Festival of Trees Week.

The big day arrived, set up day for Festival of Trees.  This is the dedication photo on the table, by the chair that Dad repaired, and I painted.  Yep!

Here's a close up of the tree.  We added the Bs to the tree when we decided to dedicate it in Ben's memory.

Here I am with the We Can girls.

Dad loved it when he ran into Ken Macey. You know how Dad loves a reunion.

These gals did their first tree for festival, dedicating it to  co-worker.  I know the two on the right, Laurie is a dealer at Treasures, and Tara lives up the street from me, on 200 North.

All the We-Can ladies and Dad met up after we were done at Olive Garden, then we stopped at a few DIs on our way south.

Look who we ran into at the Provo DI.  We had plans to go to the Stevenson's soft opening for their restaurant, Rui was on her way there too.

Here we are with Phil, Rui's dad, at K's Kitchen.  We had a delicious veggie meal.

Yum!

 On Tuesday Dad and I started wondering how many times we've done trees for festival, so I got out my Christmas journals and took pictures of them.  We also did two other trees, doing double duty two years, so we've done trees 18 years, 91-02, then 11-15 and this year, 18. for a total 18 years, and 20 trees.

 Here they are, not all great photos, but its fun to see them together.

Dad got the tree set up that day.

Here it is, we really simplified it, leaving off about half the ornaments.

 That night we were off to bid night.  Our tree sold in the first segment, for $1,950. I loved this Harry Potter wreath.

We were outbid on this Amish, hand quilted quilt.  After that we went over to to where you could buy quilts, and got one there instead.

Dad ran into Darren Peirce, for more reunion chat.

 Brady and Becca bought a tree for their family.

This shot shows the color better.

On Wednesday I worked, and got off early to meet most of my Utah kids at the Festival of Trees ...

Hanna and Eva

Becca and Reagan.

At the end of evening we watched the Timpanogos Bell Ringers, with Paige Coleman and her sister Amy, from our ward in Salt Lake, that was a lot of fun.

On Thursday I worked again, and got off early again, to go to the Hundreddollarshow at the Springville museum of art. This is a screen shot of their post, of the people in line ... I got there at 4:10 and was number 17 in line ... the show started at 6:30, I may or may not have let a few people in line with me ....

Its almost time for the sale to start.

These are some of the art pieces bought by members of our family, except the one in the middle, which was drawn by the same artist as the painting in the upper right hand corner. It was done by a missionary friend in the MTC for Brittney... small world, eh?

Here I am with the artist of my painting,

Here is Titan with the artist who did his drawing.

Then it was off to the Hale Center Theater to see A Christmas Carol with Hannah and Trevor's family.

 While digging out the Christmas stuff, I had found the brown transferware dishes.  So on Friday I moved china around to make room for it in the dining room china cabinet.

 I put up this fresh garland that day as well.

 At four I met with these fine folks at the church to kick off a year of attending all the temples in Utah. They are shown at the Payson Temple.

Here's everyone after doing baptisms for the dead at the temple, back at the church for a kick off fireside and donuts.

Early on Saturday they all went to the Provo City Center temple, but I was busy loading up the van to take props to Becca's customer event ....

 Saturday was  Zach's birthday, so we dropped by and dropped off his gift, even though we had to miss his party later.  We did hear that Davin and Bri were able to bring their kids to the party.  Yeah.

 We hauled our parlor chairs to Becca's office, along with some Christmas trees for decor.

Her event was Pictures with Santa, and included activities and donuts.

Here's Becca with her in-laws, Mac was pretty sleepy, isn't that a cute posture?

Dad and I had to take off to attend the Finlandia Foundation's annual lunch.  It was great to meet new people and talk about Finland.  Of course the salmon soup was pretty nice as well.

I dropped Dad off at home to finish painting the guest bedroom window he had installed on Friday, we are so loving the looks.  I headed to Springville to shop DI, then to Spanish to attend Confetti Antique's Christmas open house.

 Next I took Nenna her birthday gift, 

 This furry kitty sweater and tutu skirt were part of her gift.  Then I took the kids, as we were to watch them over night.

 We stopped by the house to get Dad and then went to the Payson Creche Festival.

 Elias was more interested in watching the performers, than the creches.  But even that got boring, I guess.

 But we all enjoyed the brass ensemble.

On the way home we stopped by our neighbor's super decorated house.  When we got home there was a man doing metal detecting out on the main street park strip.  He asked to do the yard, and we said sure.  He was using a head lamp, and Elias was fascinated. We ran in and out of the house washing off his finds, including a huge nail, a couple of metal peices off things, about 8 pennies, and two dimes.

 We chatted later and found out that he had worked with Jack Mason at BYU, and that he and his wife are Danish, having lived here for some 8 years, but his wife's best friend in Denmark is Susanne Perkins, Dad's cousin Mark's ex-wife.  You may recall that Mark was drowned in a Coast Guard accident not long after their divorce.  We have been friends with her on face book for some years now, and even had her son here for dinner before our mission.

We even managed to get our plates hung before heading to bed.

Davin came by early to pick up the kids, and we headed over to our special stake conference, where we got to hear from Elder Christopherson.  Here is one of the Young Women in our ward, Nadia Evans, shaking hands with him.  It was a great meeting.  We took it easy the rest of the day.