Nativity and Early Christmas

Kendra and I continued our tradition of attending a Nativity display given by one of our church congregations nearby.  I will admit I was disappointed;  they scaled down the display a great deal this year.   There were only two or three rooms with nativities this time, whereas in year's past they had the entire cultural hall and every classroom filled.  The most popular feature was the dress-up nativity photo opportunity and Kendra and I had our picture done for the third year in a row.  It is a really nice service!  They dress you up, take your picture, give you a 4 x 6 print, and send you a link to a site to access the electronic versions, ALL for free!  Here are our shots from this year.

 Usually Kendra wants to be Mary, but this year she wanted to be the angel...

So that means I was Mary.

I also took a few pictures myself that night. 



Kendra's dad came into town for an early Christmas with Kendra.  We have done this for the past several years...he comes in a few weeks before Christmas and she gets to open her "big" gift from us.  She opens the rest of her presents on Christmas morning.  This year she got a REALLY big gift.  We usually don't spend this much on her, but it was a gift of semi-necessity.  She got....

A laptop!

The necessity part is that we have one computer at home--my laptop--and I have to use it all the time for work.  She can rarely use it (I work a lot!) and she is getting to the point in school where she needs access to a computer.  Even in fourth grade, her teacher gives online homework :-) (yes, yes I do!).  So when Kirk and I were talking about what to get her this  year, this was our choice.  She was very excited! 

We also got her a wireless mouse and she loves the color green so she was thrilled with this one.

Kirk gave me (us) a new flat screen TV (WOW!) which I got earlier in November, and surprised us with a BluRay player when he got here (DOUBLE WOW!).  We got him a Oral B professional sonic toothbrush, a couple of boxes of gluten-free pasta (he is eating gluten free and can't find it in Utah), a picture frame Kendra made at school with a cute picture of her in it, and the best gift that Kendra made herself was a nativity she made out of clay.

Kirk was shocked that she made this herself.  She really enjoys making things out of clay and had a lot of fun making this for him.  I think it is adorable!