Christmas 2012

 

December is always a busy, delightful month.  This year's started off with Steve finding an incredible deal at Home Depot on a 9 foot pre-lit tree for our living room, which was simply stunning!

Our ward did a children's live nativity for the Christmas Dinner & asked if Blake would be the donkey.  I told the sister asking that Blake was a busy, rambunctious boy and I could not guarantee what would happen up on stage (imagine the worst, then double it).  She said - "Oh, we carefully considered personalities for the principal roles.  And we would LOVE for Blake to be the donkey!"  Hmmm... It was an absolutely precious performace - luckily we cleared the stage fright "I-am-not-going-up-there-to-be-the-donkey" hurdle just as he was supposed to take Mary to Bethlehem and the performance went off without a hitch.

We had our annual Christmas music & gingerbread house making night with the Walkers and Uncle Ket who moved here from Boise and we were lucky enough to have him spend time with us before his family came out to join him. We knew him and his wife, Nicole in Hawaii and love this fabulous couple.

Miss Kali also had her first performance with her little performance group. She had a solo and really, really loved being on stage.

Ket was kind enough to let us stay a night in the hotel he became the General Manager of The Country Inn & Suites by DIA.  I was a little worried we couldn't squeeze it in with our packed December, but we made time for it & it was so much fun.  Like a mini overnight family vacation.  Ket was a super uncle for us - including retrieving Kali's tooth that fell out & went down the bathroom sink.  We LOVED spending time with him.

The kids were very helpful assembling neighbor gifts :).  I think I found our annual neighbor gift.  We make this yummy smelling stovetop concoction every year & thanks to Pinterest found a way to share it.

The best part of the year was that our family came out to visit for Christmas!  We got to host!  Anna brought Kody, who was a good sport getting grilled & questioned by his future brother-in-laws.  We loved Kody from the minute we met him.

They made him feel very welcome as seen in the picture below.

I had to work on Christmas Day, so my family was gracious enough to celebrate on the 24th, making the 23rd our Christmas Eve.  It worked out well enough, but as I pulled out of the driveway waving goodbye to Trenton I vowed I would NEVER work a Christmas again, EVER.

We had a fun nativity scene the night before, a Santa sighting on Christmas Eve & a fun, spoiled-rotten by Grandma & Grandpa & Santa Christmas morning.  Trenton got a chess set and a football, Kali got an American Girl Doll, Blake got a Spider-man shooter set, and Cameron got a basketball hoop.  Steve and I continued our tradition of doing The Twelve Days of Christmas for a family in lieu of gifts to each other.  I love that man of mine SO much & that both of our favorite gifts is giving to others.

How we loved that cousin time of ours, sledding and using our membership to go to the zoo downtown.  We stayed long enough to catch the beginning of Zoo Lights & saw enough indoor exhibits that we stayed nice and warm.  What a marvelous, marvelous month!