Christmas...

was a blast. So glad the magic never dies. Christmas Eve we ate our traditional mexican dinner -enchiladas this year. One of these years I'll get to make our sopapillas but with so many helpers and too little time we kept it simple. With all the excitement and all the chaos I'm a stickler for making sure we put Christ in our Christmas celebrations so we attempted to do a nativity. This year we added Samuel the Lamanite. (a couple days ago he came out of the bath with a towel on and said "here's the lamanite!)

(The only picture I ended up with- everyone else was being camera shy)

Henry cooperated for a few verses as Baby Jesus. But as always the kids were most anxious to get their stockings ready and we were ready to send them to bed.

We gave the kids a phone to call us in the morning so we could make sure Santa had come. They all slept in Kate's room. At 2:40 the phone rang. "we're ready!" Chris had to go down and tell them it was waaayyyy too early. Kate said she thought the clock said 5:40. Chris said "that's still too early- you can call @ 6." They called at 5:58. We had a very strict budget this year but you'd never know. The kids all got what they asked for and a little more. Henry even got a highchair from Santa (how does Santa know these things). Grandmas (and Grandpas too :)) were so very generous- the "kids" got a new air-hockey table and some awesome super hero jammies with capes.

A few hours later we were packed and in the car headed to Ogden to surprise Gram (Chris' mom). Chris had told her that we probably wouldn't be able to make it this year because of work. So after a fairly easy 8.5 hr drive we put Henry in his car seat on the front porch with a card and then rang the doorbell. The rest of us snuck around back. Chris's dad was in on the surprise so he made sure that Gram was the one to open the door. She was, to say the least, surprised!

We then spent a fun filled week playing in the snow, Chris took Kate skiing, we watched movies, went to the movies, made Harry Potter potions while watching Harry Potter, played games, Papa Kevin shot off an impressive fireworks display for New Years (some of which were probably not legal in Utah- but hey we were surrounded by snow). We ate a shrimp boil off the dining room table and made homemade sushi, and last but not least celebrated James and Kate's birthdays! Whew! Fun was had, memories were made and we especially loved just being with family.