Merry Christmas 2013.

Much the same as the last few years, Christmas Eve is bigger for us than Christmas Day.  We love the two days of family, fun, and food! 

My mom goes all out.  We have appetizers, the main course, and a chocolate fountain to finish it all off.  

This is my parent's tree. They have 3 children and 9 grandchildren. We have been really lucky to all be together for the past two holidays.  

 

In the past, the grand kids have picked names and just exchanged between one cousin.  This year, Tiffany suggested we do a candy exchange instead.  It's much like a white elephant game.  Everyone's names get put in a bowl and then drawn out randomly.  They can steal other's candy or choose an unopened gift. It was a lot of fun to watch and the cousins said they liked that exchange better than the gift exchange.  Great idea Tiff!

The girls ended up with these in the candy exchange.

Directly after my parents house, we headed down to the Christmas Eve party with the Cowles.  We eat and then play the M & M game.  We roll the dice and if you get doubles, you have to run up and try and retrieve as many M & M's as you can with a butter knife off the pan until someone else who has rolled doubles get's to come up and take your place.  It's been a tradition for years.  One year Diane (who is in charge of this game) got fake M & M's and was subsequently put on the naughty list that year. She has since learned it is called  the M & M game for a reason.

After the M & M game, we played Head's up.  It's like reverse charades.  Pretty funny to watch the people trying to get the one person to guess what's on their card.  Here are a few shots of that game.

  Look at Jason's face.  He looks disgusted with Jeff. :)

This one was shaving.

I'm guessing this was Gangnam Style.  If so, way to go Margaret for knowing this one!

 

Then, the fun doesn't stop for us!  Nope!  We head to the Wood's for gift exchanges as well.  Are these kids spoiled or what?

 

Merry 'actual' Christmas Day!

 

See Jason's yawn?  We were up at about 6:30.  I didn't even have to wake up the kids this year.  I'm usually too excited to sleep in but this year, the kids woke us up.  

 

Santa couldn't forget Sadie.  Ellyse is helping her open her gift.

See the book in the lower right corner?  That is a book given to me by the girls and Jason that recorded their voices reading me the story of the First Christmas.  I bawled throughout!  It was so touching and I will cherish it forever!  I love that I have their voices recorded at this age! 

Jason's take.

Sadie ripped up this bad boy in about 5 minutes. 

The girls playing with their dolls. You can see a little of what Ellyse got in the background.  I spaced getting a picture of Allie's gifts.  I'm pretty sure my mom did though.  I'll have to add that in later.

Once we were all done opening gifts, we headed back to the Wood's for a yummy breakfast.  Diane spoils 

us too!  All I had to bring was the parfaits.  She made a yummy egg casserole and orange pecan french toast.  Brittny brought her family's traditional monkey bread.  Yum!

We hung out for a while until my parents were ready to come back to our house to see what the girls got.  We chatted and had lunch at our place and played with toys. That evening we headed back  to the Wood's again for dinner and games.  Margaret and Ben stopped by and we were lucky that they stayed for dinner and games as well.  We love family time together, especially fun family time.  That is one of our best gifts we received!  Merry Christmas!

Cowles Annual Santa Party

This party begins with dinner and bowling at WSU, then heads to a church where we exchange white elephants and a certain somebody shows up.  :)

 The Hokey Pokey again??????  Not really sure how this was added to the traditions but it is. Ewee got skillzzz!

These two are inseparable when together.

We had a bit of a Christmas miracle this year. Margaret and Ben have had things from Grace's home stored in their home for months now and after they returned from their mission, they were able to go through the things that were left over. One day when Margaret had had a particularly hard day, she prayed and felt the need to go through some of Grace's stationery. Grace was well known for her large amounts of stationery. Margaret started looking through some of the stacks of stationery. She kept setting aside different sets because she felt like that 'wasn't the one' she was looking for at the time. After sorting a bit more, she came across one set and felt like she'd found the one! Margaret was surprised to find that inside that particular stationery set, were individual letters addressed to each one of Grace's children. Sort of a last goodbye letter to each of them. This was definitely a miracle because the things that were at Margaret's home were those things that were 'left over' from going through the home. A lot of things had already been taken to goodwill. This set of stationery very easily could've been sent to goodwill with no thought involved. Santa was made aware of this miracle and was given the letters to distribute at the party. What a special special gift that was left from a mother to her children! Thanks goes to Taycina and Jeff for capturing this moment!

Thanksgiving weekend 2013

Happy Thanksgiving! Wait, that was like a few weeks ago right?! Things have been a bit nuts lately. Here's a recap of Thanksgiving weekend. It was so much fun. We have a tradition of making a thankful tree every year about this time. I disliked how our trees have turned out in the past and thought a turkey might just do the trick.

Here's the actual day before and day of. We were at my parent's this year with all my siblings. Which is pretty much a miracle in itself. It was a wonderful afternoon. We headed to Margaret and Ben's after words for some awesome games and planning for the fun night of shopping till we dropped!

A friend of mine hooked us up! Her husband works with the Jazz and was able to get us lower bowl tickets for free! We surprised the Wood's with them.

Coach Sloan was in the audience. I clicked a pic before it looked suspicious. The dude does not clap. I wonder if he's ever happy? Most likely, it's because the Jazz are pretty awful right now.

Then Saturday, the electric lights parade in O town. It was nice and short. We headed back to the Wood's and watched Christmas Vacation. It made me happy!

I love me some Thanksgiving weekends!  Lots of fun activities and lots of family time.  Hope yours was great as well.