The 10 Virgins

I was asked months ago if I would be willing to participate in December's Relief Society weekday meeting, helping to retell the parable of the 10 virgins. I agreed to, but was quite nervous. I was assigned to be the 7th virgin, representing sins and pleasures of the world.
Each virgin was assigned a room to decorate, fitting their assigned virgins' personality. We each prepared a four minute script describing the virgins' lives and the choices each made before/after the bridegroom came. We all dressed in character and remained in character during the entire program.
Once the program started each virgin, in character with oil lamp in hand sat with the others as guests. There were three narrators who started the evening off prefacing the parable with various scriptures and information about the artist and how the idea came about in bringing this parable to life. At one point during the opening presentation the 10 virgins stood up and walked to their rooms. Meanwhile the other sisters broke up into five groups and visited each virgin in their decorated room round-robin style. The groups rotated between the foolish virgins first, and ended with the wise virgins. By the end each group had the opportunity to get to know each virgin a little better by listening to their story. We all met back together and ended with the three narrators sharing more scriptures and quotes.
Overall this was a wonderful experience, and I'm so thankful for the opportunity I had to be apart of it.

There is one lady missing, but I still wanted to take a picture of those who participated...

Ward Christmas Party!

Our ward Christmas party was AWESOME this year. We had so much fun with our new ward family. For dinner we had ham and potatoes cooked in the dutch oven, salad, rolls, and dessert. Kyra on her own tried the ham and loved it, yeah! After we had been eating for a bit a "special" visitor arrived, Santa. All the kiddos formed a line to sit on Santa's lap, get their picture taken, and receive a special treat. Kyra loved Santa this year compared to previous years, it was really sweet. We ended with the primary kiddos singing songs and acting out the true story of Christmas, it was perfect.

Kyra looking at baby Jesus in the manger, so precious...

Christmas Gift Exchange...

My BEST girlfriends and I celebrated Christmas early this year due to December being a super busy month. We went to dinner at our favorite restaurant, Yen Ching, exchanged gifts, and went to a fantastic movie, The Help.
Last year while celebrating Christmas it was suggested to start having monthly "girls night" for year 2011. Before we were getting together with families included, but realized we were not getting our girl time to chit chat, laugh, and just be girls. Anyways it was a HUGE success, and we made some great memories... eating dinner at Ann's house and chillaxin, going to McCall, eating out at The Creperie, eating great stir-fry and prepping calendars to make for our mamas, making our calendars and eating dessert, going to Something Borrowed and eating out at Legends, craft night with a yummy dessert, writing letters to Mary the Great, being girls and relaxing, and celebrating Christmas together. We always have the best time together no matter what we're doing. I look forward to what 2012 will bring.
Below there are only four of us in the photo, if we were ALL together there would be five, but Mary lives in Australia. We miss her everyday, especially when we get together for "girls night". Love and miss you always Mary!

Our Family Pictures...

I know it's been almost a year since I blogged, but I have an excellent excuse... We had NO internet. We now have internet and hopefully it's here to stay. I intend to blog about the big events that took place this last year, but it will definitely take some time. Anyways, I thought a perfect "returning to blogging" post would be to post our most recent family pictures.

Our family picture day was not an easy task, I wonder if it is for anyone. It's funny how you put so much time into getting your family ready for pictures, and then my sweet little Kyra refuses to smile for any picture, or wants to wander off and play elsewhere. I need to remember she is two no matter what situation we may be in at the time. Anyways we ended up getting a great family photo! I emailed two pictures to my sister-in-law (the only picture of Kyra smiling and another that the rest of us looked decent in) My sister-in-law pasted Kyra's smiling face onto the other photo and voila we got a family photo we were all happy with.




On family picture day we did not attempt to get individual pictures of the kids, so yesterday I tried all by myself in our own backyard. These were my favorites...

Kyra - 2 1/2 years old

Miles - 8 months old

Breaking Dawn

I LOVE these girls, we have so much fun together. We went to Breaking Dawn opening night. We of course made it a complete GIRLS night with dinner before at The Creperie, taking a few silly pictures while at the theatre, and sipping hot cocoa at Moxie Java afterwards.





Great night with great friends, thanks girls!