December 2022 - The Most Wonderful Time of The Year!

 

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We started the festivities of December at the Christkindlmarkt Salt Lake City on Dec. 1.

Market Booths

It was a cold wintery day and perfect for being at the Christmas market.  It was not the same as being in Germany, Austria or France, but it was still festive and the smells from the food brought back lots of memories.  We stopped at the Cafe Berlin and met a family from Singen, Germany that knew several of the missionaries that we served with.  It was so fun to visit with them and to try their bratwurst on a real authentic bun.  There were some nice shops and it is a nice venue at This Is The Place State Park.  Because of the threat of a Winter Storm there were not a lot of people and it was nice for us to not have to fight the crowds.  

Time for Christmas Shows and programs.  Preslee takes Theater class at the Scera in Orem.  They put on their Christmas Show and it was Fantastic!  She really enjoys it and shines on stage.

This is a picture I did not think I would ever see even in my wildest dreams.  This is Joshua's family with SANTA (Joshua) at their Ward Christmas Party.  

Kelly on the left, Shannon on the right and Jamie on Santa's lap.  So fun for their family.  

To top it off - Julie got to have her picture with Santa too!  This truly made my day when they sent the photos.  

Julie with SANTA

They are really enjoying Portland - even the snow and ice they have had recently.  

We look forward to having them visit for New Year's.

Emily, Ian, Logan and Preslee.  It has been a few years since they have had a family picture taken and we are so glad that Brian and Beth came for a visit and did a photo shoot for us.  Logan is in 8th Grade - he is over 200 lbs and 6'1".  Preslee is in 6th grade and busy with Cheer, theater, and friends.  

Brian, Beth, William and Nora living in Wichita, Kansas.  William is in 4th grade and enjoys piano, voice lessons and flag football with his Dad as coach.  Nora is a star soccer player, plays the piano and is an avid reader.  

Jaime, Andrew, Adam, Eric, Abby, Zach and Emma Zuis living in Farmington Minnesota.  With three adult kids it is hard to get the whole family together for a picture.  This is their busy time as Andrew is a Professional SANTA and Jaime has a cottage Bakery business.  He did over 90 home visits this year and his whole being transforms the minute the suit goes on.  He is awesome.  Adam works in the meat department at HY-VEE grocery, Abby works as a supervisor on the ramp at Delta Airlines, Eric helps at home and Zack and Emma are in school.  Emma with her school choir recently got to sing the National Anthem at the Minnesota Timberwolves game.  

The Nativity Display in Texas has been a part of our life for 28 years.  We were not able to go and help our dear friend Faye Landham this year due to surgeries and preparations for leaving to the Czech Republic in Jan.  We were so sorry to miss this special event.  Faye is almost 82 and she decided this was going to be her last year to display her 1300 Nativity Sets.  She reached out to 76 Churches in the area to see if they were interested in acquiring the sets and carrying on the display.  Five Churches responded and she narrowed it down to two in Granbury.  We talked over the options together.  Many of you know the story - 27 years ago Faye asked to participate in the Arlington TX Stake Nativity Display.  She had 200 sets at that time and we were thrilled to have her be a part of the event.  That began a special friendship and many more years of setting up Nativities in Arlington and then Granbury.  Her collection grew to over 1300 sets.  The Granbury Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was one of the Churches that expressed interest in the collection.  I called and talked with their representative and shared a little of our history together.  They want to continue her legacy and have her involved telling her stories as long as she is able.  They see it as a great Public Affairs event and a great opportunity to be more involved in the Community.  Both Faye and I had been praying for the right opportunity to happen and I know it was an answer to my prayers for this to happen.  It will be a great Community event for Granbury.  

We hosted our 2nd Annual Open House Nativity Display this year.  We have about 100 Nativities and opened our home for those who wanted to come and see.  I love the feeling in our home with all of the Nativities filling the rooms - so many memories and stories of where they are from.  I love sharing the stories with others when they come.  It was so special to have two of Russ's former bosses at American Airlines come and see this year.  It had been years since we had seen them.  Amazing that we all ended up in the same area in Utah 20 years later.  We also had a longtime friend, Sam Jones attend.  He left Arlington Texas and lived in Antigua for several years and then returned to Utah during Covid.  It was a great reunion.  We had special friends from our mission and many neighbors.  

I am not looking forward to taking them down, but time is going so fast and they will need to be down before New Year's.  We are already looking forward to next year and another Open House Nativity Display.

Hand Carved in Germany

Nancy and Mel Olson

My wonderful sister, Pam

The best part of the Open House - the FOOD!  I made so much food we are still trying to finish it off.  My sister, Pam came for a day and helped with the baking.  It was such a fun day together - we just got carried away and made a lot of food.  

PICTURES OF DECEMBER EVENTS

We rode the Frontrunner Train to Downtown Salt Lake City.  It was a very snowy night and magical as we walked through Temple Square and all of the lights, visited the Giving Machines, had a delicious dinner at the Blue Lemon,  Mexican Hot Chocolate from The Red Iguana as we walked in the snow to Abravanel Hall for the Millennial Choir Christmas Concert that my two nieces were singing in.  We got about 6 inches of snow that night and we were so glad we rode the train and did not have to drive so far in the snow.  

Giving Machines

Temple Square

Front Yard Snow

Music and The Spoken Word with The Tabernacle Choir

We did not get tickets to the Christmas Concert so we attended on Sunday morning for their live broadcast with the guest artists, Lea Salonga ( she is the voice of Princess Jasmine from Aladdin and Fa Mulan from Mulan) and Sir David Suchet (he played Hercule Poirot in 70 episodes of Agatha Christie's Poirot)   It was such beautiful music and a special program.  We are so grateful to be here and to be able to attend so many wonderful events.  

Sir David Suchet shared the Nicholas Winton Story - a British humanitarian who assisted in the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II.  He was born to German-Jewish parents who had emigrated to Britain at the beginning of the 20th Century.  He helped compile a list of children needing rescue, helped fulfill the legal requirements in Britain and found homes and sponsors for them.  His work went unnoticed to the world for over 50 years until he was invited to a BBC program, That's Life, where he was reunited with several of the children he had helped rescue.  He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003.  He was awarded the highest honor of the Czech Republic, the Order of the White Lion in 2014.  He died on July 1, 2015 at the age of 106.  After his story, the Choir sang a traditional Czech Carol.  There was not a dry eye in the audience.  I am amazed at how many experiences we have had in the past two months since being asked to go to The Czech Republic.  

DRIVE THROUGH LIGHT DISPLAY - SPANISH FORK, UT

I love to see the lights!  The lights of Christmas are symbols of the Light of Christ.  He is the light and life of the world. He brings light to a dark world.  

We waited in line for about 45 min. and then entered the gates to the wonderland of lights.  I felt like a little child overwhelmed by all of the sights.  Moving from one scene to the next wondering what I was missing.  

One of my favorites was the green dragon.  I am not sure why I liked it so much but it was magical to me.  It was nice to just be with Russ and to have both of us just enjoying it with no background chatter.  According to him the only thing that would have made it better is if I would have stopped at Cracker Barrel for dinner on the way home.  

Ending the drive with the Nativity scene was so beautiful and fitting.  Amid all of the lights of cowboys, bears, penguins, dragons, ferris wheels, etc., it was a grand finale to end with the true light of the Christmas season.  

One of the nice things about living back in Utah is being close to family.  We visited my favorite cousin, Shirley on Christmas Day.  She has been collecting snowmen, Santa's and Christmas village pieces for many years.  She has help setting it up now, but it is still so fun to visit and experience so many memories.  

Friends Elli and Cooper are visiting in Germany for Christmas and sent us this picture of a special place that Elli took us to when we were in Freiburg Germany.  The most beautiful life size hand carved Nativity scene.  

CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

Late on the 23rd of December Emily came downstairs to check on two friends who got to have a "late night" with Preslee.  Their parents were coming to pick them up and she looked out the window and saw something on the front porch.  She has a Ring doorbell and it had not indicated that anyone came.  She opened the door and there was a snowblower sitting on the front sidewalk with a note on it.  

It said:  Dear Grimmett's and Fackrell's - We have used this snow blower for the past few years and it has worked really well for us.  We have a new four wheeler that we use now and know this will be useful for you.  Merry Christmas, a loving neighbor.  

The past two weeks we have shoveled a LOT of SNOW.  More than last year in the whole Winter.  Ian will be glad to have it since we will be gone the whole Winter.  So grateful for good neighbors that were so gracious to our families.

NIGHT IN BETHLEHEM

For about 35 years on Christmas Eve we have what we call A Night in Bethlehem.  We put a table on the floor with cans under it to raise it just a little.  We have a simple meal of Chicken in pita bread with cheese and lettuce.  Trays of nuts, dried fruits, olives of many varieties, cheese cubes, stuffed grape leaves, roasted potato cubes, chips and Salsa, fruit breads, baklava and this year we added shrimp.  Everyone gets gold chocolate coins to pay our taxes and we eat by candlelight .  We watch The Nativity Story - when the kids were little we would act out the Nativity story.  Most of our children still do this in their homes.  It is one of the things we look forward to every Christmas.  

Christmas Morning!

We had a very simple and nice day.  It is always a special day when Christmas is on Sunday and we can attend Church.  We have Church at 1:30 in the afternoon so we had a nice leisurely morning and then attended our Church service that was filled with beautiful music and testimonies of Jesus Christ.  We visited family and delivered our traditional Salsa and Chips to our neighbors on Christmas Eve.  It is a lot different here where our friends and neighbors are within a 1/4 mile radius and not driving all over Arlington/Mansfield to deliver our Salsa.  We miss all of our friends we would visit and wish a Merry Christmas to all.   We are grateful for our new friends and neighbors.

What a year it has been!  We have worked hard on our home, visited our children and grandchildren, traveled, volunteered, survived Covid and surgeries.  We have witnessed miracles and so many tender mercies in our life and of family members.  We are so grateful that Emily is recovering from her car accident last month.  It has been a long slow process and she continues to get treatments to be relieved of pain.  She is still not driving and we hope she can overcome her fear and be healed.

Christ taught, "My grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."

We have learned from so many experiences and have drawn closer to our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ along the way.  We have been blessed abundantly.  We leave in 5 days for The Czech Republic.  We are excited and also a little nervous about our abilities .  We know the Lord will bless us and strengthen us in our weakness.  We are so grateful for the experiences we have had in life that have prepared us for what lies ahead.  We are taking down our Christmas decorations today - always a sad day for me.  I love the feeling in our home with the lights and the Santa's and the many Nativity scenes.  Our responsibility is to now carry that Spirit with us throughout the year and help others to feel it and be blessed by it.  

We pray that each of you will feel the peace and joy that comes through knowing that Jesus is The Christ, the Son of God.  We must give place for Him in our hearts, and as we do so we will be abundantly blessed.

With Love,

The Grimmett's