Senior Couples' Christmas Dinner

Sunday evening we drove up to Montreal to the Mission Home for the Senior Couples' Christmas dinner and white elephant gift exchange. Sister Cannon always sets a gorgeous table - even with paper plates!!

After dinner President Cannon started the white elephant gift exchange and of course, Sister Cannon started the picture taking!   (on couch: S.Conway, E&S Allen, E.Bendio)

(below: from left: E&S Bendio, S.Cannon, E.Jarvis, S. Arhets)

We had so many there. This is the first time we've ever had this many senior couples. We have 11 couples now - so there is 22 of us... The Howards were not there on this night.
below from left: E. Mahaffey, S.Jarvis, E&S Cannon Sr., E.Cheney

From the gift exchange I ended up with a can of maple syrup (which was a highly sought after item) and E.Mahaffey ended up with a Penguin-decorated roll of duct tape (which must NOT have been so highly sought after since he ended up leaving it there!...he says by accident...hmmmmm)
We had made a Christmas card for both this dinner and for the people in our Institute classes.  Here is the one from the Institute class - they were the same except for the writing.

Elder and Sister Jarvis had just arrived that evening!  They are the parents of our Stake President in
Canada - President Eric Jarvis.  The Jarvis' are from western Canada...Edmonton, maybe?

We always have such a great time when we get together as senior couples!

Back: Pres. Cannon, Elders Allen, Bendio, Saintonge, Arhets, Cheney, Mahaffey, Jarvis, Cannon Sr,
                  and Conway.
Middle:Sisters Cheney, Bendio, Saintonge, Arhets, Allen and Cannon.
Front:  Sister Cannon Sr., Conway, Mahaffey, and Jarvis.              (Howards were absent)                                                                                                                                                                                          

Elders for Christmas

Our Hawkesbury elders spent this weekend with us at our apt. (normally they come every other weekend). We were afraid, though, that since they came this weekend, we wouldn't get to see them before Christmas - so we gave them their presents early. We put up their stockings with ours:  Elder Boone Smith on left from Lehi, UT (we have to use first names because there are 4 other Elder Smith's and 2 of them also have the first inital of "B"_)  and E. Ballard from Arizona.

For their presents we bought each of them their favorite food that they can't buy here in Canada. Since we go over to the states & shop in Walmart, we could get them the foods they love. Here is Elder
Smith opening his.......                                                      and Elder Ballard reacting to his.....

                        

And here they are with their treasures: E.Smith with American Cheese slices and E. Ballard with "POST" Raisin Bran... the only kind he likes! ha!

It's the little things, eh?

Ward Christmas Party

Elder Mahaffey and I were put in charge of the Cornwall Ward's Christmas Party this year.  We had a big Creche Festival with people showing about 25 Nativity Sets.

There were hand puppet ones:

And wooden ones:

Clay and ceramic ones:  (We bought the top ceramic one in Quebec )

paper cutout and stained glass ones:

and even needlepointed and German ones:

These tables were set up for all the desserts that we asked everyone to bring:  (wouldn't you know I'd get a picture of the EMPTY tables, but not one with the TONS of desserts that came!)

There was a giving tree:

People in the ward had taken a glittery stocking from under the tree all during the month before and then brought it this night with a gift card attached to the back and put them into the stockings on the wall.
We ended up getting more than $700 in cards to help the people in the ward.

Then we had a beautiful program.  The Primary sang in costume  (but, since I was backstage directing
traffic and doing last-minute repairs on costumes, no picture!)  The Cornwall ward choir sang:
   (Front: Scott McIntyre, Muriel Bower, Dianne McIntyre, Gaile Hynes, Judy Willard, Branchaud              daughter, Lydianne Lupien, Marlene Lupien
    Back:  E. Mahaffey, Tim Willard, Larry Spinella, Barbara Bilodeau-behind Gaile, Sam Bilodeau,
        Sherry Svenson-behind the Branchaud girl, S.Mahaffey  )  pianist & director: Felicity Svendson

several people played musical solos and then E.Mahaffey showed a wonderful slide show he had done with narration depicting Christmas in Jerusalem and Christmas in Zarahemla.  Then we showed the DVD of the Christmas Story - which had been shown at the First Presidency Fireside last year. It was so wonderful!  To end, Sam Bilodeau sang O Holy Night in his beautiful baritone voice! Then we ate our way through 3 long tables - stuffed full with desserts.  Our neighbors George & Jean Kelly came with us and commented how touched they were and said they had really felt something here. The ward, as always, was so wonderful in making them feel welcome.  It turns out this way every time we bring investigators.  They make it wonderful to be a missionary!  The evening turned out wonderfully!

Photo Shoot

Today ended up being a beautiful day outsider with the little bit of snow having fallen last night.
So, we took advantage of the only snow we've had and decided to go over to the Merpaws and use their cute sled for our Christmas Card picture this year!  We can't decide between:

But, in the end, we thought the one with us wearing all the winter gear looked more CANADIAN.... and we had, after all wanted the sled in the picture... so we opted for number 2.
Then we had the Merpaws get in:

And, then... all four of us:

Connie & Sheila Merpaw have become such great friends and we have grown to love them so much.
I'm going to make this photo into an ornament for them and give it to them for Christmas! At least they will remember us ONCE a year!  ha !  Of course, no photo shoot would be complete without our photographer getting into the picture and hamming it up:

Brother Gerry Mazerolle was good enough to come & be our photographer. He is a counselor in the Bishopric and such a good man.  So... now we're set with the Christmas card picture... now to write the rhyming newsletter and then address them all.... I love this time of year!

Christmas Plates

We worked most of the day making our gift plates for the missionaries in our district:

The reindeer cupcakes were so much fun and turned out so cute, that I gave the idea to Sister Howard for the Christmas Conference Luncheon.  Two days later at our District Study we gave the plates and a
Canadian "Toque"  (pronounced Too-k) :

Front: E.Boone Smith, E. Mortensen, E. Neff - DL, and me.  

Back: E.Ballard, Freeze, E. Randy Wright, and E.Mahaffey.  Of course, they wanted to take a crazy picture too:

These are some wonderful Elders!  We have loved being in the District with them.

Thanksgiving

This year we told our children that we didn't want or need anything for Christmas. Last year as we were at the Mission Home, we all worked on packages for the missionaries who would not receive any presents or anything from home for Christmas.  I'm sure each mission has missionaries who are so far away or whose parents are not financially able to send anything - so they get nothing.  This year we asked our children to take the money they would have spent on us and do something for either the missionaries in their own area, or for our missionaries who would not receive anything. They all responded wonderfully!  We especially wanted for our children and grandchildren to have the missionary experience of serving others.  Layne and Aaron and family sent us money, which we added to our money and bought ten $20.00 Walmart Gift cards and ten $10.00 Subway gift cards. This worked out well, since the gift cards purchased in the USA do not work in Canada.

(I forgot to take a picture, so this was taken  by Sister Cannon with her phone... kind of blurry... and she added a thank you note.  Then Misty and Shelli bought a TON of stuff and mailed it to the US Post office box we use:

Finally, Chad & family and Lindsay and family went to Brooke's home for Thanksgiving. They used one day to put together lots of stockings for the missionaries. They went to the dollar store and purchased many things to put into the stockings. Then they put the piles around the family room and each child got to fill one stocking:

All then kids even sat down and made a card to put into each stocking:

They made 10 stockings for elders and 2 for sisters:

The kids really had a good time and the stockings turned out so darling!!!  

Front: Keely Mahaffey, Austin Monroe, Devon Monroe, Colby Sanders.

Couch: Sydney Mahaffey, Landon Mahaffey holding Annalese Mahaffey, Tanner Monroe holding Cambria Sanders, Kaden Monroe holding Ashlyn Monroe, and Trevor Monroe.

Thank you to our wonderful family for helping the missionaries in our mission who would not receive anything for Christmas!

Good-bye to Elder McLean

Elder McLean has been a wonderful district leader and is now going home to Australia. So, at our District Study we had a good-bye cake for him!

We'll miss you Elder McLean!