December 2001

Before Christmas, Loren and Phillip went to their first girl's choice dance. Elliot also participated in Junior Jazz Basketball.

We had a wonderful Christmas season this year. We spent great time with both families. This year we had the Morgan family party at my sister Megan’s house. All of us were there which is amazing in at least two ways; one, that all six of the Morgan family siblings live in the area and no one was sick and two, that we could all fit in her house! (We even have my Aunt Lesa and her family join us!) I’m sure that my parents are very happy to see us all gathered together. We sure miss their presence, but we feel of their love. My sister Melinda was in charge this year and she invited three "wise men" to come and teach us about the birth of Christ.

We have a tradition of having "Christmas Day" the Saturday before Christmas, at the Browns. We have a traditional breakfast of scrambled eggs, poteca (Italian sweet bread), sweet rolls and hot chocolate with whip cream. Then we sit down and open presents. It feels just like Christmas and it sort of surprises us that everyone else is going about their normal Saturday activities.

Christmas Eve we had Grandma and Grandpa over for a nice sit down dinner in the dining room and then Tess gave us a FHE lesson on faith and the birth of Christ to fulfill a personal progress goal in Young Women. Then we had the kids open their "gift from the heart". This year we had prepared some additional family histories for them to add to their Books of Remembrance. Each year we like to add some pages to their book.

Christmas Day was as fun as it always is! Our tradition is to come downstairs to see what Santa has brought us and then we stop and have our traditional breakfast of breakfast casserole, sweet rolls, the oranges out of our stockings and hot chocolate. After we gain a little sustenance, we gather back in the family room to open the gifts from under the tree. As usual we all received very thoughtful and appreciated gifts. Later that afternoon, family stopped by for homemade soup and fruit salad and then we traveled on down to Provo to spend a couple hours with the extended Breinholt family.

We tried to send a Christmas letter to everyone, if we missed you or you never received it, you can read it to see the highlights of this past year.