holly jolly christmas

christmas is my very favorite time of year! i love the feeling in the air, i love decorating, i love getting a tree, i love buying presents, i love it all!! the only down side is i forget how crazy it all can get! this year curtis' whole family came to stay at our house for 2 weeks....we went from a 3 person household to a 9 person household. luckily we have a big house! despite 2 screaming babies, a yapping dog, and lots of stress, we had a good time!

curtis' family has a tradition of making gingerbread houses. so the afternoon of christmas eve, we whipped up the frosting, pulled out the candy, and started working away. although i was not impressed with my creative juices this year, things didn't turn out too bad.

that evening we headed over to my parents house to spend the night with my family. my family has the tradition of drawing names then opening those presents on christmas eve so we did that and also enjoyed playing the old nintendo 64 and watching "bedtime stories."

these pictures are of mason's very first present! he didn't really get what to do but it was still fun! it was a little phone that my brother got for him and mason loves playing with it.

christmas morning we woke up and opened more presents! mason still didn't get the hang of it so i basically opened all his presents for him :) after we finished the unwrapping and ate some breakfast, we went back to our house to join curtis' family.

my brother-in-law gave us this beautiful picture of the manti temple for christmas! i love it!

later that day we went to mesquite to visit curtis' grandparents.

curtis was happy with the presents that i got him (at least it seemed like it anyway :) and i was extremely pleased with my presents (including our freaking awesome new camera and a $400 designer purse! my in-laws got it for only $100 :) mason is having a hard time becoming interested in his presents....he is so obsessed with standing that he will only play with them if he can do it while standing up. we got him a little toy to support his improving walking skills but taking steps is still so new to him that it is a little scary.

christmas is always an important time for us but this christmas was especially important for both sides of our family. my brother will be leaving on his mission this spring and curtis' youngest brother will be going to afghanistan in march. we are so grateful that we got to spend time with both of them before they leave!