Christmas Celebrations

Well, we've had a busy Christmas this year and had lots of fun. On December 20th, we drove up to Calgary to have Christmas with my side of the family. Everyone but Tilane and her family were there (they live in Texas so it's a little far for them). It was great to have everyone together. Just imagine - 9 kids all 5 and under in one little house (not to mention 2 pregnant ladies as well!). It was hectic and noisy and great. I don't often get to see my nieces and nephews so I was loving it. It was also nice because I finally got to meet Micah (Ken and Heather's little 4 month old boy) and Elizabeth (James and Janae's brand new little one). I got to cuddle Elizabeth for a while when she was sleeping and I loved it! Can't wait to have another little one of my own. We had a wonderful late lunch/early dinner of ham, scalloped potatoes, salad, buns, juice, etc and I made some Jell-O Cheesecake for the dessert. After opening all the gifts, we went to a wedding reception of a girl I used to babysit (now I'm starting to feel old. :) Sarah Widdup got married and we came to the reception and the kids had a blast! There was a dance and as soon as the music started, Katie and Dallin did not stop until we left at 9:30. It was great to see everyone. Sarah, Melissa and Josh are growing up so much. I can't believe it! We stayed the night at Tracy and Aron's and talked until sometime around midnight with a lot of laughing in there. Poor Tracy is getting so big that the laughing was starting to hurt! Sunday morning, neither alarm clocks went off so all of us didn't wake up until 7:30ish and we had to get ready and go to the other side of the city to be at church at 9 am for Elizabeth's baby blessing. Needless to say, we didn't quite make it. We got there right after the blessing. It was a great Christmas program and we enjoyed ourselves. After sacrament meeting, we went over to Ken and Heather's with Mom and Dad and visited some more. James came over after a little while too. We had lots of fun. We ate, played Taboo, and sang some Karaoke. Katie loves to sing (especially if there's a microphone involved). We wanted to get home early so we left and stopped and Darrell and Dixie's to get adjusted and kept on traveling. We got to Dwaine and Janet's in time to eat some dinner and then went home and got the kids in bed. The picture is obviously an old one I had of Katie singing on Ken's Karaoke machine.

On the 24th, Dwaine's 55th birthday, we went to Dwaine and Janet's for dinner and to open Christmas Eve gifts. We had planned to play games but that didn't happen. We left around 11:30 and got home, put the kids to bed, got stockings out, etc and went to sleep ourselves. Katie woke up at 7:30 Christmas morning and we all opened our stocking and then ate some waffles for breakfast. We read the nativity story out of the scriptures and then opened our gifts. We didn't want to take too long because Scott was calling between 8 and 10 am our time to talk to everyone. We finished opening gifts around 9:30 and headed over. Scott had just called when we arrived and Dwaine and Janet hadn't eaten breakfast or opened gifts yet so we got Scott all to ourselves when they ate. We stayed until around 10 pm and Dallin was so tired he fell asleep in the living room on the air mattress. It was so cute. We didn't want to get up early and do boxing day shopping so we had a lazy morning and went in in the afternoon to do some shopping after the craziness had died down a lot. It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures, really, so I don't have any to add to the blog. Sorry.