a white christmas in texas!!

we have had a fun week! heres the how our christmas went!

last wednesday morning curtis went to work with a bad sore throat. they have a free nurse practicioner there for employees, so he stopped in at her office before his shift. strep throat!! go home til at least friday, and you probably wont even want to come back that day either! so with the christmas holiday curtis got a 6 day weekend. it was awesome! even if he is sick, it's great to have dad home whenever we can :) he was feeling better by friday and even went to "the hobbit" with our neighbor that night. i figured i owed it to him since i made him watch the kids that  morning so i could go visiting teaching :)  saturday morning i headed to my last choir practice before our big christmas performance. i think most of you know i am the choir director in our ward. it has been such a challenge but i feel like i have learned a ton of things! anyway, i have been stressed beyond belief since i found out i was in charge of the sacrament meeting christmas program. we have been working super hard since october, i had to make a few last minute changes,  and i just wasn't feeling like we were prepared. i went to practice on saturday feeling sick to my stomach. after our practice i felt much better (although still scared out of my mind! i hate being in front of people, add to that the fact it was THE WARD CHRISTMAS PROGRAM!!). afterward, i got home and prepared for a temple trip with curtis. we are terrible at getting to the temple. we actually haven't gone since before we had sophie. it didn't help that sophie breastfed for a whole year and never took a bottle which meant we could never be gone for longer than a few hours. now that we don't have that issue and we have someone we trust to leave our kids with we decided to make it a date. not only was this our first time at the dallas temple, it was the first time we have gone to a temple outside of utah. wow. huge shocker. they organized things a little differently and there were only 8 people in our session including us. 8!! i was the only woman and we were the only couple there until the last second so those of you who go to the temple probably know what we were asked to do. it was our first time and i was super nervous but it ended up being a really cool experience :) the best part was my nerves about the next day had calmed down tremendously! luckily we only ran into a little traffic there and back so we were only gone for about 4 hours, home just in time to get the kids ready for bed.

we had to be at the church early for choir the next morning. we had to warm up and since it was joseph smith's birthday the bishop had asked us to sing praise to the man for prelude music.  i looked at my choir and said "here we go!". the time passed quickly and before i knew it sacrament meeting was over! we did it :) i felt like i had just hiked to the top of mount Everest and kicked its butt! it was a great feeling of accomplishment for me. glad to have that over, we went through the rest our meetings then tithing settlement afterward and i finally got to relax and focus on christmas and my family :)
we went to the park on christmas eve then spent the evening just hanging out and had a nice dinner of ham, potatoes, broccoli, rolls and pumpkin pie. the kids opened up their christmas eve pajamas and we watched the grinch before sending them to bed. then the fun began for us :) it actually wasnt as bad as we thought it would and got to bed at a decent hour. unfortunately we had thunderstorms roll in around 4 am which woke mason up and due to the on going thunder and lightning, he took a while to fall back asleep...we were a tired family the next day! anyway here is our christmas in pictures!

mason did a great job decorating the tree :)

 

our friends had several of the neighbors over for a gingerbread house making party. it was a lot of fun and we got to know the people in our neighborhood a little better.

opening up our christmas eve jams!

mason suddenly turned into a model :)

sophie loves playing with kitchens and now she has her own!

 mason wanted a blue bicycle more than anything in the world! santa is awesome :)

check out this dork :)

curtis is the most thoughtful person ever :) he got this desk for our computer stuff and for me to use as my scrapbooking station.

 

we had thunderstorms all morning (opening presents while lightning flashes and the ice cream truck making rounds on christmas eve...will i ever get used to this weather? :) but later that afternoon the rain turned to snow. just enough to make the ground white. now that's the kind of snow i enjoy :)

 

so that was our christmas! although we miss our family i love having just my own cute little family to myself for the day :) hope everyone else had and continues to have a wonderful holiday season!