December Holiday craziness . . .

. . . and not many pictures to prove it. Not that we didn't take any pictures, but as I'm looking at our pictures to upload, most of them are too dark to see anything! I'm so bummed. Maybe I'm not meant to be a blogger - inability to fix computer problems, no posts for months at a time, and now lame pictures! Oh well, I'll keep plugging along despite the obstacles. So instead of posting a bunch of black squares, we'll just have to have the pictures in our memories, and you, dear readers, will just have to imagine it all.

1 - One of our favorite Christmas traditions is to sleep under the Christmas tree every year, and we did it yet again. This year Chris brought down the mattress from our bed, so he and I slept better than usual.
2 - We also go to the zoo to see Santa every year, and this year we invited the Buckners, the Monsons, and the Brimhalls for breakfast at our house before we all went to the zoo. That was so fun! We may have to add it to our Santa tradition from now on. This year Mrs. Claus was with Santa, and we put Hudson on her lap for a picture. He was trying so hard not to cry, but his lower lip was sticking out and trembling. I wish we could have gotten a good picture of that - it was so cute! Also, Brigham has never been a big fan of sitting on Santa's lap. I thought for sure this year he would be okay, but not so. I had to drag him over just to sit by me for a picture. Afterwards, he panicked and wanted to go back and tell Santa what he wanted. There's no way we were going to wait in line again (and I was positive he would clam up once he was actually face to face with Santa), so we assured him that he could write a letter on Christmas Eve. He was eventually pacified.
3 - We acted out the nativity, made cookies and wrote letters for Santa on Christmas Eve day, then ate our traditional Shepherd's dinner that night. Jennifer Hansen came over since she wasn't flying out to see her family until Christmas day. After dinner the kids got ready for bed, then we read the story of the nativity, wrote down our gifts to give to Christ, opened and read our new Christmas book (How the Grinch Stole Christmas), then we opened and put on our new Christmas socks. Brigham was in charge of choosing them this year. We also had carolers! For 12 days before Christmas we received a piece to the Fisher Price nativity, along with a poem each day. It was so fun for the kids every night to try to catch our mysterious visitors. On Christmas Eve we discovered it was the Brimhalls doing it for us when they came to sing to us and give us our last piece. Afterwards the kids (except Hudson) all piled onto the floor of Annie's room to "sleep." Brigham fell asleep fairly quickly, but Annie and Noah were up late. Just as Chris and I were falling asleep at midnight, Annie's alarm went off and woke everybody but Hudson up. At 5 in the morning I woke up to Annie and Noah talking. Brigham's voice was soon added to the mix. Since Annie's room is right next to me and Chris, we couldn't go back to sleep either. When I went in to tell the kids it was too early to be up, Annie declared that she had slept about two hours that night. Marvelous. I always vowed to not be one of those families who had all their presents open by 6:30 a.m. Christmas morning, but we were this year. We really need to work on that.
4 - With Christmas presents, we've tried a few different things, and I finally settled on something that works for us. I read somewhere of a family who tried to not focus so much on presents, and they decided to follow the wisemen and their three gifts for Christ. I like that idea, so for us, our kids can ask Santa for one present, and they get two from Mom and Dad. But they also have their stockings, they buy presents for each other, and they get gifts from Grandmas and Grandpas so, at least in my opinion, they end up with plenty. Santa also gives the family 4 gifts every year that Mom and Dad get to open - a movie, a game, a book, and a CD. Later we ate crepes for breakfast, which is a Christmas morning tradition, then relaxed the rest of the day. That night we invited some families over for fondue, which is what we started doing every year for Christmas dinner (I'm way into traditions, if you haven't picked up on that yet). The Cutlers, Andersons, Mortensens, and Calls came over and we had a great time.
5 - The day after Christmas we went down to the temple. The Brimhalls were so nice and insisted on watching the kids, so Chris and I had kind of an all day date.
6 - The next night Chris wanted to host a dinner for all of the older single sisters in our ward. They were all so sweet and grateful. It was a wonderful night with those ladies.

Whew! By the end of the week we were exhausted, and we knew it had been to much to do in one week. I think it was because we knew it was our last Christmas here, so we tried to cram as much as we could with as many people as we could. It was worth it!