Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Happppy New Year!

But first, the end of 2007....

I'm having a terrifically hard time getting these photos in chronological order, so we'll start with a photo of Emma and me posing with some nice elders we met driving home from Sugarhouse Park on Saturday. Elders Chiu (from Ontario, Canada) and Johnson (from Eerie, Pennsylvania). They were strolling up Connor Street as we drove home and Joe stopped and invited them home for lunch. Elder Chiu is 2nd-generation Chinese-Canadian and when he spied Emma in the back seat he said, "I'm guessing she's adopted." We had a great lunch with them and gave them our blog address to pass on to their folks. We hadn't fed the missionaries in ages. It was a blast.

Okay, back up to Christmas. We can't find the disk that has our photos of Christmas Eve at Joe's folks. Drat. It was most pleasant. We joined Aunt Susan & Uncle Jack, Cousin Jon, and Andy & Kathryn for dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Passed two cars in the ditch on the way. Such a white and treacherous Christmas Eve! Later at home, I stayed up late wrapping presents and watching midnight mass live from Chicago (the march-in to "Adeste Fideles" with dramatic organ accompaniment was very impressive).

My folks joined us for present opening on Christmas morning at the civilized hour of 10:00 a.m. Emma's still not quite clear on what all the fuss is about, so we didn't feel too bad about the late-ish start. She did get a kick out of opening her gifts. We need to take a photo of the giant stuffed panda Grandpa got her (we've got some good video of Emma leaping into its arms....when we figure out how to post movie snippets we'll show you).


"Ah! More crayons to eat...Thanks!"


"And a two-way easel (one side whiteboard/one side chalkboard) on which to practice my cursive. Exxxcellent!"

A couple of days after Christmas we joined Aunt Barbie and cousins Amy, Dave and Jack at Jungle Jim's for the purposes of general amusement/pizza consumption. Cousin Jack (well, first cousin once removed, but why quibble) is an adorable tyke who will turn 2 in February. It's fun when he and his parents visit from Denver. Emma and Jack enjoyed riding the jungle safari cars together. They steered enthusiastically the entire ride.




Emma's a big fan of the bouquets of balloons festooning the Jungle. Although they're not intended to simply be carted away by random toddlers, that's a hard concept for Emma to grasp.

(As I type this, Joe and Emma are watching "Mickey Mouse's Twice Upon a Christmas," the episode about Mickey losing Pluto on Christmas Eve. Joe just asked me, "Is Mickey's relationship with his dog plutonic?" ....just had to share).


Today, New Year's Day Two Thousand'n'Eight, we drove up to Brighton in the morning to get out of the house and into the cold, crisp, glorious, wintery, blue air. Tons of people up there to the Brighton...so many teenagers zipping down the hill at furious speeds on snowboards, stopping inches from us. Emma got quite a kick. We took big sniffs of cold air and then went into the little food shed (where all the teenagers go to eat chili cheese fries) and got a hot chocolate.








Here's a pretty view driving back down Big Cottonwood Canyon. Emma noticed that there were lots of "Christmas trees" lining the highway ("Kih kih tee!")

And here's our little family on the front porch for the annual New Year's Day photo that included just the two of us for so long and now includes three. Let's hear it for Emma!
Happy New Year!

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the new pictures.
"Kee kee tree" is sure a lot easier to say.

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for picking us up! We'd been pouring though hundreds of member referrals all day, dividing them up between golden and semi-golden. I also had a bad dream last night that we went tracting once....could you imagine??!! If you hadn't stopped and invited us over for lunch we probably would have had to get by on the $100's in cash people randomly hand us daily. Well now we can always get that new Hanna Montana steering wheel cover Santa forgot and a new Mr. Mac suit for the thousands of baptisms I'll inevitably attend in the next few days. Thanks for greasing the skids!

Anonymous said...

What fun to read your updates! And "Hi" Elders - I loved the last picture of your "little" family of 3 on New Year's Day - it gave me a thrilling chill of pleasure to look at the three of you :)
Love,
Aunt Barbie

Sister~Mom said...

Love the pic of Em with the Elders sweet!!!
HNY 08
looks like you had some great holiday fun.

andrea said...

LOVE the pic of Jack and Emma safari riding. B and Whit would've loved to get it on that action! And that shot of you and Emma at Brighton is beautiful. It made me cold just looking at all that snow, but I can enjoy it from afar.

Anonymous said...

Jungle Jim's was so fun! I'm glad we were able to get together and let the kids play for awhile.

Thea said...

Happy New Year you three! Emma is beautiful and the whole family looks so happy. Keep blogging, I love watching Emma grow....Much love to

Thea and Chloe

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the pictures. I love checking your blog for new updates. Emma is so cute. I'd like Emily to be able to meet her someday. You look so happy as a family!

Anonymous said...

I recongnize that HNY outfit!
She looks cute if I do say so myself. :)

Ang said...

That last photo of you three is a keeper. I also enjoyed reading the elders' commentary here on the comments page. I miss having missionaries over for dinner too!

Joey/Denny/Emma said...

Ang -- that comment from the "elders" is rather amusing...:)

Anonymous said...

I just showed the elders their picture on your blog. The Elders were visiting the leaders in the ward and stopped by tonight. They felt special!

liz said...

Denise, I was just cleaning out my purse and found a little post-it with your blog address on it -- how delightful! I'm just glad another woman in the neighborhood has a blog so Mariann can't tease me about it. Even though we get to see Emma all the time, it will be fun to read your thoughts and see what you're up to :)