Christmas with the Barricks

After the Christmas concert we stayed at the Barrick home until Christmas (with a little detour to Vegas). The first week they were still working but when they took some time off we were able to do some fun things like see Catching Fire and go to the Museum of Natural History in SLC.
One of the highlight though is that we were able to head to the Museum of Art on BYU campus and see their Sacred Gifts collection. It is a collection of paintings of Christ done by three artists that have all come together for the first time. They are absolutely beautiful. The three artists are Carl Bloch, Heinrich Hofmann and Franz Schwartz. My personal favorite was Agony in the Garden by Franz Schwartz. It really touched me at a time when I was feeling a bit down and hopeless. It is a picture of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemene praying with tear on his face and an angel is above him with her hand on his shoulder and head comforting him. It was just a testament to me that Christ felt sorrow so that he could be our angel, the one to put his arms around us and comfort us. I guess maybe before I saw this picture I thought the atonement was not easy but the fact that he is the Son of God would have made it easier. But this picture really testified to me that his sorrow was real and very difficult to bear. I guess it just means to me that he is really there and can really help us because he has really been through everything.
Christmas Eve was nice, the Valentes and their exchange students came down and we had a nice dinner as well as visited with family. Grandpa Damitz and Mitzi read us The Three Trees and Daniel and I played our Christmas duet. We also opened our Christmas P.J.s, it's tradition!
Christmas morning we were waiting for the Valentes to join us again. Daniel and I had just sat down for to practice our duet when my phone started ringing. It was a number from Michigan so I knew it was a favorite Elder. We got to talk to Stephen for about 20 minutes (he is serving in Detroit, MI).
Then we came out had breakfast burritos, opened presents for hours, watched some football, or basketball, facetimed in while Stephen called my parents and had a big Turkey dinner to end the evening.