Christmas: Nativities

So this Christmas my sister Kaitlyn gave my other sister an adorable Christmas Nativity advent calendar. She made it herself. Isn't it adorable?

Anyway, it made me start thinking about (and taking pictures of) nativities. My mom likes to collect nativities, and she has quite a variety.

My mother's sister once made her an adorable nativity featuring our family acting out the scene (with dogs and two children borrowed from her family). The scene she caught was one of my youngest sister climbing into the manger with my little brother while everyone reacted in ways that expressed quite well their personalities.

My mother is struggling from her kneeling position to do something about it.
My father, having just closed the Bible, is completely oblivious.


The one with the blue nails is me: "I wish I could help, but it would mess up my nails!"
My sister is rushing in to stop it.
My brother is just holding his head in despair.

My other two sisters sit on and watch with bemused expressions, while my two cousins peek out from under the cow.

Then, we have the classic nativities. First, the olive wood, carved, of course, by my good friend Omar in Jerusalem.

You can tell that he lives in the Middle East because he carved 3 camels for the three wise men, instead of the one "representative" camel that is in most nativities. He knows that three men can't share one camel!

Then you have the cutsey nativities.

And, the faceless nativities.

And then you have what I affectionately call "European Middle-Eastern," meaning European artists who did their best to make the nativities look Middle Eastern, but their features still look like they could fit right in in the hills of Germany.

This last picture is my favorite of all the nativities. Can you imagine riding a camel like this for weeks or months?

Leftover Guilt

Today I was walking back to my car after spending a delightful time in the library. I really do like spending time in the library--perhaps a little too much, because they tried to charge me rent there once last semester. They said there was a 12 hour limit/day/student, and I had passed that 28 times so far Fall semester. So I switched to another building to study.

Anyway, since this is a new semester, I guess the rent-thing doesn't apply anymore. But I digress. I was walking back to my car and I saw a police car parked right next to it. And I suddenly panicked. Had I parked illegally? Was my car dripping large amounts of oil or anti-freeze? My mind quickly scanned everything I had done in the last 48 hours to see if my sudden guilt and fear had any foundation. As I drew closer to my car, I saw, much to my relief, that the police car was actually parked next to the car right next to my car, not next to my car, and the police was talking to a guy (presumably the owner of the car) who was holding a flashlight and looking in the windows.

I quickly got in my car and drove away before they could question me about whatever was going on with the guy's car. After all, being parked right next to him, I was a likely suspect.

As I drove away, I started to think about what has caused this unnatural fear of the police--because actually, every time I see the police I feel a little twinge of fear. Skipping over the fact that I speed perhaps more than once a year and ignoring the many books I have read about militaristic-type governments in the Middle East and Nazi Germany, I finally realized that this fear began when I was a young child.

I was 5 or 6 and we had gone on an extended-family camping trip reunion up Provo Canyon, as I recall. The reunion was fun, as I recall, and I got to play with my cousins and do other camping things, like slide down a muddy hill and eat dutch oven cooking. As we were packing up, I had found some beautiful wildflowers (which looked like weeds to an adult but violets to a small child) and picked a few of them to take home as a memento of the trip.

After I picked them, I continued walking along the trail, waiting for the rest of the family. It was then that I saw, to my horror, a sign that said something along the lines of, "It is illegal to pick the wildflowers."

(This one is from Israel. I didn't have any pictures from Provo.)

Illegal?! I had just broken the law!! I looked down at the already-wilting purple flowers, the evidence of my criminal act clutched in my tiny fist. I panicked. I went and hid in the car, or something else very grown-up like, while I waited for my parents. On the ride home, I felt sure that the police would be waiting at my house with a warrant for my arrest.

I seem to recall that I asked my parents about the legal state of one who has picked flowers from a national park, but whatever they said did little to allay my fears. I resigned myself to life as a criminal.

Well, the police weren't there when we got home. They didn't come all that night, and I think by the next morning I had thrown away the "evidence" (my flowers) and moved on with my life.

But apparently the guilt is still there, and I don't think I will be surprised at all to run into the police one day and have them say, "Breanne? We have been informed that you picked wildflowers at a national park when you were 5. Please come with us..."

Christmas: Lights

I am trying the bigger picture look. Is it overkill?

I like this one mainly because it looks like pink fire.

Temple Square has these beautiful paper-bag cutout things with nativity scenes as well as words like "love," "joy," and "peace" written in several languages. Like Arabic, written below.

This could make it into a new ad campaign: "Christmas at Temple Square"

My friend Kerry and I striking the "Taiwan pose"

There was a random couple there that let me take pictures of them--after they heard one of the sister missionaries say to me, "I know you. You're a professional photographer, right? I see you here all the time." :)

Joel was enamored by the huge tree in the window.

Snowmobiling in sub-zero weather

We went snowmobiling on New Year's Day. It was the perfect day to spend outside on a fast machine with the freezing wind whipping past and ripping into your seven layers, permanently taking all feeling away from your lips, hands, and toes.

Can you see how cold it was? It was frigid. 5 degrees at the parking lot--and a wind chill of -40 (or something!) on the snowmobiles.


Doesn't this just look like a postcard? Or a Christmas card?


The snow was "epic," Corban said.

Photo Shoot: Losaunne

Christmas day. It's freezing cold. And I want to test out my new camera. My amazing sister, Losaunne, volunteered to be my subject. You can tell how cold it was by how red her nose and ears get as the pictures progress. :)

Hey look, a truck! Let's stand by it to take pictures.

I told her to look serious.

This is probably my favorite.

She was really happy to be done. :)

Christmas: Ornaments

So, I've been really quite busy, actually, which is why my blog activity has been so abysmally small. But, I got a new camera for Christmas. It is a beautiful camera. Really. So the next few posts will be rather picture-heavy.

I tested out the features on my camera on a lot of things. This post will be about ornaments. Enjoy.




Ahh, the cinnamon Santas. I can't remember when my mother made these, but I think it was when we lived in Texas. They have been an integral part of our tree ever since.

As children, we made ornaments almost every year that had our picture in them. It's kind of like a "look how big I'm getting!" tree because you can trace the growth patterns of the children by the Christmas ornaments. It's a thrill, really.


A few years ago my mom started a tradition of giving us all a Christmas ornament every year that represented what we had done that year. (I got a red car ornament this year--a subtle hint about how many times it broke down in the past 12 months!) However, when we get old and move away, we are supposed to give an ornament to my mom that somehow represents our life that year. The only one who is good at doing that is my sister, who made this precious thing for my mom last year (3 grandchildren, including my sister's first child, were born within weeks of each other).

Gotta love those Christmas traditions!