Christmas 2009

This Christmas was as amazing as any!!! We have a great time during the Christmas season. My favorite part of Christmas is getting to spend so much time together as a family. For my family, Christmas Eve is THE DAY that we get together. We know that it's the one day in the year that we are expected to be together. My parent's don't make a big deal about any other holiday or day except for Christmas Eve. This year had a different feel to it, for me, because of my dad's cancer diagnosis. This fall we started to see "family time" a little different. You just never know how long you will have your loved ones around, for me, that's my parents and sisters. We had started eating our traditional turkey rolls when my mom got a call from Tisha, my oldest sister. She lives in Tooele and was the only sister missing that night. My mom handed me the phone to give her directions to my house..... she and her husband came down to surprise us!!! All 6 of us girls were together for Christmas Eve!!! That doesn't happen often, so we were sooo excited!!!!

Here I am with 2 of my favorite men, my sweet husband and my amazing dad!!!

As always, we read the Nativity story from the Bible. This year, Maddison was Mary, Tyler was a very fancy wise man and Cambelle was the best sheep in the land!!!

We got to see Blanche at her best....

I got to flirt with a cute guy......

Cousins played like crazy.......

Spread lots of love.....

And goofing off!!!

Here is all of us girls with our cute parents!!!!
From left to right (youngest to oldest), me, Launa, Blanche, Cindy, Brenda and Tisha.

Here is most of the group that were here for the party. My nephew and his family left before we took this picture, so by my count, that's about 50 family members!!!

But the highlight of the night had to have been my dad's tattoos!!!! We had been teasing that for his "talent" he would show us all his tattoos that he got from doing radiation treatments for prostate cancer. When it came time for him to show us all, he proudly pulled up his shirt and THIS is what we saw!!!!!!




He and my mom had gone and got some temporary tattoos to trick all of us!!!! We all laughed soooo hard!!!!! There were a few of my nieces that were SHOCKED that grandpa had such amazing artwork from radiation, of all things!!!!!!! Hahahahaha!!!! I love my parents and their sense of humor!!!!

After everyone left, the kids got to open their ONE package, which is always jammies.
They LOVE them!!!

We could hardly wait to see what Santa had brought us!!!! This year, we called my parents and they came over to see how we welcome Christmas morning at our house. It was fun to have them there. We teach the kids about Christ the whole year, everyday and especially in December, we focus on the birth of Christ, but on Christmas Day, we like to let the kids just let go and enjoy the gifts they get for being such great kids. I feel our kids are well rounded enough that they know what Christmas Day is all about and on that day, they can just be kids and feel the magic of all the fun gifts and excitement that the day has to bring. We really enjoy the whole day!!!!!

As soon as we were done with everything at our house, we headed over to Randy's parent's house!!! It's always a fun time on Christmas Day over there. The kids exchange their gifts that they have got their cousins and then the adults exchange their gifts and THEN..... we get to the adult's presents from mom and dad. Peggy always puts a code on the presents, not our names. We have to figure out the code, put the gifts into categories and then decide who belongs to which category!!!!! It's hard work!!!! This year was state symbols. Randy was Rhode Island, because his name starts with R and I was Hawaii. We had the state birds, flag colors, state gemstone, state quarter picture, state bird, flower, mineral, ect....... This years was the hardest one ever!!! Without help from the internet, we would still have a stack of presents to figure out!!!! It's such a fun tradition!!!! Thanks mom for all the hard work you put into it, we all know it's quite a task, but we LOVE it, so THANK YOU!!!!




Like I said, this year's Christmas was as fun as ever. We again are reminded of how blessed we are to live by both of our families and get to spend time with them all year!!!! I hope your Christmas was as fun as ours!!!!