Christmas festivities

It was a fairly quiet Christmas here this year. This was the "off" year for Ethan's family which meant most of the brother's and sisters were at the other side of the family for the holidays. That left us with our little family and Dwayne and Sarah, and it was intimate, and I really liked that.

For me, Christmas Eve means Mexican food. Since I'm no help with making a ham or turkey, I told Sarah I would take care of Christmas Eve dinner. But if I was going to make dinner, I wanted to go all out, which meant we needed to invite some people over to help tackle the food! We invited some of our friends, the Taggarts, from our ward over. I did chicken fajitas with all sorts of fixings, pan roasted corn, McKenzie brought over a couple different types of rice, and to top it all of, homemade white-chocolate puffcorn and caramel puffcorn. It was delicious!

After dinner, just as my family always did growing up, we did a little Christmas program that I put together, but Dwayne moderated. The kids got dressed up, and Sarah helped the little kids with the nativity during the reading. Nixon was a little young to keep interested, but the Taggarts have a 6-year-old boy, 3-year-old girl, and a little girl under 1, and they were great sports!

It was time for children to go to sleep, so we said our goodbyes and sent them off with some holiday cheer. We got Nixon ready for bed, and put him to bed, but not before we were able to read The Night Before Christmas by the tree lights.

With Nixon in bed it was time to start a new tradition we wanted to start for our family. Ethan and I made cinnamon rolls that we could enjoy the next morning. We finished up some last minute wrapping and then landed ourselves in our bed, exhausted, but ready for visions of sugar plums in our head!

Christmas morning, we were in no rush. We woke up around nine or so. Nixon was sill sleeping, so I pulled out the cinnamon rolls from the fridge to raise. We made sure the scene was set so it was perfect for Nixon when he came in.

We ended up having to wake him up. Ethan was the one to get him and I was set up with the camera to take some video. He walked through the door, and went straight to his toys.. the ones he plays with everyday (face palm). He had no interest in his stocking until I finally convinced him by pulling out a car! I had tied them altogether on one string, so the cars just kept coming!

Probably my favorite gift out of all of them.. Tickets to a Hornets basketball game!

We had a wonderful rest of our Christmas. I love that we're always reminded how blessed we are and how grateful we are to have the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives.