Christmas dresses

I am sewing for little girls again!  And I just love it.  The green one is for Alice and the red ones are for Lucy and Larkin.  Christmas dresses.  I finished them - as well as bow ties for Noah and Quinn - in time to mail them on the 3rd and 6th of December.  (I tried to mail on the 5th but the post office was closed in honor of the funeral of George H. W. Bush)

When I wasn't madly sewing and packaging, it was a fairly normal week.  Steve went to physical therapy twice.  We welcomed 14 new missionaries to the Arizona Phoenix Mission on Tuesday, the 4th.  That is always a crazy busy time.  And it brings a lot of bike work for Steve - taking bikes to Golden Spoke for disassembling and packing and then taking them to Fed Ex for shipment back home.  

I FINALLY got my cello bow back from repair.  I took it in over two months ago for a broken frog.  Thankfully, I have a cheap, back-up bow I was able to use.  I guess the time it took was worth it, though, because it looks perfectly new.  Just in time for upcoming performances.  Steve and I drove up to Payson on Sunday so my sister Juli and I could play our "O Come O Come Emmanuel" piano/cello duet for her ward and for another Payson ward.  I had a full Messiah rehearsal later that night.  This week are two Messiah performances and two more "O Come O Come" performances this Sunday.  

Our ward Christmas party was Saturday night - a nice affair - and then we went to a holiday open house held by Kathleen Hoopes, the secretary in the Family Services office across the hall from the mission office.  She collects nativities and she has a very impressive and beautiful collection from all over the world.  Steve went a little nuts :)

One BIG bit of news is a special all-mission conference we had Saturday morning with Elder Gerrit Gong.   I got to put together a missionary choir and it was so great.  So many elders and sisters wanted to sing and I had two elders on violin obligato.  I just loved it.

Just a couple of fun photos.  The first is our neighbor, Janet Wells, with Mochi, her Westie on our front driveway.  The second is Steve on one of our early morning walks around Anthem.