Saturday, December 20, 2014

Merry Christmas


We went to a Caroling Party, which was a sing-a-long of Christmas carols.  It was in the home of the couple in the red sweaters talking to Santa.  Their names are the Baileys, and they have a beautiful home in the foothills above San Jose.  It was a lot of fun.  Sister Bailey baked cookies all week to prepare, and her treats would have received rave reviews from our family of cookie snobs!  They were delicious.  She had dozens of different kinds to choose from, from cranberry orange drops to raspberry bars, almond bars, and mince tarts.  Yum!

Then last Monday at FHE we did a service project.  We helped provide gifts for foster children in the south.  Kimberly, who plans our FHEs, has a sister who lives in North Carolina, and she is a foster mom; she knows lots of the other foster families in the area, and said they don't get much for Christmas.  So we all contributed gifts, along with other members of our ward, wrapped them and Kimberly sent two huge boxes off to them this week.  It was a great way to serve and have a nice time socializing with the mid singles.




Kimberly is the gal in the Santa hat talking to Dad. 

Then last night, Kimberly went to the Oakland Temple to receive her endowment.  It was a wonderful day for us, because we had taught her the temple preparation lessons.  She's been a member for a year, and is very enthusiastic.  She got lots of support from the ward, and the two missionaries that taught her at first were able to come.  We drove 3 missionaries up with us and took them home to Santa Cruz after a dinner of pizza (they ate 2 large pizzas!)  Here are the two Elders who baptized her, and Kimberly in front of the temple.  It was a rainy, foggy night.


We have been having a lot of rain.  The costal areas have received about 16 inches in the last few weeks.  The ground is pretty saturated.  Our drive home last night was in the rain through the Santa Cruz mountains, along a winding road that was slick and scary.  The forest comes right up to the highway, and sometimes trees become so saturated, they literally slide down the mountain into the road.  We know - we hit one!  There was a bus in front of us, and the bus must have hit it first, but we couldn't see it until it was right in front of our car.  There was a horrible crunch, and zoom, we were past it.  It dented the front of the car, and ripped off the side mirror!  We were both pretty shook up, but un-harmed.  We got home and saw some other scratches, but feel very lucky that it didn't break the windshield.  The branch that was sticking up that got us was about 4" in diameter, so it could have done much worse damage.  We called the insurance company today, and will take it in for repairs next week.  We can't drive much without that side mirror, not on these freeways.  So we've been home all day with not much to do.  Sigh....

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas.  We hope you have a peaceful, relaxing, enjoyable week.  We miss you all terribly, but know we are where we are supposed to be.  We don't have plans for Christmas Day yet, but will probably get some invitations at church tomorrow.  Erin and Dave, be safe driving the kids down south; Amy and Rob, have fun in Disneyland, Tracy and Dave, enjoy time with family and friends, and Megan and Shawn, enjoy the fun of having a Santa believer in your midst for maybe one or two more years (?).

Still waiting for pictures of the pocket party!  Blog, people, blog!

Love you all so much.


Tuesday, December 9, 2014

9 years

Well, family, its been 9 years ago today.  It's still hard, but not as hard as it used to be.  Hope everyone has been able to think positive thoughts all day and remember the good times with David.  We'll tell you what we did today, but first, here is a picture from our ward Christmas party on Saturday.  Cheeky Santa!



It was a great party.  The potato casserole they had me make for it was very yummy.  It called for 3 cups heavy cream, freshly grated nutmeg (thanks, Tracy), and fresh thyme.  I'll share it sometime.

So today, we decided to go into San Francisco, since David loved that city so much.  How lucky are we to be able to do that?  We also wanted to see some places where Grandpa Crockett spent some time when he was in High School there.  We had his address from his journal, but the house has been torn down, as it is now the Dept. of Motor Vehicles, but this is the house across the street, and some sidewalk art from where his house would have been.


He had a newspaper route that we think would have had him delivering to places like this
 
Isn't that a beautiful old home? 
 
We then ate at a bakery/deli:  these are some of the delicious cakes they had on display



Then we drove through china town, down to the Embarcadero and walked over to Fisherman's Wharf.








We had a good day. Hope all of you did as well.

It's back to work tomorrow!  Oh, last night, we helped as hosts at a crèche display that has over 350 crèches from all over the world.  It was amazing.  They didn't allow pictures, but here's the sign at the ward house that has hosted it for 20 years.
They had displays from Africa, Europe, South America, the Islands, Mexico, America.  They were so great to see, and they used very creative ways to display them.  It was very unique and beautiful.  I'd like to start collecting them.  If I could only travel to all those places to get them!

Hope everyone is enjoying the season.  It will be a very unusual Christmas for us, but we'll enjoy it and look forward to talking with everyone via Skype on Monday. 

Love to you all.



 



Monday, December 1, 2014

5 Days with Family

We had a great Thanksgiving.  Amy, Rob and family got here late Wednesday night.  We had a turkey dinner in our little apartment, then cruised down to Sunset Beach.  We played in the surf, looked for seashells, got wet, and saw the sun set.  Pretty fun.





Friday we went up to San Francisco.  The weather was perfect.  We stopped at Levi Stadium, where the 49ers play.  Caleb is a huge fan, so was very excited.  Then we went across the Golden Gate Bridge out to Sausalito.  It is a beautiful place.  We spent some time at Pelican Harbor, watching those majestic birds and some seals.  We then went up to the Oakland Temple and saw the beautiful Christmas lights on the grounds.







On Saturday, we drove down to Monterey and visited the aquarium.  It was crazy busy, and wet and rainy, but we had a good time.  The traffic getting home was nuts, so we got off the freeway and got home on Monterey Road, which used to be the main highway in the lower Bay area.



On Sunday, Dad and I were scheduled to speak in the young adult ward, so the Staleys joined us there.  I got up to speak and a spider started to run across my talk!  I freaked out!  A guy behind me got up and brushed it off the podium, and I was able to continue my talk.  At least I didn't scream into the mike!  Everyone got a good laugh out of that!

They flew home later that evening, after waiting at the airport for them to fix some mechanical problem with their plane (yikes!).  They made it home safely, and we are all getting rested up from our rest (hehe).  Such a fun weekend.

Hope you all had a great holiday.  Christmas will be here before you know it.  The pocket present sign up seems like such a great idea.  Thanks, Megan.  Hope everyone has gotten on and signed up.  It should be fun. 

We're going to be very busy.  There are a ton of special Christmas activities and programs in the Bay area, and we get to help out at some of them.  We're trying to re-design our Facebook page and are wishing we had a grandkid or two here to help us!  Katie would have, but we were out of data on our little hotspot.  What a pain!  But we will get it figured out (eventually).

We have had quite a bit of rain, and the autumn leaves have been pretty.  It's so funny to see the colorful leaves along side flowers!  But we won't miss the snow this winter.

Hope everyone is doing well.  You're always in our prayers.