Merry Christmas! A few weeks late...

I was wanting to do this a few weeks ago but thought I had no pictures of Christmas. Plus I didn't want to go over on texts sending pictures from my phone. So that's why New Year's will wait one more day. :) I did however, find a few pictures from Christmas, so here we go!

This Christmas we decided to go to St. George and spend it with Steve's parents and family. It was the first time we'd spent it with them that wasn't at my house and I wanted to be on their turf to learn some of their traditions. So while I was sad not to be with my family, I was excited for a new experience.

We decided to leave a day early because a major storm was heading our way. We were very glad we did! While everyone got dumped on up here, we got a nice rain and 36-42 degree weather down south. :)

We spent one night with Steve's parents because our hotel wasn't booked for us that night(as we went early). Gavin stayed in the living room with his siblings for the first time! He did awesome and had lots of fun... he's getting too big!

The next day we got everything packed up and hung out with cousins for the morning. We then went to our hotel room and got everything unpacked. I LOVED the colors they used in the room and can't wait to use them at my house. ;) We were going to do a birthday party for Steve's brother but his poor daughter wasn't feeling well so we had a small dinner, did a few errands and hung out at the hotel. The kids fell asleep well that night. Jakob and Andy cuddled up (unknowingly), and Gavin only fell off the bed three times during the night. :)

The next day we had some breakfast continental style before heading over to the grandparent's house. The kids enjoyed more time spent with cousins and then we went to Target to get Ashley's dress and a sweater for my dad. We had lunch at a yummy restaurant called The Mandarin and filled ourself with chinese and mongolian barbecue. YUMMY!

We went back to the hotel and watched part of the BSU vs TCU game at the hotel. At halftime we headed back to G'ma and G'pa Weists for dinner and for me to make a cheesecake as a reward for the contest I'd had to find something to remove the ink marks my Gavin so lovingly had drawn on our walls. We got done really late but they turned out looking and smelling very good! That night we also slept well after watching a little White Christmas.

Christmas Eve we got up early, ate our breakfast and headed off to Susan's house for some good snow time. Like I said, it was 42 degrees or so there which meant we had to head up into the mountains. After having fallen in love with Pine Valley, we went up a little further and the kids played in the snow. The older kids (cousins, not ours!) went on the 4 wheelers and we played until we froze - which in 19 degree weather it didn't take too long! I have gorgeous pictures but they're on my video camera...

We went to G'ma and G'pa Weists for a few hours afterwards before heading back to our hotel to get ready for the Christmas Eve festivities. We had yummy vegetable soup and bean soup that was one of their biggest traditions. It was SO good! Gavin even gulped it all up!!!

We had a wonderful time on Christmas Eve with excellent food(i.e. my cheesecake...among all the others) and then a fun program with music. Grandpa Weist talked about Christmas which was really nice to hear. The grandkids all sang I Am a Child of Godwhile standin around Grandpa(its his favorite song). Then it was time for gifts. We did the exchanges for the grandparents to the grandchildren and then Santa came! Each of the cousins bought something as an exchange and Santa handed them out. It was a lot of fun and the kids were excited for their gifts! They were all worn out by the time it got done and were happy to hop in bed that night so Santa could come.

Santa got to come to our hotel room (I talked about that in the last blog) and enjoyed some cheesecake and milk. Good thing he's not lactose intolerant... Jakob woke up first around 6:40 and looked around before I told him to hop back in bed. It wasn't long before everyone else was awake and we watched the kids look in their stockings before we opened gifts. It was the first time ever that it was just our little family so it was a fun, new experience. We went in order from youngest to oldest and then Steve and I opened ours.

We headed to Susan's for a yummy breakfast and the kids played with each other's toys and visited for a few hours. The rest of the vacation was spent playing with the new gadgets and sleeping and lots of playing with cousins!

We left a day later than what we'd planned because of weather but had great roads so I was glad we waited. We had plenty of shovelling to do when we got home. Here I am shovelling just so we could get the kids in before Steve shovelled the back. I couldnt even see the sidewalk steps to our house!!! We hope everyone had a fun Christmas!!!