Christmas and Beyond

My brother and his family came into town a few days before Christmas.  It was so. much. fun! Stephen and Boston love playing with their Quist cousins.  Every day went something like this: wake up, get dressed, go to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, play, play, play, nap, play play play.

Christmas Eve we acted out the nativity.

Celsea was Mary and Stephen was Joseph.

I was the angel.  With a cell phone in one hand.  (I used it to look up the words to the hymns, ok?)

 

Some wise men and shepherds.

 

On Christmas Eve Santa came to our house.

 

At 6:30 am on Christmas morning, Boston was the first to see what Santa brought.  He was still half asleep.

 

“Wook Stephen!”

 

Santa brought Boston a tricycle and tiger slippers.

 

Stephen received the Imaginext pirate ship from the jolly old man.

 

New toothbrushes were a surprisingly bit hit as stocking stuffers.

 

You can’t beat a Christmas morning smile!

 

The boys opened a gift from Mom and Dad which turned out to be a treasure hunt to find…

The Lego table! For some reason I felt that it was a little anticlimactic but they do love it now. 

 

The rest of Christmas morning we spent opening gifts with the Quists.  Here is a picture of all of us girls wearing the beautiful aprons my Mom made for us.  They are seriously so pretty I almost hate to get my dirty.  She worked very hard on these aprons and they are so well made!

 

Christmas afternoon and evening we spent with the Smiths.  We opened more gifts and had Christmas dinner.  I feel horrible but I have no pictures of this!  We get to see them a lot more frequently so picture taking has kind of been done.  But still…I wish I had some pictures. 

 

After Christmas we had a few more fun days of playing with the Quist cousins.  Here they are wearing the cute shirts Aunt Rebecca made for them.  Stephen and Boston have ASU on one side and BYU on the other so they can represent both Mommy and Daddy’s schools.  Anna and Jeremiah are BYU all the way!

 

We got to meet my sweet little nephew James for the first time.  He was such a chill little guy and soooo squeezable!

 

Boston and Jeremiah, who are only 6 days apart in age, finally started to connect with each other and play together!  They were scribbling on this paper and then laughing maniacally.

 

Jeremiah really loved getting to know Grandma and Grandpa’s dog, Indy better.

 

We went to a playground that was built on top of an old landfill.  It had some of the craziest playground equipment I have ever seen including a giant spider web of ropes that was 20 feet tall.  It was big enough to support adults and so the kid in Scott took over and he had to climb it.  Here is Jeremiah and Anna on the tire swing.

Boston was in his element on the tall slide.

 

We decided at the last possible moment that we should take a family picture with everyone.  The kids were in their pajamas and we used a tripod, but hey we are all there!

And I think we look gooood!

Then suddenly, everyone left town and we were left with the usual skeleton crew: my little fam, Grandma and
Grandpa, and Allen.  Sigh.  We sure do miss all those crazy kids!