Christmas Parlor Games

Here are some fun parlor games published by Carma Wadley in the Deseret News. Great for when everyone gets together!

There are writing games, a reindeer word scramble, a drawing game, and many more!

Joy to Everyone this Christmas

Here's a great little slideshow created by the BYU Department of Fine Arts:

Vocal artists are Jenny Jordan Frogley and David Osmond.

This is found at http://www.joytoeveryone.com and the movie and/or soundtracks can also be downloaded at http://www.joytoeveryone.com/en/download.htm

Cool toys...

When I was a kid one of our favorite toys were the two Nerf Men we got for Christmas one year. We threw them all over the house. They were probably confiscated to prevent damage because I don't remember much more of them. Maybe they were so much fun we didn't do our chores. Or maybe my dad made good on his threat that he'd "cut it in half if you throw it in the house."

Anyway, I read an article on Monday in the Deseret News about toys. It highlighted a blog, The Toy Snob, kept by Nicole Bradley that reviews creative, aesthetic, classic-type toys. I took a peek and found a toy that I almost bought for my nephews last year- the Automoblox cars:
You can drive one of these for just $32 plus shipping from a great on-line game and toy store, Fat Brain Toys. They have great deals on pretty unique games and toys. The article also talked about the purpose of toys. I remember that a lot of our play as children was invented and much of it took place outside. I remember spending hours driving our Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars around a dirt hill with my brothers and friends.

These Automoblox cars come apart and even come in smaller versions ($10) and in sets of three for $26. Pretty cool.

The mini-cars:

I had better get married and have a kid so I can get some of these... for the kids, of course.

White Elephants

Thought I'd share some funny things from Christmas last year, courtesy of Andrew, my brother. He's a pretty good writer, as are some of my other siblings. I'll throw in a few pictures that he and I took. To explain, we had a white elephant exchange- in part because my oldest brother, Spencer, had the funny item of temporarily stealing several old, unused items with which the family was very familiar, or in some cases, unfamiliar- and wrapping them up as gifts.

The "gifts?" Well, they started with some items from Dad's "office." A little bust of Bach, a book on how to raise boys and solve the Rubik's cube. From there it went to a giant pair of over-sized shears and Dad's old broken .22 rifle. Even better we retrieved from the back porch the "bag balm" from our dairy cow days. It was still in the same "cubby" where it had sat for years. I couldn't believe it when I looked- and there it was! Apparently the grand prize was an old trout that Nathan, Kimball, or Dad had caught and put in the freezer so many years ago that I think that it was actually freeze-dried and weighed only a fraction of what it should have weighed.


Andrew's response to Kimball's e-mail below (another brother):

Family,
I'll be their both nights... I think singing from one door to another would be sufficient for all to feel a bit of the Spirit. I'm down with white elephants (something cheap or homemade) ...and no frozen rainbow trout.

Later,
Kimball Clark

Andrew's response:
It wasn't frozen Kimball, it was a patented and time-honored method of freeze-drying.

I looked it up on the internet:

"This aging and freezing process begins in the highland ponds of Farmington, Utah in North America and can only be duplicated with years of patience and experience as the free-range, fresh water trout is hooked, gutted –or not– and wrecklessly glazed with a fine layer of Reynolds aluminum or plastic by native fisherman ensuring proper 'airination'.
The delicacy then begins the age-old 'freezage' (freez-ahhhge) process which can take well up to 20 years. During this time-honored process, the trout, bovine tounge or occasional raccoon produces a flavor that cannot be replicated in any other way.
Moved randomly from shelf several times each decade, the delicacies are enveloped, airinated and imbued by quarts of turkey juices with bits of celery, bottles of bacon greases and bags of yeast infusing and enhancing the original meat flavors with our own unique recipe that can only be replicated by sucking on an old ice tray or licking the frozen juices that accumulate over the years in the bottom of your freezer.
The prized meat delicacies are then gifted and received with jubilant squeals of delight from the benefactor and the envious eyes of covetousness of all others as gifts are exchanged with loved ones gathered during frigid holiday months."