The World Didn't End So Christmas Did Come

For Christmas this year Dan and I stayed in Boise. We really wanted to be with the kids this year, however, finances made it difficult for us and Amanda and Jake to be together. Sid came for a visit the Friday following Christmas to attend a wedding in the Boise Temple and stayed a few days extra with us. (A post to come; all things in their proper time and order.) He was kind enough to be our delivery person for all of our out-of-state gifts this year. No Post Office lines for us!

Our celebrating began on Christmas Eve as we joined a few others from our ward at our Bishop's home for dinner, visiting, children running everywhere, singing carols and a mostly reverent reenactment of the nativity.

Dan with the Three Wisemen...the threesome of Elders currently serving in our ward.

Dan was the narrator.

Everyone had costumes, even if they objected at first.

 

Since the Bishop, and other families, had younger children we left their home fairly early. We then headed over to Dan's brother's where we visited together, frosted some sugar cookies, delivered a Secret Santa gift, then looked at a synced light display (along with several others in the area-it took us about 30 minutes to get in front of the house and 10 minutes to see the lights syncing with their personalized radio station).

 

 

Even if their neighbors didn't like it, we found it quite spectacular!

 

Then we headed home to finish our final preparations for Christmas Day and get to sleep so Santa could visit us as well.

 

An advantage of not having young ones any more, we slept in until we woke up which ended up being about 7:45 am. We then got ready for the day and started our gifts about 9:00.

 

Santa found us and left us some practical and traditional items in our stockings. The gum is a different brand but keeping with tradition.



 

The gifts were dispersed....then opened to see what treasures they held:

 

Blankets for both of us from Lynette's family. We love that the their girls helped with our gifts.

 

After we opened our gifts we tried to take a picture of both of us together, this was our best attempt...

Time for the traditional breakfast: scrambled eggs, bacon (instead of sausage this year), orange juice, and cinnamon pull-apart. It doesn't get much better than this: YUMMY!

We ended our day by watching my new movie, We Bought a Zoo. It was relaxing and enjoyable to be together and visit with so many of those we love!