Christmas 2008

Me and Steve had a GREAT Christmas this year! We drove 13 hours to Austin, TX because my oldest sister and her husband live there. There were 13 of us all together and all I can say is PARTY! It was really cool too because my cousin BrieAnn and her husband Jake and thier little baby Cora came too. It was the first time we've had a baby at a family get together! But Cora was so fun and we were all way sad when they left Friday! We really had a blast, Steve and I got there late late on Tuesday night and stayed until the next Monday morning. The family togetherness was so awesome on this trip, we all had a lot of fun and late nights spent hanging out. This next part I totally plagiarized from Mhari's blog, but I thought she did such a great job summing up our adventures that I couldn't do a better job. I will however make some changes to keep it interesting!


We spent Christmas Eve doing all kinds of things. Mom and Kiersty and I were making aprons for everyone. Kiersty found these super cute retro patterns and we all bought fabric and that was the majority of the day.


Steve was kind enough to let me open my gift a day early so that I could find out it wasn't a fish tank like he had been telling me all week.

Here is my apron! I spent ALL day making it, I am such a beginner, my mom had like 6 half way done when mine was half done! It was fun though, to figure out my machine actually make something!

The boys went to see Yes Man to avoid all this girly stuff. :-) And then came home to play more of the Wii puzzle game. It took 4 of them to solve portions of this. When Steve got here he was immediately attacked to find out which of the 4 of them took physics 2 last and could be a better problem solver. See how hard at work they were?

And then we had some yummy lasagna for dinner - Thanks Meg and Brittany, made sugar cookies - as if we hadn't eaten enough - even Cora jumped in to help.
And Mhari started baking for Christmas day. We had chocolate pecan pie, pumpkin caramel cheesecake, and caramel apple pie. And we ended the night with White Christmas to really get us in the spirit of things. And Cora let dad hold her and play with her and laughed at his funny faces. :-)


Christmas Day was a pretty laid back day. We ate a late brunch of Grandma Carlene's famous stuffed french toast and buttermilk syrup (THANKS GRANDMA FOR SHARING THE YUMMY GOODNESS!!!) and we finally started opening gifts around noonish. We always start out with the youngest and work our way up, so Cora was up first. She really wasn't sure what to do but enjoyed tearing up the paper more than the gifts probably.


Here is BrieAnn holding her best present of the year. Bows and all.
As well as a fabulous necklace - Thanks Steph.

Mhari got a garmin so she will stop calling James for directions when she doesn't prepare before leaving the house.

Seth got a soccer sweatshirt from Kiersty and his face says it all.
Brittany started a wrapping paper war with Seth and Steve...She just got beaned in the head twice in a row by them.

Jake for all of his spare time, now has a Rubiks cube to help occupy it.

And Steve got some new goggles so he can be totally pimp out on the slopes!
Mom got a new shirt to wear for pictures and of course for work too.

Dad got I believe the only John Wayne movie he doesn't already own. (now what do we get him?)
James got some new Wii games to entertain him when not busy with his car.

Megan got some new movies to entertain her roomates with.
And then there was the end of Hurricane Christmas '08!

We had a great Texas Christmas menu of brisket, mashed potatoes, homemade mac and cheese, and of course yummy pies. I will be trying to lose the weight for months to come!! And we did family pics. I'll post those later as this is already super long!
Friday morning BrieAnn and Jake and baby Cora had to head back home to Oklahoma for the Johnson family Christmas. We were sad for them to go, but so glad they made it and we got to hang out with them. The rest of us piled in to the cars and headed for Fredericksburg. It is a great little German, touristy town about an hour and a half from here. James and I love going there. Great food, great shopping and lots of fun. We took everyone to our fave restaurant - Friedhelm's Bavarian. It is fantastic food. I introduced them to schnitzel, spaetzle, rye bread and they loved it!! We then tried to go to the George H. W. Bush museum/Admiral Chester Nimitz museum of the Pacific Theater of WWII, but it was under construction. So instead we walked around the memorial wall. So many people gave their life for that. It is such a wonderful reminder of all those people were willing to sacrifice, and it makes me wonder how we can't comprehend a sacrifice for the war we are in now. I really liked this plaque.

We saw dad's hero, Ronald Reagan.
We found the plaque for one of the ships Grandpa Roy served on. The USS Monterey.

And we found a friend of Grandpa Irl's who dad even met one time. He served on a ship with Grandpa Irl, but the plaque is for another ship he spent time on. The Arisan Maru was a Japanese ship that was sunk by US Ships and was carrying over 1800 POW's to do slave labor in Japan. Of the POW's 9 survived and Grandpa Irl's friend Robert S. Overbeck was one of those 9.


We came home Friday night and Steve made us all Ukranian borscht. James was unsure, but being the great person he is, tried it with a brave face ;-) and then realized it wasn't as bad as he was expecting and actually said it was good. Yea Steve! That is a high compliment from James!

Everyone left except for me and Steve early Saturday morning. Kiersty, Seth and Megan headed for Tucson so that Megan could be dropped off, and then they made it all the way to about Kingman before finishing the rest of their journey back to Provo on Sunday. Mom, Dad and Brittany headed to Phoenix. Britt is spending the rest of her Christmas break at home before hitching a ride back to Provo.
We stayed for a few extra days so we could see the stuff we had missed earlier in the week.
It was a great week for us to all catch up, get to know each other againand remember how lucky we all are to have a great family.


Haha, that's the end of my modified post! Do you like how I even made it sound like I wrote it... really i just changed all of the pronouns! But I think you can see why I didn't have the will to write such a long post-- there was so much to write about! Anyways, I hope all of you had a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year! We are leaving for SLC on tuesday for a week of snowboarding and hangin out with the Hale clan! Wahoo!