christmas part 4

Christmas is just not the same when there are no kids running around and not a whole lot of noise to be heard. i had to work on christmas eve but after my mom, meghan and i spent the morning at saving mr. banks. the movie was fantastic and i loved every minute of it. we decided to do something a little different this year than cooking at home so we had benihana's for dinner and then went to bountiful. 

 meghan and i have decorated gingerbread houses every year now for about 10 years. it has been our one tradition we have stuck to. this year i got the gingerbread men from costco for 4 dollars though so we added that to the mix so terry and debbie could participate as well. 

 gingerbread house fail. 

 terry had so much fun and got so into it...and then i accidentally broke his head off. i did manage to icing glue it back on and fix it and he didnt even notice. 

 i haven't had matching christmas jammies in ages but this year changed that. 

 meg and i did not want to spend a ton of time wrapping presents so this is what they ended up looking like. we think we are so funny. 

 later that day meg and i drove to green river to stay with my sister and her family. we played games that night with my brother in laws family.  

 the boys got a power wheel for christmas but cade was so excited to drive this little red thing around still. 

 words cant describe how much i love this nephew of mine. 

 while in green river i got to meet up with some dear friends. derek and i have been besties for quite a while now. we worked at the movie theatre and were fast friends. 

jamin visited from canada, where she is in a phd program. cori came in from missouri where she goes to school, and we had quite a few others meet up with us as well that we didnt get a picture with. jamin has been my very best friend for quite some time now and it is so hard not living near her but i am so grateful for the time that i do get to see her. all of these wonderful people were met through my high school job at the theatre. i will forever be grateful for that place.  

these last ones are out of order and happened at the very beginning of december, but my roommates and i went to the festival of trees. i have always wanted to go and this blew all my expectations. it was wonderful. i loved all of it. the trees were so elaborate and gorgeous and i can only hope to put a tree in there one day.