Avery was Baptized on January 2. That capped off our holiday visit and we returned home the next day to get ready to go back to work and school.
We had such a great time being house crashers on our cute family in Lindon and Riverton. Ben and Michelle and Cory and Angie were so great to open their homes to the 6 of us and the chaos that naturally follows. The kids had such a great time hanging out with cousins and playing with all the gifts and toys.
Uncle Ben was great to play Rock Band with the kids. He really made it fun for the kids and Michelle and I had a great time watching him be one of the kids.
Fresh snow is just what we all wanted after spending the last 3 Christmas' in the desert. There were snowball fights and tubing adventures.
I loved getting reacquainted with my holiday tradition of cracking fresh Dungeoness Crabs while watching Football Bowl games.
Brad and his siblings and their wives were awesome to step in and manage things while I spent time in Logan with Mom, Dad and my siblings taking care of Mom and helping Dad through the trauma and shock of a double mastectomy that surprised all of us when Uncle Gary found a tumor in Mom's mammogram just before the holiday. Mom and Dad spent Christmas in the hospital and returned to their own home on the 26th. Mom's recovery is going well and has seemed to be ahead of the doctors predictions. Thank goodness we have had Gary and his expertise to track all of us as in breast cancer awareness. His retirement on Christmas Day was inspired as Mom was motivated to get her mammogram before he retired and took a much deserved vacation to New Zealand.
Christmas night brought the traditional Nativity and dinner at Brad's parent's home. His father was suffering from terrible back pain which lead to surgery later the following week.
Over all we had a great holiday season. Thankful for family, good health and the ability to spend time with loved ones. We are happy to be back in the state of Utah and a short drive to all these great people that mean so much to us.

Snowballs, Snowmen, Tubing and fun with cousins met all of our expectations. The weather cooperated with fresh snow for the fun. Brad's Dad had back surgery the week following Christmas so it was nice to be close enough to be there for him as well.

From real acoustic guitars to Madden 10 (artificial football) Christmas brought all kinds of fun. We visited Ben and Michelle and their family where we enjoyed Rock Band with Uncle Ben. Then we headed north to stay with Cory and Angie where we built a snowman and went tubing. Family time is what the holidays are all about.
The Kerr Clan spent family time helping Bobbi (mom) recover from an impromptu mastectomy. Not what we would have planned as a holiday gathering but we were all sure glad to be together and to be available to lend support to her and Dad.

Fernando the Christmas Elf Leaves Great Surprises

Fernando has not disappointed in his nightly visits..The first night he left a slinky for each child along with some candy. The next night he left tickets to the Nutcracker Ballet...(Photo of Charlie dressed in his Christmas Sweater to go the Nutcracker). Last night he left coloring books and bags of coal. (The coal was bubble gum so not bad, huh...)

Meet Fernando, The Cook Christmas Elf

This is Fernando. Tonight, being December 1st, the kids all put a little fairy dust/elf dust/glitter on their hands and on the count of 3 blew it into Fernando's face. Through the magic of Christmas the glitter will allow Fernando to awaken every night from now until Christmas to do something either naughty or nice in our home. He won't wake up until we are all fast asleep and if it gets too late he gets tired of waiting and the likelihood of "something naughty" increases.
Some nights he will leave wonderful little treats or rewards for our family to wake up to. Other nights we may wake up to something not so nice.
Fernando also has relatives that work with Santa in the North Pole and he keeps in close contact about the Christmas spirit in our home and whether or not we deserve a visit on Christmas Eve. We look forward to waking up tomorrow morning to see what Fernando has done with his first night of freedom...We'll keep you posted.

H1N1 Vaccinations for the 3 Youngest

Stanford 45 - Notre Dame 38

It's always been a treat to return to Stanford and walk the beautiful campus. Brad enjoys recalling experiences that took place in his life there. He has great memories of his time playing football for Stanford in 1986-87. The campus is amazing and has a sense of tradition and history. The beautiful sandstone arches and Hoover Tower are so impressive.
This year Michael and Debi Benson invited us to go see the final season game, Stanford vs. Notre Dame. We jumped at the chance and loved every minute of the two night get-a-way.
Stanford has a new stadium, built the first year we were in Abu Dhabi so we loved seeing the incredible structure. It seats half the number of people as the previous stadium and gives all in attendance a much better view of the game.
Our seats were great. We sat on the 20 yard line behind the Notre Dame team only 4 rows up!
We could hear the clash of the helmets and the calls of the quarterback. It was awesome.
The game didn't disappoint. Notre Dame made a great showing. Giving Stanford a run for their money until the second half when the Cardinal came alive and thanks to amazing play by Gerhart, Stanford made and exciting come-back to win, 45-38.
(By the way..How is it fare that Dr. Hotpants looks better NOW than he did when he played there over 20 years ago??)

The 4 of us with Hoover Tower (faintly) in the background.



After the game everyone rushed onto the field to celebrate and congratulate Gerhart for breaking all kinds of records.

Timing worked out that we were able to see Sargon, Habib, Tammy, and Sargon's Father, Ron. What a treat. With Sargon and Habib in Afghanistan we have spent Thanksgiving/Christmas with them in Abu Dhabi. We never dreamed we might get to see them here in the US on the same weekend this year. The weekend before Thanksgiving Habib was honored by CENTCOM for his contributions to the US military in Afghanistan. After receiving this prestigious award in D.C. Habib got to see a lot of the US on his first visit to this country. He saw Florida, Las Vegas and the Bay area.

Veteran's Day Presentation 2009

Jack and Charlie were so cute when they presented Grandpa John's framed medals and awards from his military service. The class had a lot of questions and the boys had a lot of interesting and REALLY imaginative explanations for how he got each award. Only a few of which were true or even possible. Luckily I was there to correct the answers such as: "He got this award for running a man through with a sword..." "He got this medal for shooting a man from a helicopter."...