Christmas 2007

Christmas is a time of Thanksgiving for the Savior's birth- the best gift that we could receive!
I am thankful for all that He has done for us. We had a great Sacrament on Sunday that I dedicated to the Savior since I was given the talent of singing as one of my gifts from Above. I am amazed sometimes because when I sing sometimes I can hear my Grandma Field instead of myself. I guess besides the Yenta personality from her I also got the pipes! Thanks Grandma!

Christmas Morning always comes so early at our house. We actually extended the hour to 7:30 a.m. after begging Mckenna not to wake anyone up this year at 5:30 a.m.! Which was good because I am sick, sick, sick, sick, sick with a major Sinus infection.

This year we didn't get many gifts we only got a few small ones and a large gift.

• Devin and Kyler got a Xbox 360 and 2 games (one of which Kyler bought for himself.)

• Devin also got a subway gift card for 2 weeks worth of Italian BMTs, a gift card from Kyler for a xbox 360 game and a Boston Redsox Backpack from Mckenna.
  

  

• Kyler got cologne from Devin, many shirts and a zipper jacket from everyone!

• Mckenna got a Camera, a puffed fur-lined vest, the movie Hairspray and a sweater. Speaking of Hairspray- have you seen it? Cheezy but worth the laugh of watching John Travolta play Big Momma. (why oh why would he subject himself to the humility?)
  

• Matt got a Flat screen t.v. (the console was moved into our room,)Pirates of the Caribean:World's End dvd and a book about WWII (he loves those history books!)
  

  
  
  Notice that Gilmore Girls is playing on the screen?




• I got a camera (which is where all the fun pictures have come from in the last month- our camera started zapping batteries after our Florida trip- not sure if it was the heat or the humidity,) the book Eclipse (Twilight series- if you haven't read it you should. disclaimer: not for younger than 14 years old :at least I think,) some bath & body works items and a super mario ds game (from Devin.)



• Sharon and her family sent a really fun looking game that the kids can't wait to beat us with called Beat the Parents. THANKS guys!

And from my parents who were so generous to us all we ended up getting a new DVD player for the car (ours had died.) And sent me really cute mikey and minnie ornaments!

THANKS SO MUCH, Mom, Dad and Mary!

Merry Christmas!

Love the Brower's!

Have you ever ate a DIXIE dinner?

Well, neither had our family until the Hunt's invited us to one. It was very interesting. Patrice handed out oranges and then told us a story about how the Saints who lived in the Santa Clara Tonaquint area had never had the color orange except for the oranges that were given each Christmas because the dye was not contiguous to the area (think-red mountains, sage brush, trees, grass, weeds, yup! No orange!)

Then we were handed Baked potatoes and told about how the Saints had these to keep them warm in a very rainy season. So we ate our baked potatoes probably a little different than the saints did we got to add cheddar cheese, Bacon bits, ranch (not me,) and butter to them. Yummy!

Then we had Dixie Sa'la'd: the salad the Hunt's had wasn't the exact Dixie Sa'la'd recipe because it was missing the Pomegranate seeds, but it was yummy too. We also had a story about that one too!



It is a tradition that they Hunts do every year, we ate our food sitting on blankets in their living room and listened to the stories. Then we played games and finished the evening with a Christmas Carol sing-a-long (or in Matt's case, a listen-a-long.)And to top it off our Neighbor's the Simpson's came delivered treats to us and the Hunts and also sang us a song about BYU being divine! (Mark Simpson is one of Matt's policemen, he has a lot of fun teasing Matt about the BYU/Utah game.)

All in all, it was a really nice night!

Does anyone have any change for this child?

For some reason Mckenna decided to ask for "pennies for the Poor?" Maybe it was because we were deciding what charity we were going to give to this year instead of doing our "Santa's Elves." We decided that there might be a family or families that might need to have a holiday more than the fun that we do for someone who we know.

So the kids provided money and helped go shopping for 'Coin's for Kids'. The boys also packed for 'Toy's for Tots,' and Mckenna and Kyler went to Christmas parties where we helped the local shelter by bringing food cans and Mckenna brought a few hats I had made for the kids of the shelter. We also were going to serve Christmas Day dinner, but they didn't need our help since they already had a fill of helpers. Bummer, that is something Matt and I have wanted to do with our kids for a long time, but never figuared out how to find out about it.

Here is our little version of the Salvation Army bell ringer!

"Pennies for the Poor?"

But I don't think that they pose for the camera do they? She does look cute though!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Now that the tree is selected from the forest, it is time to decorate it and the house. Here are a fun selection of pictures of what our happy house looks like at Christmas time!

(sharon- notice that yours is the first present to be put under the tree?)

These are a few of our fun ornaments that my parents and Mary send every year. We love them. We also have matching cups. I wonder what will come this year, hum??

Now on to the REAL tree hunt

Now that you all know about the 1st attempt of a Christmas tree search, we will now move on to the REAL search for a Brower Perfected tree. Does Charlie Brown know anything about looking for the perfect tree? Well, I think he did because he wouldn't have found the Lucy tree if he was looking in our forest, there was not a Perfect one around! So we looked for the tree that has the least branches missing or one that we can face part of against the wall (like the guy in CHRISTMAS STORY tried to sell their family. Know what I am talking about?

We finally found a tree that would work, set up the hot cocoa to simmer, got out the guns to shot the pumpkins we had left over from halloween and thanksgiving (what?! You don't think we need to say goodbye to the old holidays?) and sat in the truck until we could warm up since the hot cocoa was taking so long!

Here is our journey through pictures:

Tree Time!

Okay, so we started after church to Pine Valley for our annual Christmas Tree hunt! It had snow the night before and early in the morning and we thought it would be fun to have a hunt, go tubing and drink some hot cocoa. But this was not to be, On our way up the hill, we saw a van off the road and then 5 to 7 men on each side of the road throwing snowballs at each other. Clearly these men were from a different country where there wasn't any snow. We decided to take two cars so that we could bring the ATV for tubing, and the Explorer so that we could also bring home the tree. Matt and I drove up to the snow throwing men and they stopped and then Devin who was right behind us slowed down and they started up again.

Matt and I got to the turn-off and there was no Kids behind us, I started getting worried (i am a Field okay?) and told Matt that not having Devin behind us was not a good sign. Then low and behold, here come a few blond children running up the road (we were maybe 500 feet away from the previous slowdown.) Kyler tells us that Devin slid, a lady heading in the other direction slid and Devin hit her car. When we drive back yes, there is her car, there is our explorer and there is Devin frustrated as all get out. He said that he couldn't turn to the right because the snow throwers were there, she couldn't turn to her right because there was the snow throwers there too, so they ended up sliding into each other.

This car hitting incident by the way gave me a good excuse to reinforce the reason that Devin drives the Explorer and not a let's say a jeep, because this is what the ladies car looked like and not a scratch on Devin's explorer.

While we were standing waiting for the Police to arrive there were about 10 other cars that almost slid off the road, (one car in the far left of the picture ended up doing a 360*,) or hit other cars. 2 cars including the van on the side of the road didn't have four-wheel drive and couldn't make it up the hill, including the sheriff's car that they sent to take car of the problem at hand.

We ended up waiting a total of 2 hours while the sheriff's car went back down the hill and waited for a sheriff's truck to get the officer up the hill! Duh, could we have thought of that before?


Funny thing, those nice snow thrower's?! They changed their van tire and left an hour before the police showed up. By the time everything was taken care of it was 5 o'clock and so I decided that we should try to get a tree for another time....

Matt Runs a 1/2 marathon

Well, Matt has entered the realm of running again. Our Friend's the Hunts talked Matt into running in the Snow Canyon half marathon since Kristy couldn't run it so he ran in her place!

Funny thing, he hasn't ran a race since we lived in Florida and in this one he not only out-runs Patrice, who ran the St. George Marathon but he came in 10th place in Kristy's female age category of 19-24! Matt ended up coming in 68th place out of 400. Patrice ended up coming in an hour after Matt did. It took him 1 hour and 57 minutes. Not bad for a 40 year old who didn't train for it. What would he do if he trained?

I was there for first runner and beyond.

Here is Matt acknowledging that I saw him finish. He didn't know that I was coming to see him run, because Mckenna had things she had to do and so I got Devin to take her where she needed to be and surprised Matt by watching him finish.

Utah or BYU who is going to win?

In State Rivalries, I think that this is what Football is all about! Today, is the day of the State Rivalry between 2 very beloved Football teams! Who are you routing for?

In our house we will be watching two games, first the Utah vs. Byu game and the the other In State Rivalry that we care about FSU vs. Uof F!

But, let my house tell you who We are routing for and then let me show you the rivalry of our neighborhood (okay, the Hunts- who thought they had to broadcast who they were routing for since they knew who Matt was routing for!)

What the Hunts don't realize that Matt has a plan for the 1/2 hour before the game starts! He and the kids made signs to plant in their yard and also signs to put up at our friends the Gali's when we watch the game at their house. They have a huge movie screen in their basement that we watch the game on every year for the last 3 years! There are 5 families that route for the Cougars at the Gali's and then there are the 3 Ute fans that come and sometimes get bugged but other times scream their heads off afterthe win! Will we Ute's be able to Scream our heads off again this year? Only time will tell!

Turkey Dinner!

So, two weeks ago we were invited by the Hunt's house to share Thanksgiving Dinner with them, we have done alot with them; Horseback riding, baseball games, game nights, movies etc.. their middle group of kids are Devin and Kyler's age. Kristy their second oldest daughter is Mckenna's ballet teacher and the Eshelle Advisor (highschool drill team leader.) So we thought it would be fun to spend this special day with them. We expected to have the Moncrief's with us too, but they never came and we never got a hold of them!

We started out with the dinner at 2 p.m.

and then moved on to looking at all the Turkey Bowl pictures that I had taken and made copies of for the Hunts.

After the food, some of us rested,

played games or went on to have a sing-a-long! It was fun to be able to sing with people who enjoy singing since at my house the kids always dread our Sunday or Family night various sing-a-longs. We sang music from Phantom of the Opera, Danny Boy and Amazing Grace. Patrice is an amazing pianist, I mean like professional quality, but ended up putting her piano days on hold to have a family instead, and now has time to spend on her amazing talent and so it was really fun to listen and sing to her playing.

After all the food and fun, Devin stayed and watched Premonition and the rest of us went home to record the New spot about the Turkey Bowl!

A Turkey Bowl and fun times

Happy Thanksgiving!
Today we started out with our 7Th annual Turkey Bowl. Last year was ciaos, there were too many people so we only invited really close friends and with their families in town, we still ended up with 2 games going on at the same time.

The cool thing this year was our games were televised on KCSG. The sports anchor was doing a story on Turkey Bowls and he ended up coming to the High School were we were all playing. It was fun to have our close friends and the family have their 5 minutes of fame! We recorded it on our DVR and I am trying to figure out how to record it so that I can included it as a blog entry!

Everyone had so much fun and I took so many pictures that I have picked out a few of my favorite for everyone to enjoy!


Here are a few of the football players, we invited the Hunts, the Gublers, the Gali's, Andersons and the McCoys to come play with a handful of kids to even it out.


Matt had so much fun this is what he looks forward to more than the Turkey dinner, which we spent eating with the Hunts at their house!


Here are a few familiar faces; Natalie is Devin's twin and she is holding her sister Amelia. But the most familiar is our sweet Mckenna Marie, she played awhile and then thought that it was getting too crazy, so she sat with me and helped take pictures. Since she was hanging around, she got to talk to the camera man!



Here is Brook and Me watching the games, I took about 300 pictures, alot of them are awesome shots! Look at Kenna's awesome Leap! Amelia and her older sister Kristy (Kenna's ballet teacher,) were doing leaps and so Kenna decided that it was her turn to try!



Check out that Catch that Matt made! and here is the Camera Man, Pete!



Amelia, Mckenna and Kristy talk to Pete, the camera guy about the tradition of the Turkey Bowl, Pete also talked to Ethan Gali, Natalie and Cory McCoy, it was a really fun spot on the News.

If you are wondering about the High school sign and the tree it was a very cool thing. As the girls and I were driving to Albertsons, we noticed that this tree had icicles hanging on it and the grass had ice on it. I guess that this is natures way of showing you that we are starting a cold snap! It was really nice weather though while the game was going on and then started getting nippy as the day progressed!
Next up, Turkey Dinner!