December and the new museum

On December 28th my Grandpa Hague turned 85 years old and took us to the new museum. He is the former director of the Utah Museum of Natural History. I grew up going to "Grandpa's Museum" and loved it. The old museum was closed down and has relocated to this new building on the U of U campus. It was so neat to go through the new museum with him and you could feel the deep passion he has for everything that has gone into building this amazing place.

This is the view from the top of the museum. Even though is was really smoggy, it is still a pretty amazing view!

Grandpa is such a wealth of knowledge and it was such a neat opportunity for us to have him give us the tour.

Such an amazing and massive building!

If you zoom in you can see the orange plaque between them has their names on it. The Donald and Lorna Hague Family.

I used to lay in this very dinosaur print when I was a little girl. It is a vivid memory, so even though this is in a small corner of the museum, it was one of my favorite parts!

The kids really enjoyed all the exhibits and had fun with all the hands on stuff!

Grandpa loves to talk to Richard and Richard is such a great listener. A few times throughout our visit we had to go find them and make them catch up to us! We could have spent all day there with Grandpa, but we had to move at a more kid friendly pace.

The stones and gems were one of my favorite displays in the old museum.

The third floor of the museum is named for my Grandpa and this beautiful painting of him (painted in 1984) is right as you walk off the elevator. He has contributed so much time, talent and expertise to make the museum what it is.

I sure do love these guys, and they have so much love and pride for the museum.

This was one of my favorite parts of the whole tour. It was fun to watch passersby realize that the man we were taking our picture with was the man in the painting!

There was so much to see and my Grandpa knew about every little detail in the whole museum. Amazing. This display case alone has 600 items in it!

Rewind to the beginning of the month:

Emma's school teacher got married and had a reception at the school. Emma was in heaven dancing with her teacher and all her class mates. Her teacher is like a real live Disney princess and Kate thought she really was!

Her teacher is so sweet and Emma loves her so much. Mrs. Barton let Emma keep her bouquet and Emma was beyond thrilled! She felt so special!

Of course, our December is filled with a lot of Voice Male concerts and my kids are always eager to collect the rubber duckies after the shows. Here is their loverly display. And, of course, I didn't get any pictures of Voice Male....only the ducks.

Here is our family on Christmas Eve. After a potato bar dinner with Martinellis , the kids opened their jammies and I remembered that my Aunt Barbara had made these for Richard and me years ago. We looked like dorks, but it was fun. We had a totally awesome dance party and watched "Elf".

Other fun things we did this month:

Attended 2 Voice Male concerts, made lots of goodies (including a fondant cake because we love Cake Boss), had Christmas Eve breakfast at Dave's and went to a movie, wonderful family celebrations with both Hague and McAllister families, spilled hot chocolate all over Kate at a family party, breakfast at IHOP with Grandpa Kevin, ward parties, choir concerts, pack meeting and caroling, playing piano and singing lots of Christmas songs, and enjoying lazy days in jammies, watching movies and playing Just Dance!

We did have a wonderful Christmas. But we only took videos (no pics!) of Christmas morning. The rest of the day was spent making a lot of food, Richard being at church for 3 hours (he's in the bishopric), me being in charge of the Sacrament mtg. program (which actually went very well), and me stressing about it all. I think I wanted to be a kid this year and enjoy the magic of Christmas. But with the whole Sunday thing, I think I was overly stressed and it didn't feel like much of a relaxing Christmas Day, which is what I really wanted. However, we did have a great Christmas. I love my family and we are so very blessed. I think I'm ready for the kids to go back to school. I'm ready to take down the decorations and get my house back in order (well, as much order as possible with all the craziness). Ready to get back into regular blogging again. I guess I'm ready for a new year. I'm not ready to start my diet (again), but I figure I have until Monday to live it up. I'm gonna go have a piece of cake. See ya in 2012!