Christmas 2011

On Christmas Eve we invited a newly baptized family, the Cooper family, and Quinn and Leslie Mortensen and their family to dinner. We had a yummy ham dinner and an enjoyable evening visiting and playing. Grace was especially excited because she got to have her friend Callie over.

After our company went home, we cleaned up and then the kids opened their Christmas Eve presents from Nana and Granddad- new pajamas! They then all went to the bonus room and watched "The Grinch" with Jim Carey. They all slept in the bonus room, except for Amber, who went to her own bed after the movie was over. She has become like her best friend, Emily, and prefers to always sleep in her own bed.

I had a horrible night's sleep- too excited? Anyway, at 7 am the kids came in to wake us up. We looked at the Christmas scrapbook and said family prayer before heading downstairs.

A few favorite presents included, an itouch for Marin, a new ipod nano for Amber, these BYU earphones for Justin, a WWE wrestling game and game chair for Ben and a fleece blanket made by Mom for Grace. After years of Ryan surprising me with gifts, I finally was the "supriser" and Ryan was thrilled and stunned to have an ipad.

Jimmer loved curling up in the ribbons and stockings. We expected the kittens to be hyper with all the upwrapping and excitement, but they were pretty chill and just hung out watching it all (and napping a bit).

We took a break, ate our traditional Christmas breakfast, and hurried to get ready for church. We only had one hour of church, but it was a really good one. The choir sang 2 numbers, Jenna Mettra sang "O Holy Night" and Sister Luedtke played "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" on the violin. Brother Mettra read Luke 2, the Primary children sang and we had a youth speaker. Then Ryan spoke and gave a very moving and meaningful talk. Both of us were crying. There was a special spirit to the meeting. We had a congregational hymn on the middle of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" with an awesome piano and organ accompaniment which I loved. We finished the meeting singing "Silent Night". It is a version we use each year that I adore. We all sing the normal words and notes, but the piano accompaniment is exquisitely tender and sweet. I can hardly get through it each year. When we got home we took a few pictures, put our pjs back on and finished opening presents.

Later in the afternoon, we headed to Robles' for tamales. It seemed very strange not to have my parents there. We had good food and a nice visit while watching the Laker game at Ron and Sue's. Then the Redford's and AP Christoffersons came over to open some cousin gifts, play and eat more (we ate a lot over the whole vacation).

The next day we met up with Daniel, Jill and Raelynn and went to a park for lunch. Northwood Pizza was the treat. We opened a few more presents and had lots of fun at the park. The Redfords were absent because they flew that day to Washington to be with some of Kevin's family.

What a very Merry Christmas!