Christmas Time (was) here...

The week before Christmas was busy, busy, busy! The kids and I made a few treats to take to the few people we know in the Valley (it took us like 2 hours to drive the half-dozen plates around, and we were only partially successful finding people home). It was fun to make them, and they LOVE helping with stuff like that! (one picture is in the post below)

 The weekend before Christmas my family all gathered here and we spent some time together, even having our own 2-day Christmas party, complete with a park trip, a crazy Girls' night out, a cousins' present exchange, getting a babysitter for the kids while all the adults went to Jump Street and dinner, and watching some old family videos (1995) that I recently found and edited. (They were thought to be lost for the last 10 years) All of it was awesome!

Some of these pictures are presents from Phil & Sophie when I inadvertently left my camera at their house...

As soon as my family cleared out (Emily and Jason and their boys had been staying at our house), Jeremy's parents and Chloe came to stay with us for 2 days. Chloe wasn't feeling well most of the time, but we still had a good time with them, and got to go out to eat, check out the temple lights, watch some family movies from Jeremy was a kid, and do a mini present exchange. It was so nice to see everyone and have some fun together!

Christmas Eve we sang some Christmas carols together as our little family and read Luke 2. The kids were so excited but went to bed pretty easily. We were up a little later than we should have been. We told them not to get up and come in our room (and barricaded the living room with some chairs and a blanket, so there would be less chance of peeking!) until there was a "6" on the clock (as in 6 AM). So when Jaina saw a 6 on the clock, apparently she woke Reilly up and designated him to come tell us it was 6.  The "6" she saw was on the wrong end: 5:46. I guess I should just be grateful it wasn't 3: or 4:46... I had started getting a cough and drainage the night before, so I was mostly just grateful it was time to get up and I could stop tossing and turning.  Jaina and Katy got a "Princess Castle" from Santa, as well as some little Disney princesses to play in it. They're the new ones with dresses that clip on (think of a chip clip in a dress shape) instead of the little rubbery silicone ones. Mommy is VERY happy that she doesn't have to help dress the princesses! Jaina also got a carriage to go with the castle/princesses and Katy got a Dora backpack with a flashlight, pretend cell phone, and a beanie Boots to carry in it. Reilly got two different Angry Birds games, one of which was a Star Wars Angry Birds set. He was pretty excited!  Here are just a couple pictures.

You can find quite a few other Christmas pictures here -
Facebook Album: Holidays 2012
You might have to scroll down towards the bottom.


I was feeling kind of icky most of Christmas. We had invited Phil & Sophie over for dinner, but thankfully they ended up not being able to come at the last minute, because I started running a fever that evening, and over the next 6-7 days I'm pretty sure we all had the flu. Like influenza. Maybe not (we never got it checked) but it was a nasty little virus, even if it had another name!