Jena the waitress

On Monday Dec. 27th, I took Jena over to the Texas Roadhouse Restaurant to get her "training" to be a server for lunch as part of a fundraiser for Gigi's Playhouse (which is an awesome program which is designed to give free services for kids and adults with Down syndrome including speech and other therapies, reading and math instruction, social skills training, etc.  Eventually they will have evening social events for adults with DS.)  A group of moms is starting one nearby in Layton.  We are so excited.  I would be more involved if I have a few hundred more hours each week, but this was a small way we could support them.

Gary and our neighbor Marge joined me to be customers and look who was our cute waiter:

Jena taking our order for drinks

Part of the fun was the cute helpers-
Kaitlyn, Claron Aldrege, and Jena

Jena had fun but I don't think she wants to switch to waiting tables.

Saturday fun

We wanted the partying to keep going on so we decided to have a pool party at the local swim pool and invited family and friends to join us.  We took donations for a local organization who houses foster children (The Christmas Box House-Ogden).  It was fun to enjoy the pool and visit with our friends while the kids were getting wet.

Going down the little slide

Some people may sing about dancing all night, but Jena could "swim all night".  She told me several times last night and today how much fun she had swimming with Kaitlyn and other friends from our neighborhood.

Christmas Dinner 2014

This year I decided to do a full blown dinner with turkey, ham and all of the trimmings.  Since I didn't cook a Thanksgiving dinner, I was missing the leftover turkey and stuffing.  I won't normally do that type of dinner but it was good for this first time.

We were excited to wake up to a White Christmas.  It was the first real snow fall of the season. 

Grandma Hall's house on Christmas

However, the downside of it was that Grandpa Giberson and Karla and David and Dawn and girls all decided to be safe and stay home that evening rather than worry about the storm and icy roads.  SO we had a smaller group than we expected (more leftovers) but it still was a very nice evening.

The center of the evening was not dinner although that was good:

 

 Games were fun:

Christmas Scene "on your head" drawing
Grandma Hall won.

Pull back car races

No, the highlights were Scarlett and Niki and watching all of my children enjoying both babies so much.  They are keepers for sure.

Tosha and Niki, Jena, Chantel and Scarlett

Scott getting to know Niki while
Austen and Tosha are talking to Scarlett.

Ben holding Niki for the first time.



Always good to taste your cousin to make sure
he is the right one.

Austen, Tosha, Niki and Grandma Hall

I love this picture of Niki and Jena looking at each other.

Sometimes rolling over gets you in a tricky spot.

The two of them played on the mat during all of dinner.
It was handy that neither of them are quite mobile enough
to reach the other.  Scarlett has been working on crawling though
so those times are now over.



My two little grandchildren in their Christmas pjs
from Mrs. Claus.  I couldn't imagine this picture
when I bought the pjs as I expected Niki to
be wearing his in Oklahoma.  How awesome.
It will likely be four years until they are together again
as Christmas.

Merry Christmas to one and all!  Hope your 2014 holiday was filled with happy and fun memories, too.

The Tuesday before Christmas.....

and all through the house, I wasn't really home.  It turned out to be a funny type of day right before Christmas when I was busy doing some un Christmas things which were fun.

First Jena and I met her friend, Kaitlyn and her mom Debbie for our annual Christmas breakfast.  (Okay, it was a Christmas activity to start the day.) This year they picked McDonalds.  Okay??  It was fun as we talked and they enjoyed being together.

Kaitlyn and Jena doing cheers
(this was a re-enactment of their original cheers)

I got home just about in time to meet Chera (Mann--my niece) to take her to lunch with Jan Pendley who is an administrator at Davis Behavioral Health.  Chera is also studying social work but doing an entirely online program out of Pennsylvania.  I thought it might be useful as she begins looking for her next internship to talk to some people in the field.  We had a great time talking about social work.

Got home just in time to meet up with Tosha, Austen, and Niki who came by to go with me to visit Elaine Woolley.  Elaine is a single sister whom I visiting teach.  She lived for 25 years in England and she and her ex husband worked for McClaren  (not sure of spelling) Formula One Race Car team.  She actually knew Niki Lauder who is the driver whom Austen and Tosha named their Niki after.  We had the fun visit as Elaine shared her scrapbook with old photos of all of these famous racers with us.  Austen knew so many of them from his love of Formula One and racing.  I loved watching the two of them "talk racing".  Even Tosha is picking up on the history and vocabulary of the sport. In general, I love listening to people talk about a subject that they are passionate about.  People are so interesting and I am fascinated about the things people get passionate about.  Fun time.

We left there and headed straight to the bowling alley to get in a game of bowling with Gary, Allan, and Jena prior to them heading off to a family birthday party in Austen's family.  Austen likes to bowl so that was fine.

Niki's first visit to a bowling alley.
He did great.

They headed off, I left to go grocery shopping and Gary, Allan, and Jena bowled a few more games and had dinner together before heading home.

That was a fun day.  Actually talking to people is probably one of my favorite things so this type of day is awesome.