And December finally arrives...

in the blog anyway.  As you can see I am still working on doing December of 2015 in mid-January of 2016!


December went in a whirl this year.  In addition to the normal December holidays, I had final stuff to do for my school, my internship continued through the whole month, and I was behind in all of the holiday stuff because of school, internship, and the foundation stuff.  And of course, keeping Jena on top of all of her stuff is almost a full time job for Gary and I. 


Also a couple of days after we returned from AZ, Ben decided with his therapist that he needed to be hospitalized.  He first went to McKay Dee in Ogden, but because of insurance reasons was moved to UNI in Salt Lake.  It made for two long days at the hospitals going through the admission process twice.  He stayed in UNI until a couple of days prior to Christmas, then he moved to the local Inpatient unit at Davis Behavioral Health (called the CRU).  He was able to spend the day with us on Christmas and then switched to day treatment after that.  He has had some rough nights not being able to sleep well but that has calmed a bit finally.  He was discharged from day treatment last Friday (Jan. 8th).  He is on a brand new medication which was just approved at the end of August.  That is a bit scary but so far the side effects aren't too bad.  Still not sure if it is helping his illness enough but we are trying to be patient.  It is nice to have him do something different since the other medications aren't working well for any length of time.


We started a RS Christmas dinner.  I was determined to sit by people I didn't know so took the opportunity to invite my new visiting teacher to sit by me at an empty table .  As people came and sat down by us, I knew most of them from other settings.  However by the end, it turned out that everyone who sat by us were neighbors of my visiting teacher.  So much for her meeting new people.  It was fun to get to know her better as well as her neighbors who have all known each other a number of years.


Then at the last minute, someone gave us tickets to the Frist Presidency Devotional.  Gary hurried over to Mom Hall's Church to see if she wanted to come and she did.  So we had a sweet experience of sharing that evening with her in Salt Lake.  It was awesome of course.


Then we took a few minutes to walk through Temple Square and see the nativity and lights and hear the music.  It was a beautiful start to the season.



Looking across the field where the nativity is staged to the north visitor's center

and the amazing statue of Christ