Christmas Festivities

Nate and I had a WONDERFUL Christmas! Nate finished finals on December 13th and I finished a week later. During that time, we moved into my parent's basement for one month while we waited for our condo to be ready for us to move in. Nate did A LOT of the work himself and his two brothers helped quite a bit as well. We were grateful for their help. After we were situated into my parent's house, we were really able to focus on Christmas.

The first big Christmas event we had was my immediate family's big Christmas dinner. Andrew and Melanie were leaving for Oregon so we did it a couple weeks before Christmas. This year, instead of giving us a bunch of presents (because we already have a lot of stuff), my parents gave each person in our family $100 to do some sort of service with. My mom got the idea from an Oprah show where Oprah gave each person $1000 to do something good for someone else. Of course that would add up to a lot of money if my parent's gave everyone that much, so they gave each of us $100. Nate and I put our money together and got involved with Camp Kesem at BYU which is a summer camp for children whose parents suffer from cancer. They do this camp so these kids have the opportunity to have a fun time and get away from the stress in their family. It costs $250 dollars for one kid to go to camp, so Nate and I supported one kid to go. Everyone else in the family did great service things as well - such as giving toys to children's hospitals, babysitting handicap children, and participating in KIVA. Anyway, it was a fun night for all of us.

Next, we had the Santa Claus breakfast that my grandma treats us to every year. We go up to Wheeler Farm and eat a good breakfast and sit on Santa's lap. Although we are all older now we still have a fun time. Here we are with Santa and eating our yummy food:





The next Friday we went to a big extended family Christmas party on my dad's side. We had it at my aunt and uncle's house up in Salt Lake and we ate a good meal and opened gifts. We each picked someone's name in the family. Nate ended up with a Scookie (cook a cookie in a skillet...or an omlet or something) and my cousin gave me these cute gloves/mittens that could be either. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera that night.

On Christmas Eve, during the day, my mom's whole side of the family ordered out Chinese food for us all, which has been a long standing tradition. Then that night, we went to Nate's family's big Christmas dinner. Everyone opened up "warm and fuzzies" and we had a white elephant gift exchange. The nieces and nephews were especially hyper and excited for Christmas. Diane also opened up her big b-day present from us all on that night. Here are some pictures of that:

Here are the nephews and nieces in their new pajamas:





Nate's mom opened her b-day gift that night too because her b-day is the 26th.





On Christmas morning, my parents, Nate and I, Becca, and Steve woke up early to go to the Developmental Center to deliver presents to some of the handicapped individuals there. It was an awesome experience. We brought gifts to them and sang Christmas carols. It definitely got us in the right mood for Christmas. The coolest thing about it was the the lead guitarist from Maroon 5 and his family were in our group singing Christmas Carols. Random, I know! It was so funny though. His dad was really friendly and told us all who he was and we were all star struck...no, just kidding, but it was pretty cool. My mom even got a picture of us all in our group and he is in it. His name is James Valentine. Anyway, we came back and opened gifts. Nate and I didn't get each other anything this year because we just bought a car and a condo, so that was our present :) I was fine with that. My parents gave us some cool things though and members of our family did too. We felt so blessed everyone was so generous!




We later went to my grandma's that night for dinner. We take a girl's picture and a boy's picture every year on my grandma's couch. Here they are:



And our family picture:



Then for our anniversary, Nate took me to Little America for a night. And we stayed in a room just like the one we stayed in for our Honeymoon. We took a picture and it looks just like one we took a year ago. It has definitely been a fun and eventful month!