Temple Square

Eveyone knows when you're in Utah for the holiday's, you have to stop at Temple Square to see the lights.

We tried to do this last year, when we didn't live here, and went on a weekend. WRONG CHOICE!  This year, we went on a not so busy weeknight.  Bundle up, it's cold!  But the lights are so awesome to see!  Grandma and Grandpa Gwilliam went with us too!  We had a great time!

We also went to the Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert!  We were lucky enough to get some tickets, since it's done on a lottery and hundreds of thousands apply!  It was such a great concert!

These are all made out of candy are in the Macy's department store windows.  They are so well done!

SNOW!

SNOW!  Jacob and Hannah had been waiting so long for it! We had one pretty big snow storm in early December and it was more snow in one storm than Utah had all year last year.

We had several pretty good storms in December and January as well.

This is looking out our front door

Getting ready to leave for work

Heading out to work

This is the freeway!  6 lanes normally!  The plows weren't able to keep up too well.

This was another day, obviously, but I get a view of Mt. Timp each day when I go to work.  This was just after a storm and the air is so clear!

This is Y mountain - I see it from my office each day.

One thing in Utah, is they use salt on the roads instead of sand, so the cars get really really dirty and salty!  YUK!

Here's another storm just hitting us one night.

Here's our house!

Jacob's free (broken) snow blower he got off craigslist and fixed it!  He loved using it!

One morning going to work, the snow in Provo was very fluffy and it was floating on all the tree limbs. It looked very pretty!

I had to go to main campus this day and decided to walk it was so pretty.

This was on a clear day heading into town with Mt. Timp in the background.

Live Nativity

Another first for us....Alpine has an annual Living Nativity, and it's so popular, they had to start selling tickets (for $1) to help control the crowds.  THOUSANDS come for the week and half or so they do it, and they put the tickets up for sale in October.  They sell out within a few days.  

We didn't really know what to expect, but it was very awesome.  Very involved and so many displays as you walk through Bethlehem,merchants, the inn where is no room, live camels and other animals, and finally the barn where the baby Jesus is.  

The Spirit was very strong in the barn where this scene was.  The baby was real, and it was so quiet and peaceful.  We wanted to just stay in there for a long time.

We will definitely be adding this to our annual Christmas events too!

Christmas Fireworks

Who knew there was a firework factory near Eagle Mountain, about 15 minutes away in Cedar Fort?  We did!  And they have an annual Christmas firework show!  

This was the first time we went....we weren't expecting much, as it's a pretty small factory, but it was a good show!  It was long and the fireworks were good!  We are definitely making this one of our annual traditions!

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This made it look like a rocket going up. It lit up the entire sky!

There were fire pits around to stay warm. They also had free hot chocolate and cookies!

Then they lit "THE PIT". This is where they throw all the fireworks that didn't get made properly.  Once there is a big pile, they light the whole pile up at once!