Tis the Season To Be Jolly

Tis the season to be jolly...

Here are some of the other festivities we've been up to:

We went to a Christmas concert last week at the Sergstrom Concert Hall called "Tis the Season", which was phenomenal. One more annual Christmas tradition to add to our calendar for next year. Seriously, it was amazing and definitely put us in the Christmas spirit.

We also went to Fashion Island to see the 115 foot tall real Christmas tree. Wow.

After Five Crowns on Saturday we met up with Scott's family and headed to Balboa Island to watch the boat parade and walk around to see all the houses decked out with lights for Christmas. It was totally crowded, but really worth braving crowds and the cold. Sorry no photos, but think of Chevy Chase's house in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation...yep, there were some contenders for sure. I hope they know a good therapist.

And Scott just about O.D.'d on my clam dip...Mom, it was a hit. Thanks for sharing your recipe. Yet another tradition in the making. ;)

My work holiday party was dinner and dancing at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel. We fell in love with the real Christmas tree in the entrance and the huge gingerbread castle in one of the lobbies that took multiple hotel chefs a total of 400 hours to create. We'll have to go again and take some photos to post. Incredible.

Our ward Christmas party this year was centered around a service project for some really poor children living in Tijuana, Mexico. Every family bought backpacks and filled them with school supplies, gloves, hats, umbrellas, jackets, blankets, scarves and the priesthood leaders delivered them to a school that is very needy down there. We were able to provide a filled backpack for each of the 250 school children. I sure love our ward and especially our bishop, bishop Grossen. He is an amazingly spiritual and generous person and this was his idea to do a service project in lieu of a party. We all brought our backpacks to a breakfast and put them under a couple Christmas trees and they filled the whole side of the room. The whole experience was so touching. That's what Christmas is supposed to be. I hope we can keep the spirit of service in our lives all year round.