Mom 'n' Dad

December is such a joyful month. After getting to briefly visit McKay and family, we snuck away to the cabin. Dad went ahead to check out the winterizing and warned me that we might not have electricity or hot water. Imagine my surprise to pull up to the bridge in the dark and see Christmas lights twinkling on the front porch! Needless to say, we not only had lights, but hot water too. We spent a peaceful few days enjoying the snowy scenery and warm fireplace.

When we returned to Logandale, it was party time! I counted twelve grandkids in the house at one time. Over the week we hiked lots of sand hills, burnt lots of hot dogs, and played with lots of kids. We really did party non-stop. We had tons of fun, and from the reports we heard, so did everyone else.

Having so much family come visit gave us a delightful joyous interlude to the normal humdrum of life. And I guess that's the true meaning of good times. We look forward to many many more good time visits in the New Year, and we wish everyone peace and joy for 2008.

love and prayers,

Mom & Dad

Mel 'n' Andy

Martha 'n' Jeremy

Each year as our children grow, the month of December becomes takes on more meaning. The kids understand the birth of Christ a little more. The days before Christmas become more electrifying. Christmas Day becomes more magical. Jeremy and I get more sentimental. December just keeps getting better and better.

The month began with our Ward Party. Lyle's preschool group performed an animated version of Jingle Bells. I named them Santa's Elves and they were the hit of the program, almost. Lyle did a stand-up comedy routine that I think really stole the show. I went up with him and was planning on saying most of the jokes for him. I thought for sure he would freeze up and become too nervous to talk. Instead, he interacted with the audience and had them rolling with laughter. The show stopper was, "What do monkey's sing for Christmas?" The punch line is, Jungle Bells. However, Lyle was on a roll and instead of saying the punch line he began singing, "Jungle bells, jungle bells, jungle all the way, HEY!" It was a lot of fun.

The next week we had Hyrum's Joy school Christmas party at our home. His group acted out the Nativity and sang Jingle Bells with actions. Our little tender-hearted leader convinced the other children in his group (who are all girls) to let him please be Mary. It was so touching to see Hyrum tenderly wrap his little baby Jesus up in a blanket and then give him a kiss on the forehead (Chris, don't even roll your eyes, it was so cute and I can picture Bronson being just as cute!). Hyrum did a great performance and also did a wonderful job on the songs. He was so serious for everything and really shined as he sang out and did the actions to Jingle Bells.

We also had fun decorating gingerbread houses. We made some small box houses out of graham crackers. They were cute and fun. A few weeks after that, one of Jeremy's patients gave him a big and fancy European-Gingerbread- A-Frame-House-Kit. That was so much fun putting together I don't think we'll ever be able to go back to the simple graham- cracker-box- house!

Another December highlight was taking the boy's to see Santa Claus. Wal-Mart has Santa visits every Saturday. The boy's insisted that they take the Christmas toy catalog to show Santa. I agreed and figured they would have time to show Santa a favorite toy they wanted. This was not the case. Santa Claus spent a good 5 - 10 minutes with each child. He went through every page while Lyle, and later Hyrum, would point to a toy and ask him for it. Hyrum got pretty technical and even showed Santa toys that Elizabeth and his Mom and Dad would like for Christmas. Santa was so convincing and sincere I was even a believer!

Elizabeth celebrated her 1st birthday this month. I can't believe it's already been a year for her. She's been a joy since day number one. After her birthday she decided to grow up and has been acting like a toddler ever since. I miss her as a cute baby but sure enjoy seeing her grow and discover new things. She likes her "baby" toys but prefers the boy's Transformer and train toys. The only thing that gives me hope with Lizzy becoming a proper "Miss Elizabeth" is that she insists on always wearing her pink beaded necklace. I'll let her help Lyle save the world any day as long as she keeps wearing that cute necklace!

Christmas Eve came and all the children, including Lizzy, caught on that something very exciting was about to happen. They were giddy with excitement. We took the kids to a train caboose to play on, then dropped them off at Matt and Megan's home. They watched them for a few hours while Jeremy and I went out for lunch. We enjoyed a few hours of quite and peaceful time together. It was so enjoyable I think I'm going to add that to our list of Christmas traditions. We picked up the kids, and went home to get ready for the evening. We had good times together and ended the evening looking at Christmas lights with Matt and Megan. What fun!

The Tanners

Becca 'n' Nick

I've had a lot of thoughts over the last couple months but have not seemed to make the time to write them down. A few months ago I wrote down how good I was feeling about everything in general. Well since then, with the exception of a few random days, I've felt quite the contrary. Elissa had been so fussy all the time that I was finding it difficult to have good thoughts at all. After about six weeks of a sad baby I noticed she was getting two new teeth in the front and that she had four new molars in back. Phew! You'd think by the third kid you'd be able to recognize the signs of serious teething before the teeth poked through. Good news, she had a happy week resulting in an amazing amount of time I had shortly before Christmas. It is so fun to have a happy baby again.

Stelli is still Lissa's second mother, and I am constantly reminding her not to touch her sister. A while back I saw Stelli pulling Lissy by the arm through the gravel by our driveway. Lissy was trying to go one way while her sister was pulling her another. "ARGGG!" I thought as I started my don't push, pull, touch, or hold your sister routine. When I turned to face Stelli straight on I recognized the desperation in her movements as she fumbled for words. So I held my breath a moment for her explanation before I started in on my routine lecture. She frantically looked behind her then back to Lissy then back to me and continued dragging her sister. So I looked past them to see a tarantula heading full speed toward Elissa who in turn was trying to reach the tarantula. As this was Estelle's first encounter with a spider giant you can imagine the urgency to rescue her sister. I tried to take the situation seriously (hiding my laughs was difficult) as I scooped up both children and moved them out of "harm's way."

Jonathan has truly stepped up to the "big brother" role in the family. Not only has he become quite a help around the house: doing daily chores, folding laundry, bringing firewood to the house (with Tanner cousin help), setting the table, but he also knows all the right tricks for making his biggest little sister cry and scream. He used to tease her only occasionally; however, now it's the first thing he does when he gets home from school. It's as if he's been thinking about how to make her boil all half-day at school. Then once he's gotten a few good screams or cries, he moves onto his chore list and shows me what a good boy he really is.

Christmas this year was the most fun yet. Jonathan and Estelle wanted to sleep together in their little tent in Jonathan's room Christmas Eve. They were too excited to sleep though. It was about an hour and a half later when Nick's final threat quieted them long enough for them to fall asleep. They beat us out to the living room by about one minute in the morning. Jonathan was so excited to tell us about the Transformers Santa brought him. When we asked Stelli what Santa brought her she said, "No, Look at what the princesses brought me!" I guess the princesses must help Santa deliver the princess toys? Elissa was a little funny about what Santa brought her. She poked her Cabbage Patch a few times, then went straight to Stelli's princess toys. Ahh, you can imagine her big sister's initial disapproval? She did end up sharing one of her little Polly Pocket princesses with Elissa after all though.

We hope the season treated everyone good, love to all of you,

The Bryces

McKay 'n' Keresa

Matt 'n' Megan

Dear Family,

The biggest news for December is that our Fall semester ended! Hooray! We even passed all of our classes. From where we're sitting now, we've only got another year and a half. Piece of cake, right? In the midst of finals, we took a break a went to go see my first hockey game! U of A was playing their rivals and we purchased some tickets that we thought were great! However, they ended up being seats right in the ASU section. So the whole time we were seated there, we got obscenities thrown at us above and below. You think they would realize there's only so many times you can say the same four letter word and use the same rude hand gesture before it becomes trite. So we skipped out of that section after a while and walked around the rink and got some cool exciting views of the game. In the end our team lost with a score of something like 2 to 5, but in my opinion the real winner of the game was Mr. Zamboni. The home crowd booed the visitor team. The visitor crowd booed the home team. Everyone booed the referee. But the entire crowd cheered and yelled for Mr. Zamboni in between periods. I don't like booing. I guess no one else learned in elementary school that that was poor sportsmanship. So the game began with boos and ended with boos, but in between periods, we heard nothing but cheers for Mr. Zamboni.

We started out the month acquiring our very first married couple Christmas tree. It was also Megan's very first real Christmas tree, so we were very excited. After surveying the trees in one lot for about 20 minutes, it appeared that they did not have anything to fulfill our needs, something for a 2 room 450 sq ft apartment. We went down to a nearby Target and saw Christmas trees in their garden section. We found the perfect 4-5 ft tree and took it home. It ended up to be a real beauty with two short strings of lights, an angel on top that our neighbor gave us, some strings of popcorn we made ourselves, candy canes, and a bag full of other ornaments we got from Megan's mom. Then to garnish the bottom of the tree, Megan crocheted two stockings and we wrapped a bounty of presents for each other. We couldn't have done better for our first Christmas tree.

The Saturday after finals, we attended Megan's work party for M3 Engineering at a resort a little ways west of Tucson called Starr Pass Resort. They put on a very classy spread. In fact a little bit more classy than I was expecting and I felt slightly out of place in my tacky Christmas sweater while everyone else was in their very best formal attire. We still had a blast though and had our complimentary photo taken to remember the occasion (and the attire). While most others took advantage of the bar's happy hour specials, we sipped our ginger ale and sampled the many fine cheeses they had out for sampling. Then for dinner the selection was even more impressive than the cheeses. For appetizers they had a huge selection of fruit with a passion fruit sauce, sweet potatoes, salad with bacon on top, and more. For the main course we had a choice of chicken, fish, vegetarian, or beef Wellington. I personally know that all were marvelous as I had an ample portion of them all! Dessert was too good to describe, but don't worry, we were too full to really eat much more of anything.

The following Tuesday, we went to Phoenix to see Michael McLean's The Forgotten Carols performed by Michael Mclean himself. But first we did a temple session and went out to eat with some of Megan's family. We ate at a Ruby Tuesday and Megan and I ordered ribs while most everyone else ordered a hamburger. When everyone's burger came out the server said to me that he was sending the ribs out with another waiter. About five or six minutes passed by and my ribs were nowhere to be seen. The server came back out to follow up on the order. He looked at us kind of stupidly when he saw that we didn't have any food then said, "Um, let me check on those ribs." He returned and said, "The other waiter took the ribs to another table. So we stuck some more ribs in the oven for you. They'll be out in another 15 minutes or so, and they'll be on the house." No better way to see a play than with a belly full of free ribs and face and fingers sticky with free barbecue sauce.

My secret gift for Megan this Christmas was fish. I wanted to get Megan some fish to put in this beautiful glass bowl she received a flower arrangement in. She'd been talking about how much she wanted fish ever since she got the fish bowl. So fish it was. The week before Christmas, I went to a Wal-Mart that carries fish with a friend of mine and bought half a dozen of the cheap goldfish counting on that at least a few would live until Christmas day. My master plan was to keep them at my friend's apartment in a casserole dish until Christmas Eve at which point he would bring them over with his wife. His wife was to grab Megan by the hand and dragging her into the other room say, "Megan we have to talk!" While they girl talked in the other room, my buddy and I would take the fish from his car and slip them into a cupboard where they would stay until Megan fell asleep Christmas Eve. Then I would put the fish into the fish bowl and put them underneath the Christmas Tree to be illuminated by the lights. That was the master plan. The chink in the plan was my assumption that at least a few of the fish would survive. None made it to even the Saturday before Christmas. So Christmas Eve, Megan had to work for a few hours in the morning. I scuttled off back to the Wal-Mart on my motorcycle and bought two more fish and some water conditioner that claimed to make tap water safe for fish. I stuffed the fish in my backpack and rode home to put the fish in the cupboard. That night after Megan had drifted off I transferred the still-alive fish to the bowl and put them under the tree as planned. And Christmas morning was met with the Megan's squeals of, "Ooh, fish!" and my squeals of, "Ooh, the fish are still alive!"

After opening our bounty of presents, we drove to Vail to play with all of Lyle and Hyrum's transformer presents for a few hours. Then we drove to St. David to play with all of Jonathon's transformer presents and Estelle's princess presents for a few hours, and then to Sierra Vista to find that Santa left us a bounty of presents there also. The following night, we headed back to Tucson with smiles on our faces and the car full of goodies only to find that our fish had died. Oh well. Maybe for an upcoming Family Home Evening we'll go pick out some fish together and select some fish from the $1.50 category instead of some of the 12 cent gold fish.

Happy New Year!

Love, Megan and Matthias