Merry Christmas 2013

Christmas Nativities

Woo-hoo! It's Christmas time! It's basically everyone's favorite time of the year! I love Christmas and everything about it. The fact that everyone is a little bit nicer, a little bit more giving, and a little bit more focused on Christ. I love the meaning, the music, the family, the friends, the food and all of the activities surrounding this holiday.

Normally, Mike and I like to do something every day in December; it's our "Doin' December Daily" month. We don't make it a busy month; we just do at least one Christmas thing a day, even if it's lay in bed and watch a Christmas movie or drink a special Christmas drink. This year though, we aren't doing too much that involves us leaving our home. We have a wee little one who we don't want catching any illnesses, so we are being overprotective, but it's okay - the doctor's told us to be.

So, Saturday night, we set up our nativities! For the love! I LOVE NATIVITIES. Specifically nativities from places I have visited, nativities from around the world. I haven't been able to get one from every country that I have visited, because let's face it, sometimes it is impossible to find a nativity to purchase, especially in summer months, heck, it was hard enough finding one in December in Russia. But alas, I have a few.

I have never been able to display them before, but since we have a bit more room this year, we decided we should bring them out. I was excited to show them off for the first time, hence the blog post :). Without further adieu - my nativities from around the world!

Uganda Nativity:

Kenya Nativity:

Russia Nativity:

Bahama's Nativity:

Cozumel Nativity:

Mexico City Nativity:

Dominican Republic Nativity:

and because we needed one more nativity to fill our shelves - this is a nativity that I made back at a church youth activity - so it's a made in the USA "United States Nativity":

Our most recent addition comes from Italy; but we purchased it in Leavenworth, Washington with the dream that one day we will go to Italy, and we won't have to worry about finding an Italian nativity.

We loved it because it has a "Nativity Stories" book that tells the story of each of the figurines - from Baby Jesus and each angel to the stray dog that roamed Bethlehem. Some of them include scripture, but others just let the imagination run wild, as if who would we have been like had we been alive back then :). Mike and I decided it would be fun to read a story each night leading up to Christmas so we got the book too (obviously).

And that is the start of my 'one-day-will-be-huge-around-the-world-nativity-collection' :)

Riverwoods Chalk Art Festival

Back in June (June 15 to be exact) Orem City celebrated Summerfest. There was a carnival, a pancake breakfast, a parade, and fireworks. While at the parade, we got a flyer for the Riverwoods Chalk Art Festival. I immediately put it on our calendar because I have always wanted to go to a Chalk Art Festival. Fast forward to this past week and it was raining so much! I was worried that they were going to cancel the festival but they did not! The poor artists just had to cover up their paintings with plastic and taped edges during the rain storms. We saw where some of the art had been washed away from the rain; it was sad.

We walked around on Friday night and saw some of the artists working on their artwork, and then we walked around again on Saturday to see the final products. I was surprised at how many artists didn't start until the day of! They were able to start and finish all in the one day! It was amazing and their artwork was still incredible! Everyone was so talented; literally everyone. Here are some of the pics I snapped (each artist had one parking stall - but a few 'featured' artists had 2 parking stalls right next to each other - so just keep in mind, their canvas was an ordinary, every day parking lot!):

It was an awesome weekend, I am glad that the show still went on and that we were able to enjoy it!

the Flight of the Butterflies

Yesterday I was able to relive one of the most memorable things I have witnessed in my life: the flight of the butterflies.

I have always referred to it as the Monarch Migration because that's really what it is. Back in 2010, when my mom and I took the trip to Mexico City to see them, I blogged about it here: (the Monarch Migration).

(That clump of leaves in the photo above is actually butterflies, not leaves.)

Yesterday I felt like I was there again.

Mike and I went to the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake to see a couple of movies. We watched the Rocky Mountain Express and the Flight of the Butterflies. Both were great films, but when I watched the Flight of the Butterflies, I felt like I was having déjà vu! I loved that Mike was able to watch the film, and perhaps feel a little bit of what it was like to be there in real life, it may be the closest he ever gets, but it felt very accurate.

I am blogging about it because I think everyone should go watch the film! Mike said that it was one of the best 3-D movies he had ever seen! This is the trailer for it:



Seriously soooooo good! I highly, highly recommend it!

Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point

Mike and I got to visit the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi. It was pretty interesting and fun. They had a lot of areas that would have been a blast if we had a kid, but since it was just the two of us, we skipped those parts and looked at the dinosaur skeletons.

We figured that the dinosaur skeletons that they kept out in the open were just replicas but that the skeletons behind glass must've been real. Real or not, it's always fun to see life-size dinosaur replica's and think of what it must have been like back in day when they roamed the Earth.

Mike in the middle of a Tyrannosaurus Rex (T-Rex) brawl:

Me by the Triceratops (it doesn't really look that huge now does it?):

 Mike going head to head with the Triceratops (okay, skull to skull, it's lots bigger):

My favorite part of the dinosaur museum was the eggs! Maybe I am all about babies right now, maybe it was just really interesting, either way, I loved seeing all the different shapes and sizes of the dinosaur eggs.

Mike between the Aepyornis Maximus (Elephant Bird) and its egg. Can you believe that these went extinct in 1700 A.D.? Just a few hundred years more and we could have witnessed them roaming the Earth! Though a 10 foot, 1,000 pound bird could reek major havoc I suppose, it just would have been neat to see. 

We had lots of fun, I can't wait to go back one day but to be able to take our own little girl to enjoy all the exhibits set up just for kids!