Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We love our family! It was so wonderful to see so many of them during the holidays! Even though we felt that we kind of went a little overboard on gifts for our kids (especially considering Miriam didn't really know or care), I feel like this is one of the most Christ-centered Christmas's we have had in our marriage, which was really amazing!

My sweet sister took these family photos for us.

Love my girls so much! Especially after the shooting in Connecticut, I have been grateful everyday for those sweet little girls and the gospel.

I can't stop chuckling at the face that Ellie is pulling in this one.

This has been the year of the princess for Ellie. For Christmas she wanted "Nineteen princesses and baby dolls." Well, she didn't get it, but she didn't have to sit on Santa's lap this year, so maybe she'll forgive us.

I am so lucky to have my truly amazing husband and two beautiful little girls. They are my whole life.

Miriam tripped while walking around and scraped her nose. Patti documented it, which I actually love. :) Poor girl. Miriam hits her head pretty hard at least once a week.

Mommy and Daddy doing some comforting. Ellie needed to be comforted as well.

An advent activity we introduced this year was a countdown candle. It was a huge hit! These pictures show the early stages and then after we got close to Christmas.

Poor Miriam's hair is coming in very slowly. Don't you love the little pony tail on the top of her head? It was also cute to have her match her little purple baby doll. 

Ellie loves playing in the snow with the Jacobson boys!

During December, John had a job interview on the coast of Florida. So of course he had to walk over to the beach and take a look at the ocean! Great view, but no job offer.

We baked some cookies and decorated them with the girls. A combination of crafts and treats - can't go wrong there!

We love these hilarious photos of Ellie holding Miriam on her lap to look at stories!

We decided to try the lights at the Hogle Zoo. It sounded so fun in theory! But it ended up being extremely cold with lights that were not quite as exciting as we had hoped.

All the usual Christmas festivities in Ogden!

Then after returning home, we finally got to our own stockings. It's great when there is always one more surprise!

From my journal: We did most of our Christmas shopping online, which was amazing! Not that we didn’t spend our fair share of time going to stores, which we were trying to avoid, but still did. But it really was awesome! We spent a lot of money, but I don’t regret it. The previous year I tried to make too many of the presents and it stressed me out too much. I really like everything that we got everyone and it was great! We got ourselves a tablet and we have exceedingly enjoyed. We also got ourselves a game—Dominion, which is really fun. My parents got us some Cutco knives which I was so, so excited about. That was the other thing that we were deciding between (tablet or nicer knives). So what a wonderful surprise! We got Ellie some princesses, which she didn’t like as much I thought she would, but she did like everything. We feel like we really spoiled the girls this year by spending $35-40 on each, but I am sure that looking back in future years it won’t seem like that much. This all being said, I don’t feel like that I focused as much on presents this year as I have in previous years, because I wasn’t making most and was able to just enjoy the season and think about the birth of the Savior. I did make two presents: a play beard for Johnny and a “Not Tonight” pillow for Marc and Miriam. It was supposed to be a white elephant, but I think it turned out really nice and considering the “not tonight” was removable it was great! I also made a wreath for our door, which I think turned out really well. To count down to Christmas we got a candle and marked it to burn every day. We also read a scripture about Christ every day.

We attended Owen’s and Nathan’s blessings. Cute little boys. We also had the December birthday dinner on one of the those weekends as to capitalize on one of the trips to Ogden. The second week of December the Jacobson’s came to Utah to go to Debbie’s brother’s wedding. It was so fun to hang out with them. We hung out with them for part of the day on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and went swimming with them up at her brother’s house on Thursday. It was so fun to hang out with them. Her brother’s house in Centerville is super cool with an indoor pool and the house itself is really long and skinny with circular rooms on the ends. They are so nice to us. They gave us some really nice Christmas gifts as well. Unfortunately there was some weirdness between hanging out with them and the Guinns. There were a few hurt feelings but I hope that it is okay by now. Basically the Guinns got upset because we hung out with them more. It was too bad.

The night we had my birthday dinner in Ogden we had a lunch at Jeremiah’s restaurant with some of my friends from high school. It was nice to hang out and see everyone. It is weird to think of how much has changed since high school.

Something fun we have been practicing recently was country dancing. We have practiced a lot at home and actually gone twice (once for my birthday and once for our anniversary). We tried performing some moves at the Pearson Christmas dinner, which was a total flop. Turns out we are not performers. J It is still super fun. I really love it! The first time William and Camille came into town and we had dinner with them then went dancing together. It was really fun.

The week before Christmas we also went to zoo lights with McKenzie, my mom, and Kayla and Cortney. The lights were more impressive than I thought they would be. I was disappointed not to see more animals and how cold it was. It has been so, so cold the past few weeks.

On December 14 there was a school shooting in Connecticut. Twenty kids and six adults were killed. One of the kindergarteners killed was Randy and Karen’s granddaughter Emilie. She is Robby and Alissa little girl and was only six. Holy cow. It is so sad. I am almost crying even thinking about it. What a senseless, horrible tragedy! These kids were so young and innocent. We went to the funeral in Ogden on the 22^nd, which actually kind of renewed my faith in humanity. The community did so much for the family. There were pink ribbons everywhere to remember Emilie. So many people donated and sent condolences that they had a community memorial for her. The funeral itself was more private and there were only about as many people as would be at sacrament meeting there. Elder Cook and the Governor were there and gave amazing talks. There was also someone else from the seventy that spoke as well as Emilie’s cousin and her father. It was such an amazing service. A huge spiritual boost as well as so sad for the loss of that little innocent girl. That poor family. That night at the family dinner, Jon Schmidt came and gave a little performance because he heard that Emilie liked to dance to his music. Her little sisters started dancing. It was so sad and so sweet. Not a dry eye that whole day. I really received a testimony of Zion and the power of a group of people all trying to fulfill their covenants and mourn with those that mourn. There really is so much power in worshiping together and joining our faith with those around us. It is what Zion is all about: thinking about others and not ourselves. It really was a remarkable experience.

The next day was my 26^th birthday. Wow, I am getting older. We went to church (I actually had to take Miriam home early.). John got up early and cleaned the apartment for me. It was so nice and totally the gift of service. That evening he helped me make Chinese food and cheesecake to celebrate. So delicious! He gave me a salad spinner as a surprise and also some new shirts that weren’t a surprise. J The funny thing was that Julie also gave me a salad spinner and almond butter. It was so nice. We took the one from John back, but it was the thought that counted. J We stayed up late that night wrapping presents. I am sure that will become a tradition. J

On Christmas Eve, we got packed up and headed up to West Valley to see John’s parents for a while before heading up to Ogden. It was really fun because Sarah’s family was there. They just moved back to the USA from Japan where they have been stationed for three years. Their kids are getting so big! We also saw Millie’s family there and Joe and Regina’s family of course. We saw brand new baby Joseph who miraculously doesn’t have Cystic Fibrosis. So great! That evening was wonderful at my parents’ house with David and Patti. We have a fabulous dinner of corned beef and cabbage. We also did rice pudding and attempted a rendition of the nativity. I love family traditions! We stayed up too late playing with our new tablet.

Christmas morning we spent at my parents’ house. It was great! Everything about Christmas this year was wonderful (except the sicknesses we caught and that Miriam and Ellie fought about the tree.) We opened up our little family’s presents first thing in the morning. Then everyone came over and we had Christmas breakfast (so delicious!) followed by our family’s gift exchange. We did white elephants for the adults and real presents for the kids. Kayla and Cortney gave us a nativity set that wasn’t as bad as they made it out to be. J Patti gave them a truly hilarious picture of their announcement picture surrounded by Twilight quotes and images. It was so funny. We gave Marc and Miriam the pillow and they gave David and Patti lots of army toys. We opened stockings and were surprised to get the Cutco knives. So excited! (Of course the first time I used them I cut myself!) We went over to Aunt Carol’s and delivered her present which for the first time was pretty great. No one else was really there and we were able to sit and visit. That night we went over to Grandma’s house and had a great dinner of course and the gift exchange. I was particularly looking forward to the twelve days singing this year because I had taught Ellie the actions. Something really noteworthy was that Grandma and Grandpa made treasure boxes for all of the little girls. They are so sweet! We were able to put the kids to bed and go back over there to help clean up and play games. Unfortunately it readily became apparent that Bill was super sick with fever and the chills. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that lots of people got sick with the flu shortly thereafter starting with Grandpa and Grandma of course. Despite this they just left on a 34 day cruise going up the east coast of Africa. So cool!

Miriam, John and Ellie also got sick with different things since Christmas. Miriam has had the flu. John had a bad cold. Ellie threw up a few times a couple of nights in a row in the middle of the night. Because of this illness our New Year’s plans went kind of awry. We were planning on going to the Guinn’s house and actually spending the night, but of course we didn’t want to spread our germs. We still stayed up until 1 am playing Settlers of Catan over the webcam with the Jacobsons. It was really fun.