Christmas Trees Galore

Another week has flown by. I can't believe that it's December already, it seems like we just celebrated Halloween and fall was just getting started and now we're getting into winter. Tis the season of Christmas parties, we've already had two and have another two coming up this week. This week the orthodontist that our practice refers to almost exclusively took us all out for dinner at the Outback, everyone except the wives, although he did encourage us all to order a dessert and bring it back to our wives. Next we had our dinner party at our boss' house with just the dentist in the group. It was a lot of fun, his wife Ivy must have been slaving over the stove all day because she made a huge meal. Everything tasted great and we were in great company. There are ten dentist in the group right now, three of them were out of town this past weekend at C.E. courses. Dr. Tornow got us all a gift. He got everybody a nicely framed picture of the temple we were sealed in with our name and wedding date on it. It is really cool. We had that party on Friday night, we had gotten a babysitter from the ward, it was the first time she had come to our house to watch the kids, the kids were excited and so were we. Well Dayna wasn't feeling the greatest and after a little while we got a call from the babysitter, Dayna was throwing up. There is a strange bug going around, I think Diego was one of the first to get it that we know of. The kids just start throwing up for awhile and then the next day they are fine. Dayna had a rough evening but she didn't throw up at all during the night and the next morning she was fine other than being pretty tired. Tis the season for weird bugs. Janelle had something similiar a few weeks ago, it comes and goes so quick that you want to blame it on food poisoning but there would be  alot of people with food poisoning out there if that was the case

We decorated the tree on Monday night, that was a lot of fun. All the kids got into it. Of course we kind of had to spread the ornaments around after they were done.

 Dax had his spot that he liked to cram every ornament into.

 Dayna had a little more reach, and Alana would set them on a branch and walk away with her hands in the air with excitement

 and Alana would set them on a branch and walk away with her hands in the air with excitement

 Yesterday we took the kids to a Tree festival, people decorate trees and then donate them to the festival and people buy raffle tickets and place them in buckets in front of the trees they want, then there is a big drawing and the trees are given out. I guess they open it up one night before the festival to give people the chance to buy the trees, some of the trees had sold for $1,500. It was pretty crazy. The trees would be decorated with lots of things from cash, gift cards, toys, to trees with a theme, like baseball or Coca Cola.

 Anyway, the kids got some raffle tickets, Dayna liked the Fancy Nancy tree and the Princess Frog and Art trees. Who knows what Dax liked he was pretty random in his selections. But in the end they placed all of their tickets in buckets for the trees they liked. We waited for the call later that afternoon, but it never came. They had fun even though they didn't win a big fancy tree.

We found out this week that BYU will be playing in the the New Mexico bowl, we are looking into getting tickets through a friend from dental school. It would be a fun weekend, probably pretty cold but it would be fun. It is on the 18th in Albuquerque if anybody is interested. Last night we took the kids to see the Luminarias at the San Juan College. They are basically paper lunch sacks with sand in the bottom and a candle in them. They arrange them in large lines and patterns all over the campus. Dayna's class took a field trip to the college to help make them. As we drove through the campus we were saying to Dayna that it was pretty cool that she helped make the luminarias, and she said actually I didn't make all of them there were other kids there helping out too. There were literally thousands and thousands of the luminarias and we never thought she made all of them by herself, but she wanted to make sure not to take credit for her peers hard work. Well that wraps it up for the NM Dicksons this week. We hope everyone is enjoying the Christmas season. It is a great time of the year. A time where the words Santa is watching strikes fear into your young kids and straightens out whining cries and brawling siblings. It is a great time to remember our Savior and everything he has done for us. We love and appreciate each of you and wish you all good health and high spirits.