Christmas Dinners with friends

Our ward (congregation) has a Family Christmas Dinner every year.

There is a big Nativity room for people to bring their nativity sets. We brought a ceramic one from Mexico, a teeny tiny one in a bottle from Chile, and a homemade one painted by the kids.

Then we have a big dinner, watch slides of all the members (of Christmases present and past), and hear musical numbers by all different groups. I led the childrens' choir in "Away in a Manger" and Ted sang with a group of 4-5 men, accompanied by George K. on guitar. Then we saw a beautiful slide show of the Savior, depicted through photographs of people dressed up to look like Jesus, John the Baptist, Mary, and various others. It is the best slide show I've seen and has my favorite spiritual song as accompaniment: Come Thou Fount

Hit this link and you can watch it. It's about 5 minutes long.

The book, CD and DVD can be found on: www.deseretbook.com

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This is a dear, dear friend, Lynette Ballard and I. We share the same birthday week (and year) and so do our younger husbands, both born in mid-December of 1970. We have spent 3 years of Easters, Thanksgivings or Christmastime holidays with them and their six children. We love and appreciate them so much! Plus, Ted and Dave has the most in-sync crazy sense of humor and love of particular movies (and quotes), both from Nacho Libre and formerly, Napoleon Dynamite. They sat by each other recently in a church meeting and Ted said that the Nacho quotes were whispered back and forth so fittingly...they have even tried to incorporate a few key phrases into talks and comments from the pulpit...those boys!

Relief Society Christmas Dinner & Program Decorate your own table. Above is the beautiful table of the lovely Connie S.

The bottom one is mine:

I invited a delightful friend who we met when her son and Maddie were on the same 4-5th grade basketball team at school. They came here from England and their two boys love to play with Maddie and Nick. In fact, both boys and their father went with Ted to the Thanksgiving day football game played by boys and men from our church.

This is Jill, me, and Allison Drinkwater. Jill comes with her husband, David, to visit all throughout the year. So we see them often at school events and now socially as friends.