Nov 18, 2011

Christmas 2009

 Christmas this year was a lot of fun.  We had all of the children and their families here for at least part of the holidays. Jeff and his family were here from the 18^th to the 21^st. However during the short visit we had three parties. We met as a family on Saturday after Marie and I had completed photographing a wedding at the Provo temple during the morning.  We had a lot of fun and a big dinner. We played games and Jeff even had the four wheeler out driving around the yard in the snow. (It was a bit hard but after one trail was made it worked a little better.) The grandchildren even got to play a game of twister Christmas style where the plastic sheet had Christmas things on it rather than just the colored dots.

Then on Sunday we had a birthday party for Marie and more food. It was a big meal provided by the children.  Marie was pleasantly surprised with a new Kitchenaid mixer suggested by Tia. It had occurred to me as something that I wanted to do after seeing Tia use hers here to do a cake a few days earlier. I figured that if I got one that then Tia wouldn’t have to bring hers. However it was Tia making the suggestion to get it from Bed, Bath and Beyond.com that made it a little easier for me since she came and helped decide on the model and color. Marie also received a Cuttlebug machine which I didn’t even know she had wanted.  So Brittany picked up one of those and then suggested to me that I get some embossing folders for her for Christmas which helped me since I had no idea what would be best for Chritmas after having just given the Kitchenaid mixer to her.  We had a lot of fun watching her open the presents from each of the children.

Then on Monday night we had our family Christmas party here at home. All of the children and their families were here again and we ate more food. (I have gained five pounds over the past two weeks and most of it over those three days.) It was a lot of fun however and each of the families were excited to open their presents that they had given each other. We had a lot of fun but the end came too quickly and Jeff  and Lori began packing to return home that evening. They had to go since there were major storms predicted for the next few days and they had mountain passes to cross to get home. They left at around 9:15 pm and needless to say Marie and I didn’t sleep too well that night. Part of the reason I must admit was because of too much food in my stomach. I arose finally at 5:30 am and went to see where Jeff had emailed us at 4 am stating that they were home and I was almost ready to go back to bed since I could probably sleep then but I stayed up and instead almost slept at my computer at work all day instead.

I had taken Marie to a movie on her birthday on the 16^th that was called “Everybody’s Fine”. It was a movie about a man who was getting prepared for each of his children to come visit him and they all backed out at the last minute so he ate his home bar-b-qued filet minon steak by himself and then decided to go visit each of them.  It was a very interesting movie to watch at this time of our lives and knowing we were expecting all of the children for the holidays ourselves. Well for us they did all come and it was a very great event or set of events.

So for Christmas we had everyone again with us on Christmas Day as well, except for Jeff of course but even with them we had a video chat with them before we opened our presents here. Loren, Tia, and Brittany were here at around 9:30 AM and after we had video chatted with Jeff’s family we ate breakfast in our traditional manner and then opened presents and greeted Hayden’s family around 12:30 PM and Ben’s family around 1:30 pm. I got a lot of pictures and am trying to process them quickly so that I can send a cd back with Loren and Rachelle since of course Brooklyn was a major star in most of them. We have really enjoyed having them here and Brooklyn has really been fun. At first she wouldn’t let us hold her but now when they are almost ready to go home she is finally letting us hold her and play with her one on one.

Now Hayden gave me a present that is going to place quite a challenge on me. He gave me a book called “Dad, Share your life with me …” A daily journal of Childhood memories. I have been thinking that what I really should do is start a private blog and write it in the answers to the questions that are written for each day in that blog so that all of the children would have it and be able to read it since my hand writing is far from legible at best. Then each of them that might be interested could pull it off and save as they desired.