Pre-Christmas Celebrations

Well, I figured it was about time to blog the last month of festivities. I guess I have been in the slow lane. I took the last of my Christmas decorations down today . . . at least I think it is the last of them. I am sure over the next week I will find various Christmas-y things around the house that I overlooked. They will sit on my staircase to go upstairs with me walking past them at least 25 times before they make it up to my second set of stairs up to the tippy-top, where they will once again sit and sit. Maybe I will have it all put away by February. But I digress.

I have so many pictures of the last month that I decided to blog them into three categories, pre-Christmas celebrations being the first. So, here we go.

We were lucky enough to be able to go to Salt Lake for quite a few days this holiday season. We arrived on the 16th, and the partying began. We did a lot of eating. We visited Shivers on more than one occasion. Awesome little restaurant -- who doesn't want to sit in a train while they eat their corndog and fries?


On our anniversary (Dec. 18th) our sweet family watched our kids while Ben and I spent the whole day together. We went to the temple, shared a gingerbread shake, and did a lot of Christmas shopping. I love my sweet honey! It has been an awesome decade.

We made gingerbread houses. (Special thanks to Katrina for baking the gingerbread -- she's very talented.) Aunts and Uncles kind of teamed-up with the grandkids, we all had lots of fun.



I think these girls mostly just ate the candy.


Jake had a masterpiece as well, but I never got a close-up of it. But, you can see how hard he is concentrating on his work.

Michael brought his computer game that he loves to play (Age of Mythology -- the Titians) and got his Grandma Nona hooked. They played more than a few games. [Interesting side note: I have known for many years that when my husband is really into his computer game he does not hear what I am saying. I have (over the past two years) found that to be true for my son as well. But, not until this last month did I discover the same is true for my mother.] It was pretty cute to watch them.


We even took the kids to see The Princess and the Frog in the theater. They love the show . . . they loved the popcorn more!


Before we left for Utah we made a schedule of things that we wanted to do and which grandparent's home we would be sleeping at each night. The kids even had a sleepover at Andrew and Becca's house one night (or should I say Gus and Abby's house -- their cats). Andrew and Becca were also our chefs extraordinaire -- they always had something yummy planned for dinner, and worked super hard to cook for so many of us. Thanks again guys.

So the final result for pre-Christmas celebrations . . . AWESOME!!!!!