Christmas 2011

I suppose since it's already mid-January, I should probably get the Christmas post up.  This Christmas we did a lot of traveling; it wasn't so much that we went terribly far, just that we did it in so short a time.  It was almost like living in the van.

We started our trip by going up to Mesa to spend Christmas with RJ's family.  They were celebrating early, since his brother's family from Utah was only there through Saturday and Raimee was spending it with her new fiance, so Christmas with his family was done Friday evening.  We arrived late Wednesday.  Thursday night, we all went to the Mesa Temple to see the Christmas lights.  They are always so beautiful.  This was the first time girls have been to see them.  Our group got split, so I don't have a picture of everybody, but I do have a rare picture where RJ and I are both in it.

 Girls asked all day Friday when it would be time to open presents.  Finally, the time came--and they made out like bandits!  We had told them not to expect presents, but boy were we wrong.  They ended up with so much stuff, I almost wasn't sure everything was going to fit in the van, especially since they each got their very own bean bag, which they are still enjoying. 

After kids opened gifts, we sent them to bed.  I got to open the first gift, which was this:

This was from Rue, Raun, and RJ.



 The twins and my husband were in on a gag gift.  I received my rear view mirror with the note that it had been pimped.  They replaced it with this one:

As stylish as this is, it's not really my style, so I had them return my original mirror.

 After everyone checked out my newly pimped van, we went back inside for the White Elephant portion of the gift giving.  Can you tell my in-laws really like nerf guns?  Because just about every gift was a nerf gun.

Other white elephant gift included a ping pong and ring toss.  We had fun making up games with them.

 Saturday morning, Christmas Eve, we drove down to my grandma's house to celebrate Christmas with my family.  It was rather mellow this year, which is not the norm, but was rather nice.  We didn't get to see everyone we would have liked and unfortunately, our girls are on the younger side of the great-grandchildren, so they didn't have other kids to play with.

My girls occupied their time by having one of their older cousins do their hair.  (Raena had just taken a bite when I took this, so she looks kinda goofy.)

 We left my grandma's around 8:30pm and drove the three hours back home.  Sunday we got up and let kids open up gifts before we headed to sacrament meeting. 

Kids dressed in Sunday clothes, sitting on their new bean bags, waiting to open gifts.

This year, we told kids they were only getting four gifts: one from mom and dad, one from a sibling, one from Santa, and their stocking.  Since we didn't actually hang stockings this year, the stocking stuffers, aka pillow pets, just got put on the tree.  We got each of the girls a mini pillow pet to match their big one and Haydn a Lightening McQueen pillow pet.  Apparently, we got Haydn the wrong one.  The first thing he did was run and grab Raena's and then sit on it, so she couldn't get it back.  In fact, Haydn tried to steal everyone's presents.

This is Haydn after opening his first present.  By the look on his face, you'd think he was excited about it, but he was much more excited for everyone else's gifts.

This is Haydn with Raena's pillow pet.  Eventually she managed to steal it back.  But whenever he noticed, he'd go take it from her again. 

Overall, we had a really enjoyable Christmas and break.  In fact, girls didn't even fight that much over break, which was quite nice.  I'm starting to think it may be time that we just do our own thing for Christmas and just find a time to visit family during break, but I really do like being with family for Christmas.  Logistics are becoming troublesome, however.