa didn't really want her picture taken, either, so the picture will just have to remain on my camera for now.

I'm happy to say we traveled home safely and uneventfully (last April when Hannah and I came back from Oregon it was snowy and slippery and scary).

We did stay up for New Year's, though it was a relatively quiet affair. At midnight Alex was the first to do 100 jumping jacks and the boys dropped some potatoes (while Hannah threw hers). I don't really understand this new tradition (being the first to do something in the new year), but the kids had fun, so that's good.

Hannah posted her hilarious year-in-review to facebook and youtube. I was laughing so hard I was crying.

She gave this disclaimer on facebook:

Hey, y’all! If you weren’t around to check in on my 2017, I compiled a video. May be the strangest 10 minutes you’d see today if you watched it. But then, I don’t know your life. Nothing major or important, all kind of on the dumb side, but that’s just me.

It ends with another 2017 single “Pancakes Are Closer,” so that’s kind of cool. Didn’t do so great with editing, so some pictures run almost awkwardly long. Sorry.

And can I just say that Glen's packages were labeled fu (pronounced foo)...which is part of the Chinese word for husband...and not f-u. Yeah, that system didn't work out too well.