Then we went to the library. The kids love to get books & lay in this wall that they have.
We went Temple Square - I think it was the Thursday night before Christmas. Carson wasn't as interested in the pretty lights as he was in the artwork & especially the Christus Statue. I definitely want to take him back when it isn't so crowded & we can spend more time. I needed to run to Deseret Book (turns out Beehive Clothing isn't in the Distribution Center anymore. Turns out there isn't really a distribution center anymore.) So I ran across the street to the huge one in the new City Creek development & got what I needed, plus a big bag of candy, while the kids played in the family history center & then we met up in the foyer of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Beautiful as always.
We spent Christmas Eve day at G&G Seiter's with family. We had the traditional breakfast of gingerbread waffles, fruit, wassail, & this year there was frittata. Grandma had an activity for the kids to go around the house & find all the different nativities set up (a change from acting out the nativity). The cousins opened their gifts from each other. We stayed the rest of the day after everyone left & had Jerusalem dinner. We came home & the kids opened their Christmas jammies & went to bed.
I told Carson he had to wait to open his because I had to go to the car to get the camera. He had a pretty sad moment because he wanted to open it right then.
We weren't sure what to do about opening presents because our Church was at 9am. The kids were up around 7, so we let them open their stockings and the presents from Santa. I had an eggnog french toast bake in the oven - for a long time - & we rushed to get to church & got there a tad late.
After church we opened the rest of our presents, skyped with my family at Jenn's house for a quick minute, and then spent the afternoon playing with toys & relaxing. We went to back to G&G's house for Christmas dinner - traditional ham, potatoes, rolls, jello, etc - and watched them open their presents.
My mom did a lot baking while she was staying here with kids. It was all so yummy!!! And I was glad I could take it to family stuff because I ate way to much of it as it was - it was good to spread the love!
Our advent calendar was fun this year. We don't have a ton of our own traditions because we spend a lot of time with Mark's family & his mom has a lot of traditions. We love spending time with family & it's fun to have our kids start understanding about Jesus & still be excited for all the other magic of Christmas. Kids are only young once, so I don't feel bad about getting excited about Santa because we talk about Jesus & the Gospel everyday.
I made "Christmas Memory" books for us & our families this year in hopes that we'll write down something about each Christmas from now on. I'm wondering what your feelings are about something - maybe this would be better put in our book with my own thoughts, but I'm curious how "blogland" deals with the busy-ness of the season. There's no doubt that we do a lot during the holidays. And we all know that things that are important & worthwhile take work. How do you balance all the work it takes to make traditions "go" and feed a crowd, etc., etc. & still feel like you're enjoying your time & feeling the magic & joy of the season?
Anyway, we had a good Christmas. I took my decorations down a lot earlier this year than usual because it was kind of a weird season for me. Gone for a week in December. No snow. No plans to see "my" family. Got all my projects done early in November because I knew we'd be gone. Missed the ward party. But it was still a great Christmas.
On New Year's Eve we went over to G&G's house. With the help of Laurel, I made Cafe Rio for everyone - sweet pork, beans, rice, salad stuff. We hung out for a while, then ate, then the kids got treat bags & watched a movie while the grown-ups had our 2nd Annual Schrute Buck Videofest. Everyone comes with a few funny youtube videos to share & we all place "Schrute Bucks" on the ones we think deserve the most. Tim & Laurel took home the trophy this year. We share jokes & Jack Handy quotes in between & it's always fun to laugh together. We eat way too much & the kids are loaded with sugar by the end of the night, but it's always a good time. This year we found some little fireworks in the garage & did those on the driveway around 11 before everyone went home.
It's been a great holiday season & I'm having a hard time getting back to real life. I've read all 3 Hunger Games books plus a fat book called "Beautiful Creatures" (witchcraft, teenage romance, mystery) in the last month. My house is mostly put back together. There's still a couple of pictures I have to hang back up which would take all of 5 minutes, but I just haven't gotten around to it. You know things are bad when it sounds like too much work to go up town & hit the drive-through for dinner. But I have plans for a few projects & hopefully my nesting instinct will kick in some time......
1 comment:
Im hoping the nesting kicks in soon too! :) As far as traditions, we've stopped going to my family's events and traditions. They didn't like it much, but we really needed to start doing our own and focusing on our little family more. We still see them on Christmas Day for presents. This year we invited them to dinner at our house instead of going to theirs. My family goes out to dinner on Christmas Eve and a movie, but we've passed on that (to their disappointment) so we could do our own tradition. This year has been particularly hard to do traditions because Im sooo tired. Even still generally the only mass "cooking" we do, is Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and neighbor treats. When I blog about Christmas I'll talk about some of the traditions we do. I think there is room to have annual traditions, but also to be flexible and do something or different each year and not have to stick to the same traditions every year. How ever your little family wants to do it.
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