Christmas

Christmas starts on Christmas eve at our house. Every year Jim and Lanita come back to Salt Lake for the holidays. Lanita's big Christmas Eve Party is at our house. Every one comes. The day before Christmas eve, they come over and get started on the cooking. Then they come over early on Christmas eve to finish getting ready.

Then everyone comes. There is tons of food...

This year we did a tray for the little kids. One where they could reach the food themselves, and anything that might get dropped, won't ruin my floors.

It was a big hit!

Especially for the little boys! They thought it was great.

Then starts the opening of the presents.

There is a lot of playing that goes on...

And visiting...

A few family shots....

Some waiting for the excitement to end... (or begin?)

Kate and James weren't coming over on Christmas day, so they opened all of their presents on Christmas eve.

We got a four generation picture.

And one with Lanita and her little boy....


After everyone leaves, we always do our little Christmas eve thing ourselves, where we open Christmas eve pajamas. The only one home with us this year was Jon. So we opened our present and then watched "It's a Wonderful Life"

Then was Christmas morning....

Jon got to go first.

At first he wondered what I was thinking with the Nerf gun set, but then he had fun with it!

Then Chatt and her family came over.

They opened their family stocking... I do big ones for the families.

And no matter how many presents little girls get, the make up is always a favorite!

Then Bronson came home from his dad's.

This little helicopter was his favorite...

Though he was pretty happy with the Nerf guns too.

By the end of the day, Britt came with her family.

Everyone opened more presents...

I went to Cort's a couple of days after Christmas. By the time they finish picking kids up and having their own Christmas with them, and taking them around to everywhere they have to go, they didn't have time to stop by my house this year. Plus the heater in their car doesn't work and it was freezing. So I went to their house.

They only had one of their kids that day, so she is the only one to open her presents then. I got each of the girls little twin babies. A boy and a girl. Alyssa kept calling hers her baby brother and her baby sister. She loved them though!

Then we got Dylan. Five days after Christmas, but he was able to stay for eleven days.

I got Ky that same day. She finally got to open her presents from me. She loved her babies too!

It was sort of a sucky Christmas this year. But at least we got to see most of the kids. We did get to see all of our grand kids. Chris is in California with his mom. I hope it goes well for him.

We are hoping that 2009 is a better year. It didn't start off so good though. On New Year's Day we had to put Buck down. He would have been 18 in April, and the vet said that was a record for such a large dog. But it was really hard anyway. He couldn't get up that day, and he had tried and had hit his face against something and was bleeding from his nose. His breathing was very labored too. So Dennis took him in. It was a sad day.