And the parties kept on coming....

Sunday was our annual Giberson Christmas party.  This year we were able to add Dan and Raylene Gibson, my cousin, who has recently moved to Utah.  This will be our last one with BYU student relatives for awhile as Niles and Rachel Giberson both graduated in December and are back to Texas to begin post college life and to wait for the arrival of their first child, a little boy.  And Katie Giberson is off to her new adventure as a missionary for the LDS Church.  She is going to Portugal.  Katie missed our dinner as she was busy with finals and packing up her college life.

Here we are (minus Gary who was the cameraman):

Me, David and Dawn Dodson, Dad, Dan, Rachel and Niles
Jena, Jenna Dodson, Raylene, Danielle, Karla, Sierra
Chantel and Scott

 On Monday (the 10th), Jena was invited to the annual Girls Christmas party for the older girls on her Special Olympics team.  These older girls are so kind and fun and Jena loved being included with them.  She missed her friend, Kaitlyn who was in Disneyland that day, but had a great time.  Here they are with their craft they made.

Being silly with some of their gifts.  Fun group!!

Then on Saturday of that week, Jena had a party with Special Olympics with a visit from Santa while they were bowling.  True to form, Jena told Santa she wanted chips for Christmas.

And as I mention parties, I realized that I forgot to mention my Ward Relief Society Christmas dinner and program.  It was one of the best I ever attended.  The food was nice and simple--soup and salad and bread.  The program was amazing.  It was written by two of the women in my ward and it was called "Christmas Memories".  Kaye Volk (who is my visiting teacher) and Betty Van Orden (another awesome women) gathered 10 stories from sisters in the ward and then intertwined the stories with songs and narration between them.  They had four narrators and the stories were not identified just shared.  Kaye had written a song called "Christmas Memories" about the power of our memories to feel the Spirit of Christmas.  We all cried.  One of my memories was included.  That was fun as well to hear how they used one of my memories to teach a principle about Christmas.  We have already told them to start writing "Christmas Memories 2" for next year.