Family Home Evening: Temple Square Edition

Firstly, I'd like to explain what "Family Home Evening" is. A simple definition is this: a special time set aside each week that brings family members together and strengthens their love for each other, helps them draw closer to Heavenly Father, and encourages them to live righteously.

We were invited by our neighbors to go to Temple Square for FHE.

Temple Square during Christmas is simply wonderful. 

There are nativities ALL OVER the place, lights carefully wrapped around just about every tree and the Spirit of Christ is so very present there.  I love that when you go there, you are reminded of what Christmas celebrates: The coming of the Lord to this world, as humble as it was, and His being the Savior of it, as majestic as that is.  What better way is there to bring family and friends together than by celebrating Christ?

Here are some pictures from our outing:

We hopped on TRAX in Sandy. It was really cold so I wore my scarf around my head....I got some funny looks.

The Frosts-our neighbors. :)

Massive tent tree.

Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus  on the reflection pool. This is my favorite part of Temple Square at Christmas.

A tree.

It was a grand ol' time. :)

Rice Pudding

Image compliments of Google.

Since Neil is the Rice Pudding magician around here, I asked him if he uses a specific recipe.

He said he had one once but that he couldn't find it so he mainly improvises. 

Well, I found this recipe online and asked him if it would work and it did but then he added some twists.

So, here is the recipe we used/ made up.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cups of uncooked white rice
• 2 cups of Milk
• 1 tablespoons of butter
• 1/3 cup of white (regular) sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 egg yolks (beaten) OR 1 whole egg (beaten)
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg

Directions:

1. Bring 1 & 1/2 cup of water to a boil in a saucepan; stir rice into boiling water. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. 
2. In a different saucepan/small pot, combine 1 1/2 cups of the cooked rice, 1 & 1/2 cups of milk, sugar and salt. Cook over medium heat until thick and creamy (15-20 minutes). 
3. Stir in remaining 1/2 cup of milk and beaten egg(s).
4. Cook 2 minutes more stirring constantly. 
5. Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla. 
6. Garnish with  nutmeg and cinnamon as desired. 

You can serve rice pudding hot or cold. I, personally, prefer to eat a nice warm bowl of rice pudding. 

Enjoy!

Christmas Festivities

Date nights and shopping trips, were mainly all about Christmas last month. 

We bought "The Polar Express" one day and decided it would be fun to snuggle up, watch the movie and for a treat, RICE PUDDING. 

YUM. Neil is one master chef when it comes to rice pudding. (He's a master chef in regards to many dishes, but that is besides the point.)

Then, it was that magical time where we got to shop for and set up Christmas!!

Our intention was to have a real tree but that fell through for some reason...I can't really remember why. Anyway, we bought a fake tree at good ol' Wal-Mart as well as some purple and gold ornaments.

Purple and gold was the main color theme for Christmas. We loved it. :)

I snagged all of this at Tai Pan trading. The trees totaled $17 ish and the sign was $6.You know how they always have trees up and they say, "Do not remove decorations from trees" ? Yeah, they only had two of those believe signs in the store and they were both on the same tree. Boo. I did what anyone would have done and took one off the tree. So there.

This frame was a wedding gift and I write seasonal messages on it. For Christmas I had Luke 2:11

Probably my favorite wreath so far. I bought the tinsel for $2.50 at Hobby Lobby, wrapped (but did not glue) it around a 97 cent piece of plumbing wrap-or something like that- from Home Depot, and the sign was $3 from Tai Pan. Because I assembled it this way, I'm able to reuse both the tinsel garland stuff and the sign and the foam tubing. It's grand.

Our first Christmas tree!!! I'm sad you can't tell what it looks like because it was so pretty if I do say so myself. Purple round ornaments with sparkly gold (but not tacky looking) reindeer ornaments (also compliments of Wal-Mart-$3ish), more of that tinsel garland stuff I used for the wreath and a twig wrapped star (Tai Pan-$7). It was just so awesome to set up a tree with my husband for the first time ever! We put the tree in the corner because we have a corner window (actually two-the cause of our heating problems but we'll get to that in  a later post) and corner windows are REALLY COOL display windows.

Variety of Christmas Parties

With work, school and church, we were bound to have a few Christmas parties to attend. 

On December 7th we had the ward Christmas party.  Food, fun and friends. 

Neil also played the piano for the talent show! It was fun to hear him play/see him perform. 

I was having too much fun to take pictures except for a couple. 

Here they are:

The next week, there was a Christmas (but really it was a going away party) for my work. We lost 6 employees. That hasn't happened in the 3 years I've worked here! Two left for internships, one left because she enrolled at Dental Hygiene school, two left for missions and one left for another job that fits more with his major/intended field of work. 

It was really sad to see everyone go and it's been exciting/exhausting/educating training all of our new team members but the party we had was for all. Old and new. It was fun to be with everyone outside of work just relaxing and eating really yummy food. 

It was a lot of fun. :)