Christmas!

Christmas was lovely this year!!

(Of course, how could it not be?!  This is CHRISTMAS we're talking about...)

I love Christmas... and I love Christmas even more now that I have a baby.  Being  a parent at Christmas is AWESOME.

(Although much more expensive than not being a parent at Christmas...)

I hear it only gets worse... :)


This year we went down to my parents house for Christmas.  It was 3 and a half glorious days of being at my parents.  I loved it so much.

So did Emerson I think... she seriously LOVES her Uncle Brenner.  She gets excited whenever he walks into the room, and she's always watching him.  It's fun!



For Christmas Eve we did a new thing this year.. we went out to Chinese rather than having my mom slave away forever in the kitchen for Christmas Eve dinner.  It was sort of nice.

 I also will never say no to Sesame Chicken from South China.

After dinner it was pretty much Emerson's bed time.. so we had to hurry home and open her Christmas pajamas so that we could get her in them and get her to sleep as quickly as possible.

She loved her Christmas Jammies!

Well, she actually loved the sparkly bag that they were wrapped in more.. but that's ok!

After Emerson went to bed we all went downstairs and watched Polar Express together...

It was really a genius plan to get Brenner to fall asleep so that Santa could come, but it didn't work.  Of course it was like the ONE time that watching a movie... in the dark... late at night... didn't immediately send Brenner to Dreamland.  (I can't say that I blame him though... I remember being SO STOKED for Santa to come when I was little too).

Somehow my parents finally got him to go to bed.

Bribery perhaps?!

Then the real fun began... It was like a mad dash to get as many presents wrapped as possible.  We were all sort of holed into different corners trying to wrap presents while hiding them from everyone else.

I was behind the couch.

Finally sometime after one, Ammon and I called it quits and went to bed.  I'm pretty sure my parents were up until like 3 though... that is some Christmas dedication right there!



Then Christmas morning we woke up early so that we could talk to Ammon's sister Ariel who is on her mission is Russia!  :)

It was so fun being able to Skype with her and the rest of Ammon's family.  We also got to show her Emerson for the first time (and she also got to see her cute little nephew Emmett too for the first time!)

It was great hearing from her, and listening to her bear (bare? I can never remember which it is) her testimony to us in Russian too.

Then we hurried and got dressed so that we could make it to Church on time.

We were still like 5 minutes late... (I think we've only been to church on time like once since Emerson was born.  Even this past Sunday when church started at 2... )

All of us looking quite dapper in our Christmas Sunday outfits! 

Grandma and Grandpa with the babe!

Ahem... Kyler is the best at funny faces....

Once the obligatory Christmas church outfit pictures were taken we changed back into our Christmas Pajamas to open presents.  It's not really Christmas if you don't wear pajamas while opening gifts.  I'm almost positive of that.

Emerson liked opening the presents.

After all of the Santa presents were open we took a break to have Breakfast.  Well, more like lunch since it was about noon.

My dad always makes omelettes for breakfast on Christmas.  The first year we were married and we spent Christmas at my parents house my parents both ended up with the flu... so Ammon made the omelettes.  This year my dad had to leave to help my Grandpa, so Ammon ended up making them again.  Perhaps Ammon making omelettes will be a new tradition... haha!



After some much needed naps

We decided to go back and finish unwrapping our gifts!  

After all was said and done, I think that Emerson did pretty well for herself....

We had a great Christmas.  We were all extremely spoiled! ....... Especially Emerson! ha!