Christmas in Utah


Christmas was a whirlwind of fun this year!  We had my parents from WA and my brother from TX in town and sister and family stayed overnight on Christmas Eve.  It was pretty awesome.  Big J and I were so busy hosting, which we love, that we didn't get enough pictures.  But here's a sampling of our fun:

We started off the Christmas weekend with a call from my brother Thursday night saying he felt quite wretched and wouldn't be on his plane.  Augh!  He must come!!  I told him to drink lots of water and go to bed early so he can get better.  Meanwhile we were at J's parents and went to the new U of U Natural History Museum on Friday and mi hermano called while we were there saying he felt much better and would be on a plane that evening.  Whew, what a relief!  We went back home and my parents rolled in that evening in time for dinner and the Spanish Fork Festival of Lights.  This pic was the best I got--they were hard shots to get in a moving car!  The lights were way cool.

What PJBJA Christmas season would be complete without these bad boys filling our tummies?!

Saturday morning we got out a puzzle well over 1,000 pieces and by that evening it was complete.  We had some expert puzzlers in the house.  Obviously, as my bro is a Super Genius.

The girls had fun playing dress up with grandma there to admire them

Once Big J tore me away from the puzzle (boo! he is always doing that!) I started on dinner.  Thanks to J's sis we had two lovely turkey's who gave their lives for our feast.

All the Christmas Eve party goers

The kidlets helped with their rendition of the first Christmas while Uncle D read from the Bible.  Then we heard a couple Christmas songs each on the piano from our three and then Big J played Christmas songs while we all sang our hearts out around the tree.  SO fun.  

 The kids were all given a time not to wake adults up before (7am) and Christmas morning we woke up to our alarm and went downstairs to find this.  I have a feeling the leader of the pack had a large part to do with their quiet choice of reading books.  :)

We opened stockings and then made a quick breakfast of juice, sausage, eggs and hashbrowns 

Big J very  manly manning the eggs and hash browns while I flipped sausages and gave out duties to willing volunteers

Eventually all the presents got unwrapped.  We started out with two at a time and it quickly escalated into several at a time so it was all done within an hour.

Da group 

La familia despues de la iglesia.  Que hermosa.

After church we headed up to J's family to open gifts and hang out with his family

J's brother and sister also blessed their baby in the evening after Christmas dinner.  She is a lovely niece if I do say so myself!  

We then spent the week up at his families house until New Years Day.  The Monday after Christmas we met up with my parents, brother & sister and family to see the Children's section of the Church History Museum, stroll through Temple Square and lunch at Crown Burger--yum!  Bro went home that afternoon and my parents went the next day.  Three days and two nights of the time we were at his parents, Big J and I were in St. George, which is likely to be the next post.