Celebrating the Christmas season with young adults is fun. Christmas sweaters and socks are popular. Abilene has a wonderful light festival. The following pictures was our branch activity at the festival.

The Relief Society put a gingerbread house building activity together. Elder Brown won the prize for the most candy decorating his house. It got so heavy the walls fell in on themselves!

Candy, lights, and music have all been a part of our Christmas celebrating. But "Going Home" brings the greatest joy and happy anticipation to our YSA group as they look forward to traveling home to be with loved ones, or spending Christmas with family here in town. We are reminded how thankful we are for our own children and grandchildren. While we are away this Christmas, we hope our children will find joy in family; siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. What a glorious plan our Heavenly Father put in place to send his children to live in families. 

We had Thanksgiving with the YSA Branch Presidency families and some YSA members. It was our first time having smoked turkey and it was so good. It was a special treat for us because Devin and Shelby were troopers and drove from St. Johns to Abilene with their 6 children to enjoy the holiday with us. 

After Thanksgiving dinner we were able to see the Storybook statues Abilene has placed in different parts of the city. There is a Dr. Seuss Park and another park that has Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Bears, and more.

This week we juiced the "center pieces" from Thanksgiving. I am thankful I brought my Bosch and the juicer attachment. Trish Platt encouraged me to bring my Bosch and we've used it a lot - cookies, rolls, bread, and now juice.

Here's the whole crew, except Shelby who's taking the picture, in front of our apartment. It was cold that day but you'd never know it from the picture. Does Colin ever wear long pants?! Friday after Thanksgiving it rained and rained and rained. Luckily we had a museum and the YSA church building to play in. We were introduced to BYU TV shows our grandkids love, we had a little piano recital at the church and played foosball, ping pong, and Colin ran in circles kicking a little soccer ball. Esther got excited about "playing church" and after we came home, she set up her own "church" in our office, complete with stand (our 3 drawer file cabinet), microphone (a butter knife) and spot light (the lamp on my desk pointed at the file cabinet).

Our long skinny backyard got used for the first time by Lewis, Ezra, and Colin, playing ball with Grandpa Brown. We had races, threw the football, and watched the squirrels while visiting on our little patio. For being a cold, rainy weekend, we were able to have a lot of fun together. It was such a treat having Devin's family here with us.

We definitely had a THANKSGIVING WEEKEND!