Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas was so great this year! Cade and I will definitely admit that it was very different this year- having 2 kiddos now! Things are more complicated than years past, but still wonderful.

On Friday evening we drove up to Bountiful where ALL of my siblings were able to be together! It is so wonderful to have us all together. Who knows how many Christmas's will be like that. The weekend started with Emma getting sick...which was sad but not surprising. Without fail, Emma has gotten sick every single holiday this year. We were, however, VERY blessed. Usually her cold/cough turns into a fever and gets worse. But luckily she just stuck with the cough and a little cold and nothing more! Friday night we just hung out and ate pizza together. Saturday I went out to shop for one more item (went to 7 stores and didn't find what I wanted for Emma). Then the rest of the day was just being together and getting ready for Christmas Eve night. On Christmas Eve we always have a nice cordon bleu dinner and after dinner we gather in the family room and read the Christmas story in Luke, sing Christmas carols, and open our "gift from the hearts". This year we acted out the story in Luke and we'll just say that it wasn't the most reverent nativity scene :). We gave our gift from the hearts to each other which is always SO much fun to see what everyone gave. Kristen gave me a DVD of a slideshow she put together of our 2001 Africa trip. It was so neat and I loved it! The highlight was Steph and I giving our quiet book to Kristen (on the post just before this one). It was so great to see her face and give something that took countless numbers of hours to work on. After our evening together, we got ready for Santa to come and watched the Disney/Jim Carrey Christmas Carol.

Christmas morning, since it fell on a Sunday, we woke up and got ready for church. It was a very memorable one because President Eyring (member of the 1st presidency of the church) spoke in our ward. Not many people get to have that wonderful privilege, but since he is in our ward we got to hear from him that morning. Definitely a morning to remember! Both Reese and Emma were VERY good during church!!! I shouldn’t act surprised…but am :).

After church we went back to the house and got to bring Emma into the living room where all of the presents and her new pink kitchen was! Christmas is just SO exciting now that we have a toddler to give to. It is amazing to see the joy in her eyes! After breakfast, my whole family gathered in the living room and opened presents together. My wonderful husband surprised me with a Cricut! I LOVE making crafts, so I was extremely excited for this surprise! I had NO idea he was getting that for me. I have been wanting one for a while and he got it for me :). Christmas day was a happy day for everyone!

Some of my absolute favorite times with my family are when we stay up playing games and laughing and talking. Christmas night we all gathered in the basement and played the game "Things" together. It is a hilarious game especially when it's late at night :). We had SO much fun laughing at each other. After playing that game, we got out old pictures from when we were little and looked at tons of hilarious pictures. I was crying from I was laughing so hard at some very funny pictures and memories. It was one of those times with my family that are precious and bring us closer together. Then it started getting really late and the video at the bottom of this post shows how goofy and tired we all got!

Here are some highlights from the weekend:










Bryan in the past many years has given homemade pies as his gift from the heart. So as part of Cade's gift to Bryan, he gave a pie with 6 different slices together:


Kristen being the "star" for the nativity :)



Christmas morning:









This video I'm sure is hilarious to only me and those that were there. There was a possessed toy that we could not stop the aweful sound coming from it. And since it was about midnight things just kept getting more and more and more funny!