Christmas in Lehi

We've had a great Christmas here in Lehi.

We have started some traditions that we followed up with this year and started some new ones that we hope will carry over to future years. Marsha and Lauren made an advent calendar. They made 24 cloth bags with pockets in the front. Each pocket contained a ticket with a number corresponding to the date. The bags contained a treat for every day as well as a sticker and an activity. Everyone got to eat a treat (Hershey's Kiss or candy cane or something like that.) The sticker was of a stocking or something Christmasy (Christmier as Ryan says.) We would stick the sticker on the date tag and hang the tag on the tree in the piano (front) room. We would then do the activity (anything from read a Christmas story to go see the lights at Temple Square.) Another tradition that we have been doing for a few years came from our friends, the Birches, in Provo. They do an advent wreath. Once a week for the four weeks leading up to Christmas, we get out a wreath and put four candles in it. Each week we light an extra candle (so one candle the first week, two candles the second week, etc.) We turn off all the lights in the house except the candles and the Christmas lights. We then read a Christmas story by flashlight while drinking hot cocoa with candy canes. It is really a neat thing.

We had snow in the week leading up to Christmas. Mark was still in school, but the rest of the kids were out and I was off, so we went sledding at a park near our house. We had a great time and didn't even get too cold.

We had a bunch of cute sledders.

Christmas Eve we decided to take the kids to a movie to pass the slow afternoon time by going to a movie. We saw Disney's "The Princess and the Frog." The movie was OK, but it served its purpose.

We had a "Eureka Christmas Dinner" on Christmas eve. This included clam chowder and crab salad. The kids weren't overly impressed, but I thought it was good.

After dinner we drove around to look at lights. There is a place in Alpine that has a HUGE light display and sleigh with Santa. None of the kids wanted anything to do with talking to Santa (hmm, I wonder where they got that?) but we took a picutre of him anyway.

After we got back from looking at lights, we had our Nativity play. We only had one person crying this year. That is a new record for us. Try to guess who it was from the picuture.

After the nativity, the kids went on a treasure hunt. They got a chocolate orange at one stop. We all got Santa socks at another stop.

The last stop had PJs for Mark and Lauren and quilts for Ryan and Joseph. Marsha made the quilts herself. They are pretty awesome.

Christmas was  a really fun day. Lauren kept trying to negotiate an earlier time to wake up. We settled on 6:50. We (I) tried to sabotage Mark and Lauren's alarm so that they didn't get up so early, but it didn't work. Santa found our house again and we made a haul.

Our family gift this year was a Wii Fit. It is really fun except for the fact that it told me I am overweight.

Some other fun gifts: 

Lauren loved her new camera.

Mark spent hours downloading music (classical, of course) to his new MP3/video player (sorry, no photo.)

Ryan spent hours putting together his Lego creations

and Joseph couldn't get enough of his new bowling set.

We got an awesome calendar from the Meyers and a fun game from the Banks. We loved the presents that the cousins sent. (Ryan is detecting all of the metal in the house, the Pirate Potato Head cracks me up, the locker room esentials kit was perfect (Mark smells beautiful, thaks Syd) and the shirt and book were perfect for Lauren.)

It wouldn't be a Lindsey Christmas blog unless we talked about the food. We had ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry, jello salad and rolls. Outstanding!!!!

Of course one of the funnest presents for the little boys was a giant box that we turned into a bus.

Marsha and I had a fun Christmas. It is so fun to watch the kids be excited about their presents and to help them put stuff together. We got some fun presents as well. We are very thankful for the Christmas Season and for the birth of Jesus.

We hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a happy, wonderful and prosperous New Year!!!!

If You Build It...

A while ago, I did a blog on Ryan building things. This is a follow up to that blog. Ryan LOVES to build things. He loves Legos. He builds really cool contraptions of his own design. Recently he has found some MegaBlock collections that Mark built in the past. He and I have built a fighter jet (Blue Angels)

and a destroyer.

He also spent quite a bit of time this summer assembling the Rippin' Rocket Roller Coaster - a K'Nex structure that is bigger than he is. We took pictures of the MegaBlock creations, but unfortunately did not get a picture of the roller coaster before it got destroyed. I did find a picture of it when Mark built it in 2003 that I included here.

Ryan has also recently came across an Electronic Snap Kit that we have. It lets you put different electronic components on a board and hook them up to a battery. Depending on the configuration of the components, you can turn on lights, play music, turn a motor, etc. It teaches basics about circuits and lets you learn about switches, resistors, capacitors, transistors, etc. Ryan loves that thing. He has spent hours making circuits. On Saturday I had to tell him to do something else because after two hours of laser gun sounds and sirens, I was getting a head ache.

He's a great kid! We are glad he is in our family.

Halloween 2009

We had a fun Halloween. Lauren had big plans for her costume and had been planning it way in advance as usual. At the last minute, she decided that she wanted to do something else. It was touch and go for a minute, but she decided to be an aviator / Amelia Erhart. She wore my leather jacket, Great Grandpa Lindsey's safety goggles, a bat costume hat turned inside out and a scarf. I love this picture of her. It is really cute.

Joseph didn't plan his costume at all (or we didn't plan it for him.) We tried to stuff him into his Bob the Builder costume from last year, but it was too small for him then and this year we didn't have a prayer. Lauren found a bee costume that we had made for Mark years ago and Joseph was happy to put it on.

Ryan had costume trauma this year. He wanted to be a skeleton for a long time. We came up with a skeleton costume for him, but he didn't like it. At the last minute we threw a baseball hat and giant glasses on him. The glasses came off after the first house, so he was a baseball player.

After the kids got back from trick-or-treating, Marsha and I tried on some of the costume accessories. I was wearing Lauren's goggles and aviator helmet. Notice the slimming affect it has on my face. Marsha put on Joe's bee hat and Ryan's glasses. Aren't we cute? We rival Brad and Stef in their costumes.

Mark's costume this year consisted of making a Belgium flag and taping it on his shirt. He went as a Flem. Strange boy. The day after Halloween, he was messing around with Joe's bee costume. This is the result.

Quilt Lady

Can you believe two posts in two days?

Lauren's class was in charge of making a quilt for a tree the school is entering in the Festival of Trees this Christmas time. The trees are donated by local schools and businesses. The proceeds go to help different charities.

Anyway, Lauren was so excited about the quilt that they made that she wanted to make one for herself. She and Marsha went to the fabric store to pick out just the right material for the quilt. When she gets into a project like this, there is no stopping her. Marsha didn't have time to help her, so she made the quilt herself. Here are some pictures of the finished product.

Lauren loves to do projects like this. She had another activity at school where the kids could sell goods. She made around friendship bracelets to sell. She sold them all. She is great at stuff like that.

As most of you know, Lauren got a cat this summer. Her name is Tortie (for the tortoise shell fur she has.) She reminds me a lot of Rammy - really skinny and doesn't mind being toted around by kids. Here is a picture of her from the summer. She is a little bigger than that now, but not too much.

Eagle Project

It's been a while since we had a post, so let's get back into it.

This has been a long time in the works, but Mark has finally finished the work on his Eagle Project. His project was to paint red curbs by fire hydrants to mark them as no parking zones. It took a while to get going on the project because the prep work included talking to the Fire Chief and getting donations from local businesses (like Home Depot and Kwall Paint.) For those of you who know Mark, he would rather get teeth pulled than talk to people on the phone. It took a while to get in gear, but he finally got going. Mark got a donation of paint from Kwall Paint and supplies from Home Depot. He started the project during a Tuesday night activity. The Teachers and Priests were lined up to help out. About 22 people in all showed up to help. It was really windy that night and we didn't get very much done (about 7 curbs.) The project continued that Saturday and about 10 people showed up to help. We painted about 15 curbs that day with half the people in the same amount of time. There were six curbs left to do. We finished them up on Saturday. Mark has now finished his Eagle Project!!!!! Hooray for Mark!!!! Now he just has to finish up one requirement on three merit badges and do his Eagle paperwork.

Here are some of the pictures we took for the before and after photos required for the project.

In addition to the Eagle Project, Mark has been studying hard. He is getting good grades and is doing well in his AP Chemistry class that he was a little worried about at the beginning of the year.

He also had a performance evaluation in piano. Performance evaluation is where you go play for a judge and they evaluate your performance. Mark played "Danza del gaucho matero" by Alberto Ginastera. He did well and was invited to perform at an honors recital at the end of this month.

Cherries

We have had a cherry tree for several years. Up until this year we would get about 50 cherries off of the tree. This year it went crazy. We had a ton of cherries. We couldn't keep the birds away. We tried hanging CDs in the tree, but they didn't seem to mind them. We looked up other home remedies as well, but they still took their fair share. Even with what the birds ate, we still had tons of cherries. Ryan and Joseph LOVED climbing the ladder to pick them. The second picture is the remainder of the cherries on the last day of picking. It's hard to tell from the picture, but this is a really big bowl. It will hold a gallon and a half of water. We filled it a couple of times to overflowing before this picture. We wish you could have been here to sample them.

Lindsey Gardens - Memorial Day

For the past few years on Memorial Day, we have taken the kids to the SLC cemetary to visit Grandpa and Grandma Lindsey's grave. We usually buy a pot of mums at the Smith's on 6th and E and then do a drive by on G&G's old house on 9th Avenue. A couple of times we have knocked on the door to see if the people who now own it would let us in to see it again. Nobody has ever answered our knock. When we get to the grave site on the corner of Cypress and Cedar, we put the flowers on the grave and look around for other people we are related to. The kids also like to go see the military graves just to the south of G & G's grave site. After visiting the cemetary, we go to Lindsey gardens and have a picnic. We went ice blocking once. Lauren was a natural at it. She must take after her Great Grandpa Lindsey. The hills at the park are in kind of rough shape. They are getting better after some neglect, but are still pretty rough for ice blocking. This year after eating lunch, Mark and I played frisbie and the little boys played on the playground equipment. Lauren had filled up close to 70 water balloons. We hauled them to the top of the hill (by the uppermost baseball diamond) and threw them down the hill. It is amazing how fast you can burn through 70 water balloons. It was really fun. That may become a new tradition for us.

Here are some pictures of our trip this year.

G & G's house on 9th Avenue. Front yard is different, but still looks the same.

G & G's gravesite. Someone else had been there before us and left the red flowers. Steve and Donna said they had been, so maybe it was them.

Great Grandpa and Grandma Lindsey's gravesite

Lindsey Garden sign

Our picnic just off the playground and above the lower baseball diamond.

Looking toward the upper baseball diamond from the playground (another Joseph Lindsey is in the picture)

While we were on the way up, Marsha asked what some of my memories of Grandpa and Grandma were. Here are a few I came up with (it's hard to stop once you get started.)

• I remember grandpa explaining in great detail how he made the dining room chairs in his woodshop class in high school.
• I remember sleeping on the sun porch and looking out over the city at night.
• I remember grandpa pointing out that you can see Mt. Nebo from their house if the air is clear.
• I remember grandma filling in pauses in the conversation with a strategically timed "well well" or "mmm hmm"
• I remember grandpa visiting us in SJ and looking in a yogurt cup that I had just finished and telling me that there were at least two spoonfuls of yogurt left. He then proceeded to scrape two spoonfuls of wax off the container and feed them to me.
• I remember playing hide and seek in the basement.
• I remember trying to break in to grandpa and grandma's house when we got back and the adults were gone and the door was locked. Grandpa found every place we had tried to get in and made comments about it. We never fessed up to it being us, but I'm sure he knew.
• I remember Stef asking grandma if she had a little plastic thing that holds bread bags closed not expecting her to have one, but she produced about 500 of them that she had been saving "just in case."
• I remember the old powder blue Ford that seemed to run forever.
• I remember G&G bringing me a box of Hostess cupcakes that they had kept in the trunk of the above mentioned Ford and they smelled and tasted of gasoline (Camille may remember that as well.)
• I remember the crocheted duck that pooped jelly beans. (Does anybody know what happened to that?)
• I remember the ancient bottle of mayonaise that was in G&G's fridge.
• I remember being right next to grandpa and having to yell to get him to hear me, but grandma could be in the kitchen and speak in conversational tones and grandpa could hear every word.
• I remember G&G telling us stories about Grandpa Schoenfeld with a hand on the door know on each side of the door and saying, "This guy in here won't let me out."
• I remember grandpa forgetting my name (not sure he ever knew it) but always knowing who Marsha was.
• I remember G&G taking me to the MTC when I left on my mission and how nice it was to have them there.
• I remember grandpa's huge collection of stereo-scope pictures.
• I remember grandpa missing grandma terribly after she died.
• I remember grandpa loving to show us his power tools and trains in the basement when we would visit.
• Most of all I remember what wonderful people they were.
  

Like I said, once you get started, it is hard to stop. I would be interested in hearing some of your favorite memories of G&G as well.

This and That

We have had a lot going on lately. I've been meaning to blog about a lot of it, but haven't gotten around to it. This blog will try to cover it. It will mostly be pictures of what we have been up to lately

The Tophams came to visit us in March. We had a great time playing with them. The kids had a blast. Lauren was a little worried about so many boys coming to visit, but she had the best time of all. We ate a lot and had fun visiting with them.

Brenna and Joseph at dinner at the small table.

We went to Temple Square and to the Church History Museum with them on one of the days. It was freezing but fun.

Mom and Dad Lindsey came to visit from April 1st through April 8th. They got to go to a piano recital for Mark. We went to the BYU art museum one of the days. There is a Walter Wick exhibit there right now. He is the guy who took all of the pictures for the I Spy books. We watched General Conference. We also went geocaching with grandpa. We were excited to have them here. It had been a while since we saw them.

It must be conference time. Marsha and Mom sleeping.

A common sight at our house

Joseph and Ryan in front of the BYU Art Museum

Lunch with G&G at BYU. There were tons of students around that day. Marsha asked the boys who all of the people were. Ryan said, "I think they are my cousins."

Geocaching with Grandpa and Grandma. We got some serious treasures

Joseph had a birthday on April 8th. He is now three years old. Can you believe our tiny baby is three?

Joseph with a bowling pin cake...

a Snidely Whiplash moustache...

and birthday pancakes.

Two days after Joseph turned three, our little Lauren turned 11. We told her that on her "big" birthdays (8, 10, 12, etc.) she could have a bigger party with more friends, etc. Since this was an off year, it was supposed to be a smaller party. She still managed to invite six friends over. She had the party planned down to the minute. The basement got a little thrashed, but a great time was had by all.

Lauren with a birthday muffin

Blowing out the candles

We had spring break last week. I was off for the week and we had fun. Our spring break started with Easter. We had a fun, freezing easter egg hunt.

Joseph was searching for eggs by putting his hand up and shading his eyes.

Monday we went back to Temple Square. It was much warmer than when we went with the Tophams. Popcorn was popping on all of the trees. The flowers were out in force. It was a great day. We also went to Lindsey Gardens for a picnic and to the capital building. The battery on our camera died at Temple Square, so we didn't get pictures of the other places.

On Thursday (April 16) we woke up to eight inches of snow. We went to Deardens for the day and had a fun time visiting with them.

By Saturday the temperature was back up. We went to This is the Place Monument. I hadn't been there in years - probably since the famous Brigham Young smoking picture.

Joseph and Ryan petting a goat that had gotten loose

Joseph and the monument

The kids looking at the monument