It was a very, Merry Christmas at our house!

We had SUCH a wonderful Christmas! Both of my sib's were in town and we did so many fun things! The festivities started last Wednesday night when we all went out to eat at Tepanyaki. The kids LOVE going there because they like to watch the "show" and the fire. Those cooks are pretty entertaining!

Thursday was Christmas Eve and we went to my parents house. There were a lot of people and a lot of fun was had by all! There was my parents, Dane, Kelly, Roger, Aunt Deb, Uncle Wayne, Katie, Jessie, Cory and their 5 kids. Jessie (my cousin) has a girl 6 months older than Caleb, a girl born within a few days of Brynley and a girl born within a few days of Aubrey. My kids are in friend heaven when we are with them! They love hanging out with the "second cousins" (yes, that's what they call them). We had a nice dinner:

The traditional program (I played a duet with Rog and Jess and Caleb and accompanied Kelly - I didn't really mean for it to be the Lindsey show - oops)




A gift exchange (ok, this was way fun. We all brought under $3 gifts. We sat in a circle and someone read the story "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and everytime they read the word 'and' you pass your gift around in the circle. When the story is over you get to keep your gift. Everytime 'and' was said everyone screamed and threw their gift. It was really funny.)

And we used the nativity puppets Angie (my sis in law) gave me for the Nativity story. These puppets are amazing. Nice and easy. No dress up involved. The kids all start sitting and when they come into the story they stand up and hold up their puppet. The kids actually LISTEN to the story to see when they stand. They're awesome.

After dessert and lots of playing:




we came home to wait for Santa! Here's what he brought:





My kids slept in until 7:30am! Amazing!

My family came over around 10:30 and we had breakfast and played all day.



In the afternoon we went sledding up Hobble Creek Canyon.




I LOVE Christmas and this year did not dissapoint! I hope you all had a fabulous holiday and thank you all for the Christmas cards. I'm going to do them next year. Here's your promise. To make up for it I'll share some Christmas cheer (ha, ha):



Am I the only one who thinks their baby is so cute when they cry? Poor baby. She has such a mean mom.

Change of subject...

Now, I feel like I have SO much to do in the next 10 days! We are leaving for our Southern Caribbean cruise on Jan 10. In that time I have to get Christmas decorations put away and do a ton of work for my online clients (I've got over 50 next month!), in addition to packing and getting everything ready for us to be gone. It's going to be a crazy week but we are SO excited for our trip!