Thanksgiving, Aaron's Birthday, catching up with old freinds, Christmas concerts and celebrations

We have been here for over 2 months now (Steve a bit less) and the time continues to fly by with us having so much fun! The weather is wonderful, cold but sunny most days and it makes such a difference to how we feel and Steve's skin is eczema free!

Kimberly & Aaron on his Birthday

Kimberly and I have started a 12 week running programme 5 weeks ago and i'm pleased to say it's going better then I thought it would. The aim of the programme is to be able to run for 30 minutes without stopping by 12 weeks, we are at running 8 minutes which isn't bad for me as I struggled to run 2 when we started (Kim is much better then me!), if anyone wants a copy of the programme let me know and I will email you the link.

Randy & Kaelyn, Lesley-Ann & Steve with our

gorgeous grandchildren Josh and Rachael

We celebrated Thanksgiving at the Fifes (Kimberly's family), which was a lot of fun and Kaelyn cooked a wonderful meal. We really enjoyed spending time with them chatting and catching up and watched a very sad movie 'My Sisters Keeper', be warned it will make you cry :-(

Aaron's birthday cake

Josh practicing for his birthday in December

Aaron's 28th Birthday (boy does that make us feel old!) fell on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. We had a fun day with me cooking him one of his favourite dinners 'Oriental Chicken and Rice'. Kimberly's family joined us for birthday cake and ice cream (chocolate cake filled with butter cream and covered with fudge icing, truffles and chocolate orange and surrounded by Cadbury's Heros) and Aaron easily below out 28 candles (he always has plenty of wind!).

Beautiful Rachael in a Santa Hat

Aaron and Kimmy put up their Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving which quickly put us in the mood and so many more houses here are decorated outside then in England, it's just so festive.

Rachael thinks Pops boots are just a tad too big

We all had a good laugh at this

We were able to meet up with our dear English friend Teri Watkins who lives here in Utah and she was able to reunite us (well me) with a missionary by the name of Elder Kelly Kimber, who served in Loughborough in 1978 just after my family moved their. We had a fun night out catching up on 30 years worth of goings on.

Our night out with Kelly and Teri

We were also able to meet up with 2 wonderful young men that served missions in Loughborough within the last few years. Ryan Wilardson is now married to Sarah Hess and Brock Coffey who is about to get married (Dec 30th) to Tempy Glenn. They are both lovely girls and we had fun getting to know them we had them over for a roast dinner last Sunday.

Wii games with Ryan, Tempy, Brock and Beth

Beth attended her first school dance and looked absolutely beautiful, with the help of her hairstylist Kimmy!

Beth before her school dance

We have been able to visit Temple Square which is down town Salt Lake City 3 times in 2 weeks. 2 weekends ago we went to see the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. We didn't have tickets to this event but got in by getting tickets in the stand by line a couple of hours before the event started.

This was taken as we stood in line to get tickets to see the Christmas devotional

The first Presidency before the start of the devotional

Last weekend we went to see 'The Wonderouse Gift of Christmas' with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir featuring Nataline Cole and David McCullough, it was an absolutely wonderful evening of music and dance. Again we didn't have tickets but got 3 from people outside the conference centre that had extra tickets, yet again we were so lucky and blessed.

Me and Beth before the 'The Wondrous Gift of Christmas' Concert

And Steve

Before the concert started (once again we had great seats)

Then last Friday we all went to dinner and wrapped up warm we walked around temple square looking at the beautiful lights there are so many.

The Temple looked so lovely

Last night we attended a party at Allie Wicks house; Allie owns the place were Beth rides, we had a great evening getting to know people that ride there better.

Oh what fun we had at temple square looking at all the beautiful lights

This last week we able to have diner the former Sister Nola Johanson (another wonderful missionary that served in Loughborough several years ago). Nola is married to Tyler Bird and they have 2 adorable children, we were excited to met up before the move after Christmas to Wyoming.

Beth and Steve with Nola, Tyler, Matyas & Amaya

We are so excited as Jess, Ben and Jack arrive tomorrow from Denver for a couple of days on route to Idaho (then come back after Christmas for another couple of days on their way home). It has been 2 years since we were altogether, Christmas 2007 when we were here. We have seen them individually and both families came to England last year and I have been with them together on my own and with Beth, but Steve was missing! Time for some pics I think :)