Getting Into the Spirit of Christmas

The Sunday a couple of days before Christmas.  It was right about here that I was really missing Clark.

Greta and her body guards.

The Middles and the Littles at Christmas.

Sunday evening we had the Chase family over for a musical Christmas extravaganza!  They love music and we love music and we've been wanting to do an evening like this with them for years.  We sang and we sang and we played bells and it was so much fun and it just filled me up with Christmas spirit!

We almost got "Carol of the Bells" with the bells to sound... not terrible.  Almost.
Next year.  We'll get it next year.

We pretty much sleighed it with "Jingle Bells" with the boom whackers.
Get it... sleighed it...  ha ha ha!

Then, joy of joys!  Monday morning was Christmas Eve and that means the Cannon Family Christmas Eve Breakfast!

There is so much love and joy and happiness at these gatherings-- siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends.  There is no event I enjoy more at Christmas time!

Abe and I hope and pray that years down the road our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren will want to be together the way we want to be with our extended families.

My favorite cousin, Ben!  I am one week older
Which doesn't feel like the bragging rights it did when we were kids.

Love. Love. Love.

Life gets so full for both of us that we don't see each other anywhere near enough.  It was wonderful to see Allison and her kiddos.

Peter, George, Brigham, Eli, and Chloe-- cousin fun!

My cousin Toni-- who may well be the person in my generation who best embodies that spirit of Glen and Joyce Cannon.  She is a gem!
Sorry for the overload of pictures of me-- Abe was behind the camera.

Christmas Party Like a Rock Star 2018

One of the highlights of the girls' Christmas season was their friends Christmas party.  It consisted of a gingerbread building contest and a truly tacky white elephant gift exchange.  The prize for winning the building contest was last picks for the gift exchange.
Team #1:  Andrew, Wyatt and Bethany.

Their structure was very sound.  The theme of the contest was "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".  But if it had been, "Sturdiest Structure" they would have won for sure.

Team #2: Elinor, Zach, and Ben.
They knew just what they wanted to do and worked very well together.

It was a giant sleigh, complete with Santa and reindeer, flying over the town below.  Spoiler alert:  They won!

Now this team-- Team # 3 Cameron, Corrine & Jacob- was very interesting.  They had a lot of potential.  They moved their operation to the front yard in hopes of the colder temperatures helping to harden their frosting sooner.  I'm just going to say it.  Things went very wrong at the 45 minute mark (they hadn't been going very well to begin with).  There was an incident and the whole thing collapsed.

In the end, they built a questionable scene that I'd rather not describe here.  So yeah... they didn't win.  It was unfortunate.

Team #4:  Enoch, Audrey, and Josh.  They moved outside to the backyard.  This team was the dark horse of the competition.  There were those who believed this team were the true champions.

They had the tallest structure and with very festive decor.  Sort of a shame that they were overlooked.

Team #5.  Jakob, Sariah, Savannah, and Jason...Uh... this team struggled to get traction and start building.  I don't know what went wrong.  Apparently, engineering skills don't necessarily translate to graham crackers and icing:)

It ended up resembling an underground house where only the roof is visible.  They can't all be winners.
I blame it on the one-armed man.

Team #6 was sort of an unofficial entry-- although to be honest, their building skills were superior to many of the older teens.  Just saying.
Emma, Faith, and Tristin

And I absolutely adore them!

The Chase family came over to be the guest judges.

The destruction was fast and furious.  Frankly, it spared me any guilt I might have felt in throwing away perfectly good gingerbread houses.  There was no guilt in throwing away crushed up gingerbread houses.

The white elephant gift exchange was perhaps the best I've seen of its kind.  Instructions were given-- "the tackier the better" and I think they got the message.  These "gifts" were so bad there was little to no trading.  Nobody wanted anything and most of it got left here.
We did institute a couple of rules.  1) items were frozen after two trades.  And 2) If Greta wanted something......you had to give it to her.
Everyone complied and everyone was happy-- especially Greta:)

Ben won an envelope of free tickets to.... nothing.
But at least they were free.
That's the level of tacky we're talking about.

Bethany gave this charming collection of the Bratt Family.  They were well received. 

The one-armed man brought for his gift this charming "Party like a rock star" flask.  His mom wanted it out of the house.  I'm sure she was delighted when he won it back and brought it home again.

Bethany's treasure she opened was a hideous purple velvet and lace stocking filled with "holders"-- trinkety little containers from the DI.  She was horrified to even touch the items.

But little Greta loved them all!  Including, but not limited to this trophy from the Vegas Invitational 2001.

One More Nutcracker Post

I really am almost done talking about Nutcracker-- just one more post.
We are not allowed to take any pictures of the boys in the their Nutcracker costumes-- copyright laws, dressing room laws and such.  So when Ballet West put up pictures of the moment on stage when Fritz breaks the head off of the nutcracker on Instagram, you better believe I took a screen shot of those puppies!  I love this picture.  I adore Cannon's face.  I love the shock and horror on everyone else's faces.

And here is the other half of the wide picture-- do you see adorable George?  He's in brown on the right side.  Everyone's emotions are just so good!

Same pictures, just zoomed in a little.

Closer in on George.

One more with Cannon in the background.

My dad told me on Christmas Eve that there had been a dance review in the Deseret News that named Cannon by name.  Here's what it said.

So yeah.  That's pretty awesome.  Here's the link to the full article. https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900046967/dance-review-after-63-years-ballet-wests-nutcracker-is-still-breath-of-wintery-holiday-fresh-air.html
Okay. That's all.  Nutcracker was fabulous and I now declare it officially over!

Dance, Cannon, Dance

Last week Cannon had his parent observation nights for his dance classes.  Thankfully, they were two nights he didn't have Nutcracker, so I could go watch him.  I love, love, love watching his classes.  For one, I am NOT a dancer myself, so it is really interesting to watch.  But even more so, I can't get enough of watching him do something he loves so much and works so hard at.  It's pretty awesome.  So I am going to put up a lot of the many pictures I took.

These were all from the ballet technique class.
Next up are from his contemporary class.

I can hardly believe how hard these kids work.  I mean, it is really, really good, but I almost feel guilty sitting there watching them work so hard.  It's awesome.

Cannon's teacher, Lindsay is a remarkable teacher and dancer and choreographer.  I am so grateful Cannon can learn from her.  She gave him the best compliment after class.  She told me that she has taught a lot of boys over the years and that Cannon is the only one she has taught who works as hard as the girls do.  It is a true pleasure to watch him develop as a dancer.