Beneath the Mistletoe

Last week, Holly sang the solo part in "All Alone Beneath the Mistletoe" at the the Taylor Junior High Christmas Concert. In the words of our next door neighbor, a wonderful tenor soloist himself, "She nailed it!"

We are thrilled with Holly's love of music and budding performance abilities.  What a beautiful young woman!

Goodbye Willard

Yesterday, we finally said goodbye to Willard, our faithful Chevy Prizm which has served us well since we purchased it in 1999 (I think).  Since Ryan went on his mission and Eric got his own car, we were left with more cars than drivers.  So Willard will now serve a little family that needs him and we are left with happy memories and a lower insurance payment!

Thank Heaven for Grandkids

We just love our grandkids.  Here are a couple of special moments.

Chloe loves to host make-believe parties with the babies and anyone else she can coax to attend on the little white table Granny recently purchased.  The dress up clothes and pretty table cloth provided just the added touches that made a wonderful memory.

Ice cream at Granny's house is a regular treat on Sunday evenings.  Tonight after dinner, all the adults were just too busy talking, so Devlin and Eve took matters into their own hands!

Thanks for stopping by! More family photos can be seen on Mark's Flickr page.

Dance Festival!

Yesterday, the Mesa Arizona Kimball Stake held a dance festival themed "Moving in the Right Direction," which featured youth from all the wards in our stake.  Holly was one of the many young people who danced.  As Young Women's President in our ward, Claudia has been involved in practice which started in July.

Mark, Eric and Angie joined Claudia and Holly at the Mesa Tri-Stake Center for the final performance last night.  It was great to see all the youth participating together and having a good time.  Here are a few photos of Holly as she danced:

Happy Birthday, Eric!

Last Sunday evening, we celebrated Eric's 22nd birthday. Twenty-two candles on home-made chocolate pie makes quite a conflagration!

Eric was thrilled with gifts of tools. It's a guy thing!

Holly's hair has nothing to do with Eric's birthday, but you gotta love this photo!

You can always find more family photos on Mark's Flickr photo stream.

Happy Halloween!

The best part of Halloween this week was seeing the grandkids in their great costumes. Devlin and Eve dressed as the two star robots from the Wall-E movie. Devlin was Wall-E and Eve was Eve!

Chloe was a beautiful ballerina. She stopped dancing long enough to get some treats from Granny.  Granny and Gramps sat in the rocking chairs all evening on our front porch, in our wonderful Arizona shirt sleeve weather, passing out candy to all the little (and big) kids who happened to come by.

Neither Granny or Iris put on costumes for Halloween, but we think they look great, just the same!

It's nice to know that Wall-E is learning to read!

Two Year Old Granddaughters

There is nothing quite like a two year old granddaughter looking up and calling me "Gramps!" And we have two of them! Eve and Chloe are at a wonderful age - beginning to really communicate and play games and connect with an old guy like me. It melts my heart when one of these girls jumps up into my lap to have me read some books or takes me by the finger to lead me into another room to play with the "babies" or build a train out of blocks.

I love you, Chloe and Eve!