springdellgirl

Christmas Crazy 2008

Things have been a bit on the crazy side for awhile. First of all all huge snow storm hit us a week and a half ago. Tyler came home on his lunch hour and picked me up and we went to Ailey's preschool for her little Christmas program...elf hats and all.





Little did we know that day that Tyler wouldn't head back to work until the next MONDAY...and that school would be out for the next two days...which gave our Christmas break a two-day head start. I wish I could say that the snow was fun and exciting and white Christmasy...but I wasn't feeling it. Instead it was a complete nuisance. Impossible to get around...horrible road conditions...cancelled recitals...parties...activities. I am still recovering from last winter where snow actually was falling from the sky in June. So I wasn't too thrilled. The kids on the other hand were loving it. Being snowed in did allow me to get all my Christmas baking, Christmas wrapping, and Christmas cards done.

At Ailey's Christmas Program:


Ailey with Aidan...her boyfriend...according to her. They play together at school everyday...much to her preschool teachers chagrin. Her teachers have been trying to break up this little duo and encouraging them to play with other kids. Ailey came home hopping mad one day and said "Today I had to play with a GIRL!!" Aidan's grandma told us at the program that all Aidan talks about is Ailey and I said that it was the same at our house. Unfortunately...Aidan doesn't get to return to preschool after Christmas break for family reasons. Poor Ailey. When I first saw this kid I burst out laughing. You can't really tell from this picture but he has reddish hair and is truly the spitting image of Tyler at that age. I asked Ailey if Aidan looked like anyone she knew. She said "Who?" I said "Um...Daddy." She started giggling and said "I KNOW!!" Too funny.

Christmas just came too quickly for me this year. I don't know if it was the late Thanksgiving or being pregnant or what but it was over and done with before I could really "feel" the Christmas spirit. Oh there were moments here and there but I like to savor the season and this year things just felt really rushed and busy.

We spent Christmas Eve at our house again this year with just our own little family. It was wonderful. We did that for the first time last year and it felt weird to be all on our own but this year it was nice. Our kids are old enough to have established traditions and it was really neat to enjoy Christmas Eve with our own spin on it.

I am ready to throw our family computer out the window though because I took many a heart-warming family picture only to lose them all and only be able to recover a few. For some reason we can download to the lap top just fine but downloading to our family computer crashes everything...this happened with our Thanksgiving pictures too!!

Christmas Eve is always my favorite part of Christmas...good food, family, fun, anticipation, and music. This Christmas Eve was no different. We had a fantastic meal: Steak, Shrimp, Reilly's gourmet mac and cheese, teriyaki green beans, cookies, candy, cream puffs, and eggnog. YUM. It was a lot of fun to cook with Reilly this year. She helped with all the Christmas baking and then helped with Christmas Eve dinner.

The finished product

Tyler and I came to the realization that with the digital camera we have pretty much stopped "filming" anything with our camcorder. So this year Tyler was manning the camera the whole time. The result: fewer pictures. What can you do? It's either one or the other.

Getting ready to open jammies

We really enjoy the timer on our camera...can you tell? :) This was just one of MANY!!

The kids put on the most hilarious Christmas pageant and we sang carols around the piano. I lost the pictures so you'll have to take my word for it. We read the Christmas story from the scriptures by candlelight as is our tradition. Then the stockings were laid out...as our fireplace is downstairs in our family room...so we don't hang them... and cookies and eggnog were left for Santa.

This year was really fun because Ailey was so into everything. We had a phone number where the kids could call throughout the night to see where Santa had been. They would call and he would have just been in Tennessee, then they would call and he had just left Iowa...Colorado etc. When they called and he had just left Montana Ailey ran screaming for bed!!

Santa's little helpers were up until 3 am waiting to give Santa a hand. Tyler wanted to get "helping" at midnight only to have the pitter patter of little Ailey feet put a stop to that. Luckily on Christmas morning we got to sleep in until 7:30 am.

The kids and their loot:

Santa brought lots of Polly Pockets...Ailey's favorite.

Lots of Star Wars stuff for Kameron

And...oh my...a cell-phone!!

Reilly taking over for Stacey as the family "trash girl". Stacey was "trash girl" in our family every year while growing up. I thought you'd appreciate this picture Stacey!!

We had a wonderful Christmas breakfast, showered, and took a terrifying road trip to my mom's house. She lives up by the Canadian border and the roads were horrible. My mom and her husband Ken are renting a little house while they decide where and when they want to build or buy so there's not a lot of room for all the family so we stayed at the CUTEST motel ever. It is owned by one of my mom's friends and it is absolutely DARLING!!



My my mom as usual is the most festive person around and made the holiday extra special. She had baked, cooked, and decorated like crazy and it was so much fun to be there and enjoy everything. Kirk, Jayme and Kaiden had Christmas in Utah with Jayme's family, Jordin and Jaylah were in KC, and Kelley had to work so it was just my mom, Ken, Stacey and her family and all of us. But we still had a great time.

Mom and Ty sampling the eggnog. We had the most fabulous food: Prime Rib and King Crab. Let's just say I nearly ate my weight...which is considerable these days...in crab!! So good.

Tyler filming everyone and everything

Kameron hyper on sugar!! Between my kids and Stacey's and enough cookies for 100 people things were CRAZY!!

That's good Hot Chocolate Grandma!!

We had a wonderful holiday and hope that you all did too. We leave you with this...