finals are over and the family is all together. there is actually snow on the ground!! Mannheim Steamrollers is blasting through the house.
Yesterday was Christmas. It was such a wonderful day!! I thought I'd share a little bit of my Christmas season. I love to see what other people do to celebrate, but the more I see the more I realize how perfect-for-me my family does things. You can think whatever you want!
My family has a tradition of baking and decorating gingerbread men
for FHE before Christmas! Dad's is always a little more graphic than the rest.
We were happy the Jeff could join in on the tradition this year!
It was hard to find a time between all of our finals and dad's crazy schedule to fit this one in!
Of course, I had to go to the festival of trees!!
(it just isn't the Christmas season without it!)
also, I think I will be able to afford Christmas now that I sold back my textbooks....
NOT!!!! (what is the deal with this??)
I spend most of my winter break evenings doing puzzles with my mom!
Christmas puzzles of course!
I took a much needed break and spent some time in Ogden with my dear friends Katie and Mike!
We visited a Christmas village! It was so festive and cute!
It really helped improve the Christmas spirit around here!
We watched White Christmas which helped too!
My sister and I did some caroling and Christmas shopping with John and Anna Marie!
My brother always finds a way to dress up as the grinch.
He has the voice down and the quotes down and everything
We went to watch their Christmas Assembly the Friday before Christmas
He wrote the whole thing--it was hilarious! (almost as good as the year I did StudCo)
The morning of Christmas Eve is spent running last minute errands, wrapping our famous bacon chestnuts, and frantically trying to pull together a group talent we can perform for the family in our annual Christmas talent show.
Our family party on Christmas Eve is one of my favorite nights of the whole year.
We always have a delicious dinner (including steak and crab)
and put on our talent show...almost all the cousins perform!
and we trade cousin gifts and our grandparents give us each something
this year the older grandchildren got car vacuum cleaners! how cool is that?
and we just hang out and eat treats until it's almost time for Santa to come!
First we watch Luke 2--if we have not already
then my mom struggles through "the boot story" (which I will share later)
literally, she cannot get through this story without crying...none of us can
then we each write a short letter to Jesus and tell him what we will give him that upcoming year
and we put the notes in a sparkly gold box that has all our "presents for Jesus" ever since I was a
tiny girl in it. And we go around and say something we love about each other/our family/that year.
Then we open Christmas PJs.
I know a lot of people have this tradition...
but in our family it is a little different.
My mom was getting sick of giving us normal or christmas-themed nighties
every year so she decided to step it up a little bit.
A couple years ago she started doing themes for our pajamas.
like last year we were all characters from The Grinch!
This year, we all got to be super heroes on Christmas night!
Seriously!!
I have the coolest family!!
It's neat to me because she tied it in to how "super" our family
and I made some pun about how "you guys really are my heroes"
(except I actually meant it)
and we just had a blast pretending to be DC Universe and Marvel characters
(except when we got into an argument about which set of super heroes is best.....)
((#marvelwins))
Then we snuggle up in the basement and watch {the edited version of} LOVE ACTUALLY!
It is by far my favorite christmas movie, and really high up on my list of favorite movies in general!
It just has such a lovely feeling to it.
And I love Hugh Grant.
And that is everything that leads up until Christmas! Now for the big day itself.
I know most children wake up at some unnatural time of the morning
and rush to see if santa came
and everything just rips everything open as fast as humanly possible
and christmas is....over....by nine in the morning.
Not in our family!
We like to take it slooooow!
and by slow I mean, we were still unwrapping gifts at five!
We were still working on the Santa portion of our morning at ten.
and we had started at eight.
We just like to make the excitement last all day.
So we have one person open one thing and then we take it out and set it up and play with it or test it out and twenty minutes later we let someone else open one thing and start all over. We take a lot of snack breaks for hot chocolate and leftovers from Christmas Eve dinner.
I love that we do this!
It makes the whole day of Christmas so special and merry and bright!
Some of the best gifts we got this year include:
a banjo
An electric guitar set up
an atari game system (old school game system...my parents spent hours on a trip to memory lane with this one! video games have come a long way since then. But I kinda liked the simplicity of
the atari better than the complexity of the xbox. I may even give gaming a shot now)
a phantom (its a helicopter thing that holds a gopro camera -- which we got too -- and it's how they film professional surf competitions and things)
and clothes and socks and clothes!
I got some stuff for my new apartment that I love.
Santa was good to everyone this year!
we must have been nice after all :)
Then we take naps
When we are too tired to even clean up the kitchen, we snuggle up and fall asleep
and then Christmas is over :)
I love traditions. I love my family. And I love this time of year!
I have felt really sentimental about it lately because next year things are going to be really different.
We will lose and add a few family members.
Including my brother, who will be serving an LDS mission by then.
So I tried to savor every moment of this special day with those I love most.
even though a few of them could only be with my through phone calls/text messages
I hope you all had a very happy christmas!
and may your days be merry and bright!
-C
