Christmas

I don't know where to begin, of course this would be a whole lot easier if I would only have been faithful in posting. So now it's catch up time.


Christmas was so busy and so much fun this year. We spent the holidays with Kurt's family up in Malad, ID. This year all of the brother's were able to come with their families and stay at Grandma Peden's, needless to say it was a full house. The more the merrier!!! We started out with a Christmas Eve party at Kim & Lee's. The food was excellent but the highlight was a visit from Santa Clause. It was so cute, we had everyone downstairs and asked Sadie to sing one of the songs she had learned at school. While she was singing Santa came barreling thru the front door upstairs shouting Ho Ho Ho. Sadie kept on singing while her eyes got bigger and bigger. Finally Santa made his way downstairs and visited with each child, giving them a present. It was so much fun as a parent to watch the excitement!!!

Christmas morning wasn't as crazy as expected. With all of Kurt's brother's and their families, Kelly and Donna, and Grandma Peden there, we had way too many presents. I could not believe the amount of gifts that over took the family room. I wish I had pictures for proof, but I didn't have a working camera for the big day. I could have killed myself when I turned the camera on and then realized that I had left the memory card in the computer at home. Anyway, way too many presents and way too much excitement. We (the parents) finally got to bed on Christmas eve around midnight, and when we went to our room we found Sadie wide awake. She told us that she had heard Santa fall out of his sleigh due to the heavy bag of presents that he was carrying. So cute. I remember staying up late and listening for sleigh bells that I swore I had heard when I was a kid. So Christmas morning came at about 6:30am. The wind was screaming against the windows and had made it a long night, so as soon as Cassie woke up Kurt had had it with the wind and got out of bed and made the rounds thru out the house waking up all of the kids, except Aubrey and Treyton who had been up since 5:30. We brought all of the kids to the top of the stairs and brought down the kids in three shifts of different age groups. To keep things orderly, we had the kids play with their gifts from Santa first and then we removed everything out of the family room so then we would have room to open the presents that were under, besides, in front of and in the Christmas tree. Once again way too many presents. It was great, it was fun and it was exciting for all. I don't know if my children got the true meaning of Christmas at all but they sure did have fun!!!

Now onto the weather. It definitely could have been better, it snowed 1 1/2 feet with the wind blowing for two days straight. I did not leave Grandma's house for two whole days. In fact any trip outside was made only upon necessity. Well almost every trip, Paul and Emily's kids felt that it was a need to play out in the blizzard. I guess when you live in California that becomes a need. As cold as it was they still had fun and of course the snowman was built. We even had to dig our mini van out of the snow when it was time to leave. So I guess you could sum up our vacation with excitement, family, fun, too many presents, and way too much snow. What more could we have asked for?