december

Against my better judgment, I'm going to try to cram all of December up until now into one blog post.  Reason being is that I'm stuck in the very back of my car, as we speak, on our way home from the Las Vegas bowl...which we won't really talk about.  The Utes had a very poor showing, but that's for later.  

The month started off with my good friend, Nan, who's dog, Mimzy, had 9 puppies.  I couldn't wait to take the boys over to see them, but I also knew what was coming..."Moooooom, can we pleeeeeeease get a puppy??"  I didn't cave in, but they were sure cute.  Then Nan had me come over to take pictures of them for her flyer that she is putting up around town.  It was a fun project, and something that I would like to perhaps get in to more.  

Next were the boys' Christmas concerts at school.  Jake was finally old enough to be in his own concert. It was cute how all week long Ben was so excited for Jake saying, "Can you believe it Jake?  You are finally going to have your own Christmas concert!!"

Jake is on the top row, in the middle

all of the first graders

Ben's concert the next day:  all the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders, and Mrs. Reinhard, 

getting ready to sing "Everlasting Fruitcake," Ben's fave song this year.

Ben is on second row from the top, in the middle

Also on that last day of school, we celebrated Jake's teacher's (Miss Neal) b-day, her dog's, Perry Mason, b-day, Christmas, and we sadly said good-bye to one of Jake's classmates, Anders, who is moving.  Whew, it was one packed day!!

Last Saturday was the annual Mortenson family Christmas party.  Santa and his elf were able to make it.

Gma Train's tree is always a work of art

And there was the traditional die-cast cars given to each grandchild.  Even the girl's love 'em.

Ben wanted his own photo shoot with the cars the boys got this year

And finally we are caught up to the past couple of days.  Ben and Jake were already out of school, but we had to pull Will out a couple days early to go to Las Vegas to see Utah play Boise State in the Las Vegas Bowl.  We stayed at the MGM Grand...you know, the big green hotel with the gold lions. :)

Fortunately we left late enough in the day to miss the big storm that went through 

central Utah and the traffic jam that went with it.  

It was so wet the next day, still raining off and on, that we were looking for some excitement indoors, and what better place than GameWorks?!  It brought back memories of back in the day when Daren and I used to go there in California and play games.  

The boys liked this car game, mostly because it looked like a Delorean (Back to the Future)

sloshing through Las Vegas...

...to see the real lions in our hotel...


...and then on to the game!  We were well prepared for cold weather, but it wasn't bad.  The best part about the whole night was no rain, amazingly enough!!

As we were walking up to the stadium the Air Force jets were doing a fly-over for the game, and it looked awesome with the fire coming out the back of the jets.  Jake was by far the most excited and enthusiastic child to be there.  To say the other two didn't want to be there would be an understatement, but they survived. 

Ben read a book the whole time

Us and Daren's brother, Dakon, who is very good at child crowd-control!!

At half-time we hunted down Jake's friend, Nathan.  They were so excited to see each other outside of the neighborhood.

The game was a huge disappointment.  Boise State was pretty great, and we got our tushies spanked 26-3.  Even though we ended the season 10-3, it was a huge let-down at the end with losing 3 of our last 5 games.  But, we're headed off to be part of the Pac 12 next year, and there will always be bitter, as well as the sweet, and we have had a pretty sweet ride in the last few years.  

We had to get a picture of our hallway at our hotel, which looked like a mirror at the back, 

but it just went on forever and ever!

Some sights around town this morning, including the sun!

Jake was the most enthusiastic of all the boys at the game, so he got to choose where we ate breakfast today.  That was a no-brainer for him...ihop!

Goodbye Las Vegas!!  Thanks for pretty good times!  Now I have to get home and finish up all the preparations for Christmas.  I might even brave the mall and take the boys to see Santa.  We might camp-out for it early in the morning, because Julie said there was a huge long line.  Hmmm...Merry Christmas everyone!!