Christmas 2013

Christmas was on a Wednesday this year.  I worked on Christmas eve until noon and so did Ryan.  My parents were so nice and watched Nolan for us for the past few days since he was sick and then his day care was closed until January 2. Ryan and I took Annie to the airport so she could go home to California.  Craig, Dianna, Jared and Kirsten went down to Florida to be with Dylan and his family.  

After dropping Annie off, Ryan wanted a "traditional" Christmas Eve hamburger from In-N-Out.  We went over to West Valley to have that.  We had been wanting to buy Nolan a toilet of his very own to help him warm up to the idea of toilet training.  As luck would have it, there was a Toys R Us across the street so we went over there.  Being Christmas Eve, the place was PACKED! Parents and kids were everywhere.  Luckily, we were the only ones buying a toilet so that area wasn't too crowded.  Ryan and I had a good laugh about buying a toilet on Christmas Eve when everyone else was buying toys for their kids.  When we got to the cashier, he said, "That is the classiest toilet I have ever seen." Again, we laughed about that.  

We went down to my parents and spent the rest of the evening there.  My dad made resgreensgrut for us.  We watched the Hallmark channel and played some games that Macy had come up with.  The games were so much fun.  The first game you had to pull as many tissues out of a Kleenex box using your chin in 1 minute.  The next game you had to keep a candy cane in your mouth and pick up the other candy canes with the candy cane in your mouth.  The fastest team to move all 10 of the candy canes won that round.  The final game was throwing marshmallows in the other teammates mouth.  They were a lot of fun.  We missed having Collie and Zach with us.

Christmas morning Nolan slept in, waking up at 7:15 am.  He wanted his usual chocolate milk and didn't even notice all the presents under the tree.  As soon as I turned on the lights to the tree and told him it was Christmas he got a little more excited.  Ryan came in and joined us and we started opening presents.  The first thing Nolan asked for was a bulldozer - luckily, Santa had brought him a bulldozer, excavator and front loader.  He played with that present for a while before realizing there were more presents under the tree.  Nolan got: a soccer ball; new church shoes; new Nike Free's; a piggy bank; socks; and cars.   I got Ryan a new shirt for work, socks and new under armor sweat pants.  Ryan got me some new long johns.  It was a fun morning with our little family.  

One thing we opened that was fun was back in November we had a FHE with Josh and Macy about things we were thankful for.  We wrapped a box and cut a slit in the box.  Each day or whenever we thought about it we would write down things we were thankful for and put it in the box.  On Christmas we opened the box and read the things we were thankful for.  It brought tears to my eyes to think back to the many, many blessings we have.  I wanted to remember the things we wrote down so here we go:

Ryan:

*Weekends off work to spend time with family

*Living my dream of architecture and planning (and just got a raise)

*Nolan sleeping in until 7:45 am the day after Thanksgiving

*Knowledge of the resurrection for Grammy

*Clean, warm laundry and nice warm house

*A snow day to spend time at home with the family

*Staci supporting my career goals! I passed PPP!!

*When Nolan likes to cuddle

Staci:

*Josh and Macy's FHE on Thankful

*3 day work weeks

*Clean laundry

*Ryan passed his second exam

*Nolan's smile

*People who work at American Express helping me quickly to get a new card

*Ryan and Nolan

*Warm house to keep out the cold

Nolan:

*Mom and Dad
*Mormor and Morfar

*Dwight

*Dogs

*Chicken Nuggets

*Bugs Life

Around 10:00 am we headed down to my parents house.  Josh and Macy were there.  We had breakfast and went sledding at Murray Park.  Nolan had a nice long nap and I think everyone fell asleep for a minute or two while watching TV.  Collie and Zach came down from Zach's parents house at 4:00 pm and it was time to open presents.  As usual, everyone was spoiled.  Ryan got: new dress pants from JCrew; money; dress socks; a tie; a leatherman; lotion; deodorant; and a puzzle. I got: a new scarf; 2 new shirts; a new pair of pants; socks; jewelry; a pink scarf; money;  deodorant; and lotion.  Nolan got: a lego jeep; an airport runway; planes book; cars; monster truck; bubble bath; a sweater; a church shirt; levi's; dusty crop hopper from the movie planes; socks; a football shirt and a book.  We had tortilla soup for dinner and watched movies/played games for the rest of the night.  It was a perfect day and I loved spending it with family!