... and he wants to fix my car!

Granny's on 5th and State is still sporting this helpful Santa Claus in their window. LOVE IT!

Santa Claus is Still Hanging Around

Like I said a few days before, I love to see the Christmas decorations hang around for a little while. This jolly little Santa brings a smile to my face.

O Tannenbaum

I start listening to Christmas songs in about August and LOVE to see Christmas decorations hang on through the winter months.

Late Christmas Post

I can't believe I forgot to post this before Christmas. This is also a roadtrip picture, because I took it in the Deseret Book in downtown Salt Lake City. They had many interesting, beautiful, intricate and/or crazy Nativity sets and they were ALL fun to look at. This was the most different one there, an entire Nativity of snowmen.

The Night before Christmas and All Through the House...

all the creatures were stirring, snoring, crying, snorting and shuffling around all night long!

Do you like our little Charlie Brown tree? When we were first married we helped organize a children's "shoe drive" as a service opportunity for our congregation. We brought this little tree to church with small paper shoes attached with information about gender and shoe size and couples picked a shoe and brought the real shoes to us all wrapped for Christmas. We were able to deliver the shoes and actually see the recipients glee at receiving SHOES for Christmas. What a blessing it was to be involved in that project and we still use that little tree as our Christmas tree 4 years later. It is a reminder to us to always be grateful, always be generous.

Merry Christmas!

A few of the MANY Christmas photos I loved:

Kuwait

Las Vegas

Al Ain

Sunset from the I-15

Heading to a Christmas party up North, I snapped this from the car.

One more picture from SLC

This doesn't even begin capture the beauty and excitement that we enjoyed last Saturday at Temple Square in Salt Lake!

My three favorite City Daily Photos for today are:
Pasco (This is her VERY first blog post ever, so stop by and check it out and leave her a message!)
New Orleans
Rabaul

Fountain on the South Side of the Salt Lake Temple

Another photo from our trip up to Salt Lake on Saturday.

Exciting News: I ordered a new camera! I REALLY hope it will be here before Christmas.

My favorite City Daily Photos for today are:

St. Louis

Belgrade

Petaling Jaya

Temple Square: The Assembly Hall

Another of our photos from last night. The lights were actually much more amazing than the photos can show and the feeling there was incredible!

My favorite daily photos today are:
St. Louis
Brighton
Mt. Hood to Portland

(I have seen some other daily photo bloggers do this and I think it is a GREAT idea. I don't know if I will do it daily, but I will try to do it now and again.)

Road Trip: Salt Lake City - The Lights on Temple Square

Tonight we drove up to Temple Square in Salt Lake City to see the Christmas lights. Like always, they were spectacular. We had a bear of a time trying to find parking because there was a musical production going on downtown, as well as a bomb scare that shut down several streets. The news helicopters were zooming everywhere, but we didn't know what was going on until we got home.

We about froze ourselves, but had a marvelous time! I will be sharing more photos that we took with you later this week. This is the Salt Lake Temple and one of the most recognizable landmarks in Utah (along with the delicate arch).

NOTE: I bought a Panasonic Lumix FZ18 last month and have been taking several photos with it, but returned it this week because it was taking lots and lots of blurry pictures between the fabulous ones. For now, I am shooting with my Kodak Easyshare, again.

Jingle Bells, Batman Smells...

Robin laid an egg! Actually, more like EGG NOG. Holy egg nog, batman. Have you ever seen so many varieties? I think that 'sugar cookie' sounds GOOD! I found found most people either love egg nog or hate it, there are very few fence sitters. I sort of consider myself a fence sitter. I used to love it, probably still do love it, but I drank so much one Christmas I am still not ready for more yet!! What are your feelings toward egg nog?

*Also, there was that incident at summer camp in '99 when we wanted to have a "Christmas in July" party and couldn't find egg nog in the stores. We ended up making a huge punch bowl of the stuff from SCRATCH (Think: teenagers making a beverage from eggs) and hauled it up the hill to the lodge, sloshing around the van in 100 degree weather. Yuck.

American Fork Downtown Christmas Decorations, Close Up

A Quiet and Grey Day in Downtown American Fork

Angels Get Thirsty Too

They had a fun program at the North Hampton House this evening, a drive through Christmas Program with a Nativity and an opportunity to meet with Santa and his elf Bert. These are the angels from the Nativity, which was great. The costumes were fun and they had live goats and donkeys.

We only asked Santa for one thing... PLEASE FIX OUR PLAYSTATION.

What are you asking Santa for??

Thanksgiving Point Nativity

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Now that Thanksgiving is over, I will finally embrace the fact that Christmas is almost here. The stores have been trying to get us to buy presents, candy and decorations since September and one of the local radio stations has been playing all Christmas music since Halloween. I was trying out the nighttime setting on our camera and took this tonight of a friendly Santa in the neighborhood.