Festival of Trees

This past weekend, we had the opportunity to attend Salt Lake's Festival of Trees. It is an amazing event and all the proceeds go to Primary Children's Medical Center. We have been a couple times in the past, but this year meant so much more to us. First, we wanted to support the medical center that took fantastic care of Tim this past year. And second, we wanted to see a very special tree and look for others. For those of you who don't know about the trees, most are in honor of individuals who have passed away. And they are all donated by the family and/or friends of the individual. Guests are then invited in to bid on the trees and other items. After the festival, the person with the highest bid gets to take his/her purchase home to enjoy!

This is the tree we went to see! It is in honor of our friend and neighbor who passed away earlier this year. It was a beautiful tree!! As you can tell, he was a huge fan of the U of U and Real Soccer. We didn't hold him being a Ute fan against him;) We tried to search out other trees of people we knew from the hospital, but with hundreds of trees, wreaths, gingerbread houses and gifts, it was so overwhelming! We did find a Sponge Bob tree though:)


And then there's the gingerbread houses. This is always a favorite of mine. I love to see the hundreds of houses decorated out of candy and snacks. This year did not disappoint!

(The White House. Madagascar's Island Home. A farm. And a log cabin.)

After wandering around for a couple of hours and watching some of the entertainment, we went out to eat. At dinner, I made a toast to Tim and thanked him for being so brave and fighting so hard so that I didn't have to donate a tree in honor of him. Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to do that, but I am so grateful that I didn't have to. I have not posted about all the things I am grateful for because there are so many things I am grateful for this year. It would be a long post and probably bore most of you out there. Please know that our family is grateful for all of you out there and everything you did for us this past year. We thank you and love you all!