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!