Mormon Tabernacle Choir/David Archuleta

One of our annual Christmas traditions is to attend the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert, if we can get in. For those of you reading this from another state or country or are not familiar with this tradition, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints sponsors this unbelievably fantastic, wonderful concert every year for four days (including Music and the Spoken Word broadcast on Sunday), and it's absolutely free to the public. The tricky part is getting tickets. They are given through a lottery system on line. We were told by a choir member that 1.5 million people requested tickets this year. Of course, the guest singer this year was David Archuleta, which really added to the frenzy of attempts to get tickets. The Conference Center seats about 21,000, so about 80,000 lucky people get to go into the Conference Center to see the concert firsthand.

Our family never even requested tickets because there's eight of us, and only four tickets are given to each lucky lottery winner. We have always had good luck getting in through the standby line, but we knew this year would be different because of the overwhelming interest in David Archuleta.

With little hope of ever getting in, we headed downtown about 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, parked at the KSL Building, and walked to Temple Square to get in the standby line a little before 5:00. There were already about thirty people in line. We had a two-hour wait ahead of us before they would even think about letting anybody from the standby line in.

Here we are patiently waiting in line, drinking hot chocolate, playing games on the iPod Touch, and just generally having a good time on Temple Square. Gradually the line in front of us got smaller and smaller as passers-by with extra tickets handed them off. By about 6:30, we started getting tickets handed to us, two at a time. Marissa and Zack went in first, then Gage and Emily, and finally Quinn, Alex, Michael, and I had tickets in our hands!!!!!


Here's the view from our seats. Sorry, but no pictures of the choir or David. We were asked to turn off all electronics after this point. All I can say about the concert is: Oh, my goodness!!! it was so good. The decorations, the dancers, the choir, everything was magical. David Archuleta was so charming, and let's face it. That boy can sing!!!! To me, nothing brings the spirit faster than Christmas music, especially sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Jazz Game

Yesterday afternoon our next-door neighbor called to see if we wanted four Jazz tickets in the lower bowl. My answer? "Heck yeah." She said she didn't know where the seats were, only that they were in the lower bowl. (Their son-in-law works for the Jazz.) So we proceeded downtown to see the Jazz game, only to encounter a wreck on the freeway, which delayed us 45 minutes. We arrived just at the end of the first quarter, and here we are on the NINTH row!

I almost had as much fun watching the Jazz Bear as Michael did watching the game.

Incidentally, the Jazz solidly whipped the Indiana Pacers.

Christmas Food Court Flash Mob, Hallelujah Chorus - Must See!

Last Sunday of November

Sunday morning we awoke to more snow. We kicked Quinn and Alex outside to start shoveling.

Michael joined in for a few minutes before dashing off to his meetings.

Quinn has become my dishwasher. He says he's bored, and besides, the hot water feels good!

Later on after church, we shoveled again. Then again!! It just kept snowing.

Monday morning we awoke only to shovel once more. It's nippy outside, but at least the sun is shining.

Barbies

I came up from dowstairs a couple Sundays ago, after reading with Alex, and found Marissa and Emily playing with Barbies. Yes, Marissa had dragged out the Barbies and all the paraphernalia, and there the two of them sat on the floor dressing the Barbies, and even the Ken, in various outfits. Wow, I hadn't seen that stuff for MANY years. Now, remember that Marissa and Emily are 22 and 19 years of age. They must have sat there for over an hour, and I joined them for a while, reminiscing about my childhood and remembering playing with most of those very same Barbie clothes that have now been handed down to Marissa. My mom had the patience to do that kind of thing, make clothes for our Barbie dolls. Imagine the hours. I guess one day those clothes will be played with by Marissa's daughter.

Weather

We woke up to a frozen white world Sunday morning. Our trees were bent over in agony, but we were lucky to only lose three branches in our entire yard. Others had entire trees down or trees split down the middle. Our neighborhood looked like it had a mini tornado go through.

We went out and knocked snow off every branch we could reach before the trees gave way. So many of our trees still have their leaves on, which is why so much snow collected in them.

Apparently, however, this is only a preview of what's about to hit us. We're supposed to get a 100-year storm this afternoon/evening, meaning the worst winter storm Utah has been hit with in the last 100 years. I'm headed out to stock up on groceries. Let's hope the weather people are wrong. I'm feeling especially thankful today for a home, lots of food downstairs, and a family to hunker down with.

In the Spirit of Thanksgiving

Here's another great reminder of everything we have to be grateful for.

Thanksgiving Daily

Save A Child Hosting Program 2010

This video was shown at the Save a Child benefit concert held a couple days ago. Alex was excited to see his face on the screen for one-tenth of a second. Yes, it was definitely because of Save a Child that we started down this path and brought Alex home, even though we hosted him in Arizona. We also saw a glimpse of Bogdan, the boy we hosted in 2008 and tried unsuccessfully to adopt. Seeing him makes my heart start to ache all over again.

Wow, I haven't blogged for a while. After our crazy, busy summer, things seem a little boring around here. It's amazing the boys are into their second quarter in 7th grade. The adjustment from grade school to junior high was a piece of cake. They both got excellent grades for first term. Quinn was a little bothered that Alex got almost as good of grades as he (Quinn) did. I had to remind him that he (Quinn) has honors classes that require more work and that the teachers are probably going a little easy on Alex, considering he's been in the USA for only ten months.



Halloween can't be over already. Boy, our neighborhood was kind of dead this year, and that is not a play on words. We had hardly any trick-or-treaters. Where are all the little kids? I guess they grew up along with my own children. Maybe it was the rain that scared everyone away. We have so much trick-or-treat candy left over, we'll be eating it for weeks. Well, maybe a week. Well, maybe a few days.



Marissa had to dress up for work. She was an Egyptian princess.

Going out for trick-or-treating. Marissa and Zack accompanied the boys. Zack was the umbrella-carrying cowboy/clown, Marissa was Marissa, Alex was a vampire, and Quinn was a nerd. (His trick-or-treat bag was a briefcase.) So the very first neighbor said, "Aren't you boys a little old for trick-or-treating?" Hello? Hello? Did she forget that this was Alex's first and probably last year for trick-or-treating? I mean seriously, folks. The kid has never been trick-or-treating in his life. Give us a break. Well, I took more pictures of the boys in their costumes. Somehow they have mysteriously disappeared from my camera.

Save a Child Foundation brought 43 orphans over from Ukraine this year for the hosting program. Alex has had a few opportunities to be an interpreter for the host families so they can communicate with their hosted children. It has been good for Alex and a quick refresher course in Ukrainian. Last night we attended the benefit concert, which was a huge success. The organizers need to give themselves a huge pat on the back. The work that goes into everything during the two and a half weeks is amazing. Alex got to see himself in the slide show as one of the previously adopted children, and Quinn loved, loved, loved watching Jon Schmidt perform. (See the clip below.)

Trip to Phoenix

Marissa and Zack's open house was in the Phoenix/Mesa area a couple weekends ago. Zack grew up in Arizona, so we made a quick trip to Arizona and stayed at Zack's mom and dad's house a couple of nights. Before we left Utah, we arranged to meet with some families in Phoenix that adopted from Ukraine also. Alex was excited to see his friend Dima (now Donovan), who was in the same orphanage. We thought they would go crazy talking about old times and speaking Ukrainian. As is typical with these adopted kids, they hardly conversed, and what little they did converse was in English! Alex tried to speak Ukrainian to Dima, and Dima didn't understand a word he was saying. But they did have fun playing arcade games.

This is Marie. She and her husband were in Ukraine the same time we were. We went to dinner with them in Ukraine and were going through the process almost simultaneously with them. They adopted a young boy. Marie's twin sister (Rose) hosted Alex for the first few days in Phoenix until we took him back with us to Utah.

Then later that day, we hung out at the church and helped prepare for the open house for Marissa and Zack.

Zack's mom had the cute idea of putting up giant pictures of their wedding day and some engagement photos.

Alex said he wanted this picture afterwards, so he rolled it up and took it back home to Utah. It now hangs on the wall by his bed. If he wakes up in the night, he'll have this GINOURMOUS picture of Zack and Marissa gazing down at him. Too funny.

How great that the Allreds have an honest-to-goodness chef in the family who oversaw the food aspect.

Aunts and cousins showed and spent hours in preparation. Great family support.

These look like balloons, but they're really lanterns with lights inside. It was a nice effect when the lights were dimmed.

The boys looking bored before the guests arrived. Quinn and Alex were the "table clearers."

Quinn was an awesome table clearer. He stuck to the job till the bitter end.

Zack's mom and dad.

Our great friends, Dan and Debbie. We got to go to lunch with them too! It was so nice actually knowing some people that came to the open house.

I thought this was a great idea. Zack's brother-in-law is a graphic design artist and put this design on the entrance into the open house.

It was a fun weekend. We got enourmous amounts of reading and homework done while traveling the eleven hours each way. Everything went off without a hitch, and it was nice to get to know Zack's family a little better.