I figured out why I never really caught the Christmas Cheer bug this year. And it has to do with last Christmas.
Remember this?
This was last Christmas. See those palm trees, see those shorts and short sleeve shirts. This was in Florida on December 26th.
Last year's Christmas was pretty awesome. And I'm not sure I was ready for another Christmas yet. I kind of wanted to keep basking in the warmth of Christmas 2015.
But as it does every year Christmas came just the same.
And it was a pretty great Christmas anyway. Sure there was a lot more snow than last year. But there was still plenty of good company. Let's get ready to recap.
First up we have pictures from Friday December 23. Brandon's family planned a sledding day out at his sister's house in Tooele. I work on Friday's so I couldn't go, but Brandon took the kids.
He said that Derrick and Veronica started out crying as they walked up the hill. But they had fun as soon as the sled went down the hill the first time.
Charlotte and Lydia also had a great time sledding. They shared a sled and would take turns with who was in front.
Here's Derrick and Veronica going up the hill together.
Brandon going down with Derrick and Veronica with Charlotte and Lydia in the back ground.
And here is Brandon improvising with fun ways to go down the hill.
After sledding for two hours they went back to Shannon's house for dinner and movie watching. Everyone had a great time.
I had a big day at work and I was pretty happy to finally get home. Nobody else was home yet and I enjoyed the time to myself. I did my annual Holiday tradition of watching the Christmas episode from the second season of the West Wing. It's called Noel and deals with one of the characters suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. I watch it every Christmas. For some reason it really resonates with me.
Brandon came home with the kids and put them all to bed.
The next day was December 24th, Christmas Eve. Brandon's family does a Christmas Eve Party every year. We haven't been able to make it for the past two years, but we've hosted our own parties. It was kind of weird (and I'll admit hard) to not be in charge this year. The past two years I've been the one running the show, but this year I was just along for the ride.
The day was full of preparations for the big Christmas Eve party that night. Brandon, Kara, and Jacque were all cooking up a storm. I ran over to the post office hoping to find a package that was supposed to be delivered. It wasn't there when I first went, but Brandon checked back later and the package was there!
This was a big deal because it contained something that Lydia was looking forward to - and elf costume. A few weeks ago she told me that her ears were getting pointy and that was proof that she was turning into an elf. She started talking about how Santa was probably going to take her back to the north pole. I told her that might not happen, but that maybe he'd bring her an elf costume. And then I decided to just skip the middle man and just buy her a costume myself. (Plus it didn't make sense for Santa to bring her an elf costume to wear after Christmas when I could buy it for her and have her wear it before Christmas.)
So I ordered the costume from
www.costumediscounters.com. It was supposed to arrive on the 21st, but we didn't get it until Christmas Eve. Lydia was so happy to finally get her elf costume.
I'd asked Charlotte if she wanted to be and elf too, but she didn't seem interested about that idea. Still, I knew she'd want something too so I looked at some of the other costumes and asked her if she wanted to be an Angel. She liked that idea.
Lydia Elf helped me make chocolate covered pretzels. Charlotte had helped me make some others earlier in the week to take to my co-workers. Lydia had a lot of fun adding sprinkles to the pretzels.
The extended family started arriving around 4:30. This was the first time everyone on Brandon's side of the family had been together since 2012. We made sure to take a family picture since we don't know when we'll be together again. (Sorry I don't have copies of the pictures yet)
The party officially started around 6:00 with lots of yummy food. In addition to Brandon's siblings and their family's we had the usual group of extended family made up of various in-laws. My sister Hillary and her husband Joe came as well. Hillary said, "Brandon's family's Christmas Eve party is my favorite family tradition that isn't really from my family."
Charlotte had helped me move this little table into the dinning room. She was excited about the table even if she doesn't look like it in this picture.
After dinner it was time to act out the nativity story. Here are all the actors waiting for their turn to go on stage.
There was some drama involving who got to be Mary. We were using Lydia's baby doll as Baby Jesus, so she felt like she should be Mary. But one of her older cousins had already been told she'd be Mary. Luckily for Lydia that older cousin let her be Mary when she saw how much she was crying.
Even then she was still crying. Melanie asked, "Lydia, why are you crying?" And one of the boys answered with, "She's having a baby, that's why." It was pretty funny.
None of the kids wanted to be Joseph so Bryan stepped in to play the roll.
Charlotte was excited to be an angel, but by the time it was her turn she didn't want to do it anymore. She sat on my lap and cried. Veronica was supposed to be a camel, but just like Charlotte she ran out of motivation too early.
But after a while she got up and was part of the scene.
After the Nativity scene it was time for the chimes. This is something that we haven't been able to do the last two years. I was looking forward to having Charlotte and Lydia do the chimes for the first two years.
The girls did a good job of playing their chime when Melanie pointed to their number.
Then it was time for dancing around the Christmas Tree. Joe said, "what we are doing that here too, I thought that was just something from last year." Well this is where that tradition came from.
It was so cute to see Lydia and Charlotte ready to dance.
And Veronica too. She was just a new born last time we did this.
We held hands and sand songs while walking around the tree. As always it was really special. After a few songs I looked over and saw Veronica and Owen helping themselves to treats in the kitchen.
Dancing around the tree is always really fun.
Here are Hillary and I. Charlotte was done with her halo so I started wearing it.
And here are Brandon and I.
At the end of the party Brandon's parents brought out presents for each of the children. Derrick had been upstairs watching train movies on You tube during most of the party, but he came down for presents. He and Veronica both got movies. (You can see that Veronica was super excited about her "Charley Brown Movie.") Charlotte and Lydia each got little birds that could repeat things that the girls said.
Brandon and I also had presents for the kids. We'd bought them each new pajamas. Derrick was so excited about his Lightning McQueen Pajamas.
Everyone went home and we started getting ready for bed. I got out the stockings for the kids. Our regular ones are packed so I'd just bought four new ones for a dollar at Walmart. Charlotte suggested that each child write their name on their stocking. Derrick surprised me by writing his name by himself. I held his hand to stabilize it, but he moved it on his own. I'm keeping this stocking forever.
The kids all share a room right now. Normally we put Derrick and Veronica to sleep in their room, and we put Charlotte and Lydia to bed in our room. Then after Charlotte and Lydia fall asleep we move them into the kids room. But it was already so late (around 10:00) that we put all the kids to bed at the same time in the same room. The girls all share a queen size bed.
And Derrick has his own bed. (We were hoping the move would go smoother if he had the same bed that he had in Alabama - so far it's working.)
Brandon and I sat on the floor and sang every Christmas song out of the LDS hymn book. This was probably my favorite part from Christmas this year. The kids were asleep by the time we were done.
After the kids were asleep Brandon and I went down stairs and set out their presents. Here are their stockings. (And I really should point out that Lydia wrote her name in cursive on her stocking.)
And here is the Christmas Tree. Bryan and Kara were also sharing the tree with us so their presents are under there as well. Brandon and I always do small Christmas's, but this year was even smaller than usual. We didn't see the sense in buying the kids a bunch of toys when they have a ton in storage in the garage. We also are saving our money for a big present that we'll hopefully get next year - a house. And I just didn't feel like doing much shopping. In fact, Brandon and I didn't even bother buying each other gifts.
On Christmas morning the kids actually SLEPT IN! It was a Christmas Miracle. They didn't wake up until after 7:00. Then we all went down stairs and started opening presents.
The kids all LOVED their presents. We loosely followed the "Four gifts" plan of Something they want, something they need, something to wear, and something to read. But instead it really was, Something they want, something else they want, pajamas to wear, and a DVD. We also took them all to the Dollar Store and had them pick out presents for each other. That was really fun.
As usual Veronica was super hard to buy for, but for once I found her a present that she actually played with. I found her a little set with four little plastic dogs and tiny boxes of dog food and dishes. I had Derrick pick out a little box to for Veronica to put her dogs into. She loved that. She also loved pretending to feed the dogs.
Lydia had been asking for a zebra stick horse for months. She actually wanted this for her birthday. The only place I'd ever seen a zebra stick horse was at Loves Travel Stop. So I planned on buying a zebra stick horse while we traveled to Utah. Well I never clearly communicated that to Brandon and so he never bought one during the drive. We tried finding on online, but no luck. So finally Brandon had to drive down to the Loves in Salt Lake City and buy a zebra stick horse (And two regular stick horses for Charlotte and Veronica.) Lydia was so happy to see her gift.
Charlotte really wanted something that she called a Cowboy Set Up. It had lots of little cowboy and indian figurines including, and this was super important, a little covered wagon. She'd seen one of these at the gift store at the Big Well in Kansas and hadn't stopped wishing for it. (It says something about our lifestyle that my kids asked for things that they'd seen while we were travelling.) We were lucky to find the cowboy set up on Amazon. Charlotte was so happy and yelled, "I know what this is" as soon as she saw the wrapped present.
Derrick was a little tricky to buy for. But we were lucky and found this "circle track" at the store. Derrick loved his last circle track and has been asking for "circle" for a while. He loved shooting the cars through the track.
Everyone had fun playing with all their presents. I noticed that Veronica was missing and I found her playing with an alphabet puzzle in the living room. Technically she'd bought this for Derrick, but I figured that she would end up playing with it.
Christmas was on Sunday this year so we had to stop the lounging around early and get ready for church. Thankfully it was only going to be 40 minutes long.
Here's Veronica in her church dress. She's showing off her koosh ball. (Brandon too her down the toy aisle and that koosh ball and a rubber snake were the only things she wanted.) She's also playing with her candy. She carried it around and took the candy out and put it back in again for a long time. Silly girl.
After church we had a good time playing with toys and hanging around the house for a while. But that wasn't the plan for the whole day. My sister Lindsey was in Utah visiting her in-laws and we were going to visit her too. But that meant driving all the way to Cedar City. So in the afternoon we said goodbye to Bryan and Kara and started to drive down to Cedar City.
Santa had given each of the kids a new DVD so we enjoyed watching those in the car while we made the 5 hour drive. I figured we'd be sitting on the couch watching those same movies so it wasn't that big of a hardship to drive and watch them. We arrived at Lindsey's in-laws house around 7:30.
Lindsey's husband John is one of 8 kids and his parents have a house that fits everyone - and then some. Lindsey says it's the best house for kids. She says she can go hours without seeing her kids. That turned out to be pretty true for me too.
It was so great to see Lindsey. The last time I saw her was in April when we helped our Grandma move. Before that was last Christmas when she came to my house in Alabama.
John's parents had a game room down stairs and the girls talked me into playing foose ball with them. Brandon joined us and we had a really fun time together. This is another one of my favorite Christmas memories.
My sister Hillary also made the trek down to Cedar City to see Lindsey. Lindsey and I stayed up waiting for Hillary and Joe to arrive around 11:00 and then we all stayed up until at least 12:30 talking. We spend a lot of times talking about books. Hillary mentioned they'd been listening to Ender's Game on Audible during their drive down. Lindsey cleverly said something like, "don't you mean you listened to it via Ansible."
Eventually we made it to bed. Hillary and Joe got the large couch in the family room, but Brandon and I had a king size bed in one of the basement guest rooms. All our kids were asleep in it, so we moved them onto another bed on the floor.
Our room didn't have windows in it which was awesome because all the kids slept in AGAIN. Two mornings in a row is unheard of for our family.
When we did get up Lindsey entertained us with science experiments. She boiled water and then took it out to the 3 degree weather outside. She took a cup of boiling water and threw it into the air. It evaporated before it hit the ground.
Kari, Lindsey's mother in law, helped get breakfast going. She's used to feeding a crowd and didn't mind adding us to the group. Charlotte and Lydia found some bike toys and had fun riding them around the house.
Everyone was just fine with the girls weaving through all the rooms.
Here's Charlotte having fun.
And Lydia. Who was wearing her elf costume for the third day straight.
Derrick and Veronica kept themselves entertained with the pool table. They loved watching the balls roll around.
Lindsey, Hillary, and I went off to spent some sisters time together. We did a little shopping and then had lunch at Costa Vida. We bought chips in honor of our sister Emily who really loves Costa Vida chips.
Back at the house we all ended up hanging out on the big king bed and talking. (Hillary is apparently turning into Jyn Erso.)
Lindsey's inlaws were all planning on going sledding and we were invited along. But I wasn't sure if the kids were up to it again so soon. Brandon said he wasn't up to it and then proved the point by falling asleep while we were talking.
Knoxx showed off some tricks.
We decided that we probably should get going back north while it was still light outside. So when the kids started fighting over something we hurried to say our goodbyes and get out to the car. I wish we could have stayed one more night, but I had to go to work on Tuesday.
We stopped for dinner at a McDonalds in Utah County. We bought the kids Happy Meals for the first time in a long time. They all really liked those. (But they though the toys were dumb,)
As we drove through Salt Lake County Brandon and I made the spur of the moment decision to take the kids to see the lights at Temple Square. We've wanted to do this all month, but I haven't been wild about the idea of driving all the way to Salt Lake just to deal with cold and crowds. But this seemed perfect since we were already driving through there anyway.
It was about 7:00 and the kids were not happy about getting out of the warm car. But they did like looking at the pretty lights and temple.
They were very happy though when ever we went inside a building. They though the escalators in the North Visitor's Center were the coolest things ever. (We've been living in very rural places, because I'm not sure they remember ever seeing an escalator in real life.)
They also really liked seeing everything from the 10th floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Derrick saw a trax train and got really excited about that.
We spent some time on the Mezzanine level. (Here's a temple square hint for you - the best bathrooms in the whole area are tucked away on this level. No one knows about them so they are nice and empty.)
The Christmas tree was really pretty.
Charlotte and Lydia ran over to the preforming stands on the far side of the room. I can't believe it's been three years since we were here with my parents and the girls played on these same risers.
We had to brave the cold again to make it back to the car. We were all pretty grumpy by the time we made it back, but over all I'm glad we went to Temple Square. Though as always I wish it was warmer.
We made it back home to Eden and got the kids into bed. Christmas weekend was over.
All in all it was a good Christmas. We got to spent time with family which is always my favorite thing about the holidays. And it was fun seeing the kids enjoy their presents.
But honestly, I'm so glad it's over for this year.
I'm ready to get moving on to what ever is next.
