Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Christmas with Carolyn's family

At about 9, we packed up the kids, the pop-up tent, and all our gifts and headed on over to my folk's house. When we got there, pancakes were just starting to come off the griddle so we ate a yummy breakfast of pancakes and various breakfast meats, including leftover ham from Dave's dad's house the night before. It was deeeee-licious!

Soon afterward, we started opening the presents under mom and dad's tree. The girls both got Dora jammies from my parents. Lacy got a princess purse and more princess panties (but in size 4, so she'll fit in them when she 6 LOL). I'm drawing a blank here on the rest, so I'll come back and edit with what else they got! Dale was very generous and gave us a gift card to Target for the kids, plus he had our family and gave us the entire Beatrix Potter book collection and a gift card to Cabellas. We had Kurt, so we decided to give a theme gift centered around camping/hiking since they enjoy doing that as a family. They got a mini first-aid kit, a lantern, a camp spice pack, and a collapsible shovel. We also got Marilyn a craft project that looked fun.

After the gift exchange, we shooed the kids out of there and exchanged funny gifts. Hayden participated this year for the first time. It was so much fun having everyone together during funny gifts! I'm not sure if we'll be able to do them next year, since my parents are leaving for their mission this week! Anyway, Hayden got a really funny comparison of Arizona versus Washington (the similarities and differences, such as in Arizona you get brown from sun, in Washington you get brown from rust, etc). Kurt was up next and got something about his BRAT that was funny but I can't remember. I can't remember what Mark's was, but it was hilarious. My turn next. I got a paper talking about how in the past, certain funny gifts have been insensitive, so this year I was really going to get something that made me cry-- an onion! It was so funny I about died laughing. Leslie was up next. You know the phrase, "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil?" Well, my dad gave her a gift on that concept-- "See no children (blindfold), hear no children (earplugs), smell no children (noseplug)." The funny thing was, Turner came into the room right around the same time and to put it delicately, the noseplugs got some immediate use! Dale was next. He got a hot pepper kit (he had an unfortunate event with a hot pepper that he hilariously related to all of us afterward). Then Dixon. I gave to Dixon. I gave him an erector set boat kit, and a note saying something along the lines of, "we know you're sad your business didn't work out and now you don't have a boat, so here's a boat that is inexpensive and easy to maintain/repair!" After that, Mom's turn. She got some goggles with pictures of scenes in it to look at when she needs a "vacation." Dad was last. And again, I should have typed this out sooner because I forgot. I will have to ask everyone so my memory can be refreshed!

Christmas dinner was really yummy. We had prime rib. Delicious!

We left at about 6 because the kids were tired and Dave was sick. He's still a little sick but he's recovering finally. It was a blessing in disguise that he had two four-day weekends in a row. They're not paid, but at least he didn't have to miss extra work to recover. He wouldn't have missed work, but he would have been miserable and it would have taken twice as long to get better.

Maybe I'll go back and post pictures of Christmas day later. I'm just trying to get this written out so I can move on and review last year's new year's resolutions and write out my resolutions for this year!

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