I'm alive!

Yes! I'm alive! I have a lot to catch up on, so here we go! On Christmas Eve at around 4:30 we found out that our Christmas Eve plans were cancelled... We were going to go to a friend's house to have dinner, but she had a migraine, so we couldn't go over. We were really bummed, but luckily I had some chicken that I cooked into "pseudo" Chicken Kiev. I couldn't do the insides of the chicken kiev, but I could do the batter, and I had cream of mushroom soup instead of making the real mushroom sauce... So it was nice to have dinner together alone, even though it wasn't what we had planned. Then we had our own Christmas program. We sang Christmas songs, I read a Christmas story, Travis sang a song, we both sang a song when my parents called during their program. We read "The Night Before Christmas" (which Travis gave me a nice copy of). And we read and acted out the nativity. I was Joseph, Elora was Mary, Max was a shepard, and Travis was a wise man.

Don't you think that's the cutest Mary you ever did see?

Then after our program, we started the tradition of opening up new pajamas on Christmas Eve. The kids absolutely loved them!

On Christmas morning, I asked Elora if we should go downstairs to see what Santa brought. She thought Santa Claus was going to come on Christmas, like that she was going to SEE Santa Claus. So I had to explain to her that he brought presents, filled our stockings, and ate the cookies we left out, but that he couldn't stay to see us. After we saw what Santa brought, and ate breakfast, we drove up to my brothers house in Tremonton. It was snowing, but the roads were fine in Ogden. As we got further north, they got worse, and we couldn't even see the road for the exit to Scott's house. There were no tracks or anything! Luckily we made it safe, and it snowed ALL DAY LONG! So we surely got a white Christmas! We opened the rest of our gifts at Scott's house along with my other brother and his family. We played games, played Scott's new Wii (I got a workout!) And had a very nice Christmas dinner! We had a lot of fun! We stayed the night because it was still snowing that night.

Here's me after I opened the gift from my Mom that she made! I absolutely love it! I love advent calendars, and this one is awesome! She cut it all out and quilted it all together, and made two others as well. Did I say that my Mom is AWESOME?!

Happy early birthday to me. I hardly ever get new clothes, and my Mom put some in the box as filler for my birthday because they were cheap. (My birthday is in March...)

Elora opening her present from Joe and Kimberly...

It's flowers for her hair!

So pretty!

I made Travis a big King sized quilt. My awesome visiting teacher brought over her quilting frames one day while Travis was at work and school. And I did the borders on Christmas Eve while Travis was at work. It was my first time doing quilt borders, I think I did a good job, if I do say so myself... :)

Alisa in her new hat...

The day after Christmas, we drove down to Ogden, unpacked our Christmas stuff, and then packed up to go to St. George. Then we drove down to St. George, said hello to the family, and then went to our annual friends Christmas party with our high school friends. We had a lot of fun. Then the next day, we got to play a little basketball and got to see my aunt and uncle and cousins who came down from Washington State who I don't get to see very often.

(Here's Max at Great Grandma's house, he likes to hang onto Travis' loop on his pants for some reason...)

The next week was a blur of having way too much fun, and Travis went back to Ogden to work for three days, and we had an awesome New Years playing games, and playing the Wii :) And in the middle of all that fun, on New Years day, I got sick, and could hardly get out of bed the whole day... What a way to start out the new year, right? Hopefully that's not a sign of things to come this year... The next day, I was feeling much better, and we had our annual adults only (late) Christmas dinner. We were in charge of it, so I guess they had to wait for us to get down to St. George to have it. The next day, Saturday the 3rd, Nick, our oldest nephew got baptized. (Weird that I have a nephew old enough to get baptized...)

Then on Sunday the 4th, we enjoyed church, and hanging out and relaxing. Here's Elora after she took the comics away from uncle Chad when Daddy was wrestling him...

Then she let him read them, as long as she could cuddle too...

Then that evening, we had a family home evening with everyone in the family to also celebrate all the birthdays in the month. So Happy Birthday Mom, Dallas, and Travis.

Then we drove home, aww good to be home...

Here's a picture thrown in that Elora took, I just thought it was a funny picture that she took...