Conestoga Branch Christmas Party

We didn't get pictures of all of the festivities, but our branch party was a lot of fun, thanks to Michala! We had a yummy dinner, followed by rotations of crafting, and The Nativity, and inspiring words by the 3 Wisemen. Mark and I were in charge of the Nativity, and for being planned at the last moment, (yes, this is probably my worst case of procrastination ever!), I think it went pretty well. At first it was planned that Mark and I would be Joseph and Mary and act it out, or tell the story. As many people know, I am no actress, and definitely not a good story teller. So, at the last minute we decided to make the 3 groups into 3 mini paegants. The first two groups loved it! The last group was mostly teenagers, so they were less enthusiastic about it, but they still performed very well. So, without further ado, here are the pictures, and a very short video of Elder Brown as the donkey, with Alex Long as Mary, and Robby Foster as Joseph.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir

I hope you enjoy this. It helped me remember again what Christmas is all about.

Pinewood Derby

Saturday, Nov. 29, 2008 was the second annual Conestoga Branch Pinewood Derby. I only got a few pics of the racers, so here they are. On the left we have Erin Gurney, and her Petal Pusher car, with Robert Foster and his #1 car. On their right is the "official" racer. Below we have Brandon Snedeger and Pres. Wilkinson, the branch president, and Elder Brown, one of the great missionaries in our branch.


















Here is Mark, with his winning car, thanks to Craig, and Andrew, one of the recent converts in our branch who, as we would say in my mission, is bien calidad!





Mark's winning car, which was supposed to look like a pill, but it just ended up looking like a flat car with some random numbers on it. We had to pile a bunch of coins and metal on top to get it up to weight! I guess it wasn't being judged by its looks, right?

Recap of the "festivities"

Well, in our usual nontraditional manner of doing things, we avoided making anything, and took a trip to Kansas City. We drove through Liberty and Independence on the way down, and we stopped off for a while and Adam-Ondi-Ahman and the way back home. On the way down we saw lots of great city/town names, and had to take pics of a few of them. Here's a shout out to our niece, Savannah!


And you can't help but take a picture of a city named Amazonia!










So instead of cooking we went to Mimi's and had a really great dinner. We shared our Thanksgiving with a bunch of Senior Citizens!





Then we went to the Country Club Plaza to see the lighting of the Plaza. They had a bunch of singers, which reminded us of the Osmonds, unfortunately. But it was fun and we got to see the fireworks and such from the top of a parking garage. We have ended up at parking garages for our last few fireworks displays. Huh. Any way, so here are a few pics of the Plaza. It looked like a giant gingerbread village.

Movie Review

Ok, not really a review, but Mark and I went to see City of Ember tonight at the dollar theater, and thought I could use that for a blog post. It was good and bad. It was bad because the theater is a total dump. We don't usually go to that one, but the other theater that we like didn't have City of Ember. The good part was the movie. It was really good. We were both surprised, especially since it has only been out for just over a month and it is already at the dollar theater. We thought it would be a comedy, considering it has Bill Murray in it, who was funny by the way, but it was actually a serious movie, and a really good one at that. Very inspiring! I won't say anything about the movie, because I don’t like giving things away, except that it had some similarities to The Giver. We both have decided that City of Ember is another book that we need to read.