Merry Christmas!

What a great time of year: more time with family and friends, the oppurtunity to give to others, playing fun games and gifts, enjoying the snowy weather, and making & keeping family traditions.
We had a wonderful Christmas this year, we are very blessed and hope you all were blessed with all you hearts desired. We spent Christmas eve morning at home getting last minute things done (luckily shopping was done). Mike's mom wanted me to make sugar cookies for Christmas so the kids and I baked and decorated a few dozen Christmas sugar cookies (thanks for the recipe Julie). It was a lot of fun and I think that will be a new tradition for us. Then we headed up to my parents home in Layton. How lucky we are to have them close again so we can spend holidays and special times together as a family. We all just hung out and ate pizza (a Delozier family tradition) and then opened some presents. The kids had a blast hanging out with their Smith cousins who even though we live 5 minutes away they don't get to spend enough time with. My dad (yes that is him in his favorite tie die shirt) read the story of the Savior's birth to us. I remember as a child acting out the story, I guess we could have done that with all the grandkids, maybe next year. It had started snowing on our way to Layton and by the time we headed homw a few hours later the ground was covered in about a foot of snow. When we woke up on Christmas morning it was blue and clear above the fresh white snow: BEAUTIFUL and PEACEFUL! Luckily the kids let us sleep in a little on Christmas morning, 7:30. Then everyone got to see what Santa had brought them and then we opened presents from each other. Another friend posted on her blog about her boys being so excited to give to each other and my kids are the same each year. Their favorite part of Christmas is drawing names and finding and giving gifts to each other. It makes me so happy to see them so excited to make their sibling so happy, I guess they really do care about each other. After we opened all the gifts they played for awhile before we headed back up to my parents to hang out, eat, and play in the snow. Rylee even went sledding with Uncle Devin and Aunt Karissa and had a great time! We left a few hours later to head to Mike's parents for the annual Christmas craziness! We opened mroe gifts and ate a yummy prime rib dinner and then jsut relaxed for a few hours. The kids all stayed the night at Grandma and Grandpa's (another new tradition that started last year). Yesterday we just took it easy and tried to recover from all the fun of Christmas. We did take the kids to see Alvin and the Chipmunks and to Target to use their Christmas money that was burning a whole in their pockets. Today I need to clean up. Is it just me or does Christmas cause your house to look like abomb went off too? I am not sure how much cleaning up I want to do since we are thinking about putting pergo floors in and I know that if we start the house will jsut be a disaster til it's done. Hmmmm... Anyway, MERRY CHRISTMAS to all our family and friends!