Dear Family,
We hope you are all having a great Christmas Season. It seems like we just had Christmas, and here it is again. Why is it that when you are little Christmas can't get here soon enough, and then when you are older it seems like it comes quicker and quicker every year. Does that make me old?
November was a good month for us. We were excited to have Grandma Jones come and stay with us for a week. She was great help to Jim. They got a lot of problem solving done and did a lot of extracting. Mary was, as always, was glad to see her. She sure loves her grandparents.
We have sold some honey. Jim sold 62 barrels worth of honey to Barkmans and then has been selling buckets and tubs of honey as well. We are thankful that the price of honey has gone back up a little bit. We are also thankful for all of those people who love to eat honey. Jim has wrapped up the extracting part of the business for the year. He is currently moving the bees and getting them ready to load up and take to Bakersfield this year. We are a little bit nervous about leaving them unsecured in Bakersfield but at least the diesels will get to go straight through Vegas and will not have to deal with the "Spaghetti Bowl." It looks like the bees will be taking up residence in California some time next week. Then he will have to make a couple of trips down there before Christmas to check on them and feed them.
Mary has become Lightening McQueen this past month--she is no longer Pocahontas. Jim told her the other day that maybe she should be Sally because Sally was a girl car and McQueen was a boy car. She gave him kind of a blank look. I told him that maybe you had to older than 2 to discern a boy car from a girl car. Mary has quite a sense of humor. She has begun teasing me about rice pudding. Whenever things get a little dull for her, she will come up to me and say, "Rice pudding, Mom!" I tell her "yuck" and she laughs and follows me around the house saying, "Rice pudding!" She gets the same reaction from her Dad. We tell her that her Grandmas and Grandpas love it. She thinks she loves it too, but she has never had it. The other day she asked me to make her some. I refused of course. I told her that I never wanted my house to smell like that, but she was more than welcome to have her Grandparents make it for her. One of Mary's highlights this past month was getting to see Santa Clause. We primed her by telling her that he would ask her what she wanted for Christmas. I said, "So what are you going to tell Santa that you want for Christmas?" She thought for a second and said, "Something." And so she did. She is going to be hard to please this Christmas isn't she?
Christene is six months old. She has begun babbling very loudly--even during Relief Society. She is getting stronger and we are looking forward to her crawling. We believe that she is getting some teeth because she chews on everything. She sure is a happy baby! We love her and her sister!
We had a snowstorm the other day and went out and made a snowman. We had to use a bucket to pack the snow in because it was too powdery to make a real snowman. Mary has wanted to make a snowman since August when she saw the pictures of the snowmen we made last year. She got her wish. She played in the snow while Christene slept in her stroller all bundled up like they do in Denmark. Christene even had her Danish hat on that Grandma and Grandpa T. bought on their trip over there a few years ago. She sure had a red nose when she woke up.
We love you all and hope that you have a great Christmas. We are thankful for the real meaning of Christmas.
Love,
The Nephites
