A special Christmas and birthday

We had a wonderful Christmas season. Our children planned a special family reunion and birthday party in St. George, Utah to celebrate Linda's 70th birthday the day after Christmas. Our wonderful mission President Calderwood gave us permission to fly out for the celebration. So we did!  Thank you, President Calderwood. We had a two week break from institute classes, so our schedule is free. We had a wonderful time as you can imagine.

The week before we left, however, we welcomed five new missionaries to our district including two new sister missionaries. Sister Christiansen and sister Nevitt. Sister Nevitt is the niece of Monte And Julie Nevitt friends from our old Prescott days. 

We were also able to attend the nutcracker ballet in Brooklyn the Saturday before we left.

We spend Christmas with our son Tyler and his wife Cristiane and their three beautiful daughters in Henderson Nevada.

I also got to see her other grandchildren including four-year-old Luke and two-year-old Tessa. 

One special event was our attendance at the Las Vegas temple with family members.

The family arrange for a special dinner to honor Linda on her birthday.

We had 30 of our 32 family members in attendance that night.

We enjoyed good times just sitting and talking and sharing. 

The children and grandchildren prepared a special book of letters to grandma which they gave her at her birthday party. 

It was wonderful.

We finished our wonderful trip by spending a few days in Colorado with our daughter Juliann and Berrett Doman and their four wonderful children. 

We had a wonderful trip and now we are back in New York ready to get to work once again.