4th Memory of Christmas...A visit to This is the Place Monument

On Thursday night John's sister and her family came to stay with us. We thought it would be fun to take the kids to This is the Place. We double layed the kids in their pants, socks, shirts, hots, and gloves. Beth had the best idea ever...to get the hand and toe warmers. That ended up being a life saver. It kept everyones hands and toes nice and toasty. We left the twins home with a babysitter because we knew they would only be miserable in the cold. This was so much fun for the whole family. We loved it and will continue to visit every Christmas.

The pioneer children would write their letters to Santa Claus. Instead of mailing letters to him, they would place them in the fire and the letter would magicly be sent to him. The girls weren't too sure at first about burning thier letters they just wrote but soon decide to be like the pioneer children.

The elf village was very cute. It was fun to see all of the little houses with elves doing Holiday activites.As soon as we enterd the doors into the dance hall, we were invited to come learn the Charleston Dance. John and Brilynn were partners and Maycie and I were parterns. The girls loved learning the new dance and their favorite part was being able to stomp their feet and clap their hands!!!They do a wonderful job of creating a pioneer atmosphere.

In two of the buildings they had crafts for the kids including, an advent calander, a gingerbread necklace, an ornament, a beeswax candle, a woven basket, a gingerbread sticker scene, and a wreath ornament. We had to stop by the ZCMI store and buy some of their penny candy (and no, it wasn't a penny it was 10 cents a piece)At the printing press they showed the kids how the first Christmas Cards were made. They each got to bring home a replica of the card.At Brigham Youngs home they had live reindeer and Father Christmas. Father Christmas was very quite and really didn't say much to the kids. Much different than the Santa Claus that we see at the mall. We don't have a picture though because we didn't pay the $5.00They also had a live Nativity. Before we walked through they asked us to please remain very reverent, so I didn't feel comfortable taking a picture. This morning John asked Maycie what her favorite part of last night was. She said that it was seeing baby Jesus in the manger. She was so sweet when she said, "It almost made me cry when I saw Joseph looking at baby Jesus."

We had such a fun time together as a family, we missed the twins but at the same time it was really fun to be able to have one on one time with Brilynn and Maycie.