Happy Holiday Season

The Blackmers enjoyed a wonderful holiday season this year. At the beginning of December, Dave and I got to be Mary and Joseph for our ward Christmas party. We wandered through all of the guests as they were eating, looking for room, but there wasn't any. Then we acted out the nativity and all of the children came up and gave baby Jesus a gift. After the party, many of the children came up to have their pictures taken with baby Jesus. It was so nice to see that, in this season where so many kids have their pictures taken with Santa, that some of them had their pictures taken with Jesus, too.

Dave grew out a beard for the event and then, as always, had fun with it before he shaved it all off: 

One of the highlights of Christmas this year was SEEING Elder Nick! We got to Skype with him this year, and it was so fun to actually see him and talk to him.  He is doing great! We overheard him speaking Spanish with some people at the internet cafe, and he seems so comfortable with the language, and so happy with what he is doing. For more updates on his mission, visit his blog at http://espanick.blogspot.com/

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas night with the Blackmers and Christmas morning with the Rysers. Here we are with Maggie opening up one of the many awesome new games that we got for Christmas this year. Game night, anyone?

I love this picture and had to include it. Maggie wins the prize for Best Gift-Giving this year. She put together a picture frame with pictures of each member of our Ryser family (parents included) on our missions. In one of frames she put in the quote, "A man filled with the love of God is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race."- Joseph Smith, Jr. It was a really sweet gift, and you can tell how much my parents loved it. :)


I don't have any pictures of the fun that we had with the Blackmers, but we loved being with them. The chaos of young children excitedly opening presents and then running around the house playing with them was the best!
It was a week filled with time with family. We got together with the Blackmers again for Trevor's birthday party, and then again when we hosted a slumber party at our house on New Year's Eve. We continued my Grandmother's tradition of seeing the Nutcracker ballet every year, and had a massive game night with the Ryser cousins at our house, too. We also got to see the Fisher family (our second family) for Austin's baby blessing. And the adorable Kearl family stayed with us for a night on their way to Montana for Christmas. All of this made for a hectic month, but such a wonderful one!