After a month of prepping and planning and doing fun Christmas activities that BIG day was finally almost here! Here's how we celebrated this year.
This year for Christmas Eve we tried a different tradition. My friend told me about a tradition she does every year that I thought sounded so neat. Every year on Christmas Eve she does something that she calls The Shepherd Feast. She makes a simple meal of what she imagines shepherds in the fields would be eating while they waited for the first of the flock to be born. She usually does dried fruits and veggies, bread they rip apart and some sort of dried meat. The sit outside by a fire and read the Christmas story. I loved the idea and begged my husband to let us try it. We invited our friends the Iversons and the Andersons to come join us. Todd also invited the missionaries to join us. We made empanadas (mostly because it was one of the few foods that I was willing to eat) fresh veggies and fruit. My friend Autumn made bacon wrapped figs. We sat around the fire and ate and talked. Todd got the scriptures out and read the Christmas story out of Luke 2. He had a really tender moment when spoke about Grandpa Great and how he would read the Christmas story every year. Then it was passed to his father to do it and now, as the father, was his responsibility. He got a little choked up talking about Grandpa Blau, especially since his passing was only a month earlier. I really enjoyed the special spirit of it and it brought the focus where I wanted the night before to be - on our Savior and the anticipation of this birth and ultimately of his return.
All gathered around the fire
Eating our empanadas
We had pie after our time outside but the Elders had to go, so Todd sent a pie home with them.
After everyone left the girls had a bath and got new jammies for Christmas. Todd read The Night Before Christmas.
The next morning there was a long ribbon leading from tree to the backyard. The girls found this!
I heard Santa was up until 3 in the morning setting it up...
We opened up presents...
The girls wanted to help open every single gift. Unwrapping is part of the fun!
They got some princess dolls to share and some new movies.
Nora really wanted a Sofia the First doll.
After seeing Nora's Sofia Annalise started to ask for her Mickey Mouse toy! She just knew if Nora got what she wanted she'd get what she wanted too.
I got Todd a book by a comedian he really liked and had a certificate for a date night to a comedy club the following week.
Todd got me a new Kindle Fire! (Because I'm kinda obsessed...)
What Nora got for Christmas. (We try really hard to keep with the 3 gifts each tradition, so most of these where for both girls)
What Annalise got for Christmas
Enjoying their toys before we headed up to Phoenix to visit family.
Nora and Annalise loved being at Grandma's with cousins, especially cousin Violet. We were late so we missed dinner with everyone but at least we got to open up presents. The kids just started to open anything they could get their hands on!
The next day we went to the Science Center where they had snow to play in!
The movie Frozen kept singing about building a snowman, so Nora wanted to build one.
Annalise was unsure about this snow stuff.
Their little snowman! That some kid came over and picked up to throw at his sister...
Uncle Christ helping Nora load balls into a machine at the Science Center.
Annalise with a bunch of balls.
Todd handing out balloons.
Nora spinning on this platform.
Annalise LOVED the tug-a-war
Me laying on a bed of nails. (I thought it felt since by Anna was scared when she tried)
Todd lifting the girls.
My two sweetie pies!
It was great to get to see my family, especially my sister Dianna who came with her long time boyfriend John. I really liked him and enjoyed getting to know him. We got to go out to dinner with them a few times. We went for Chinese buffet one night (Annalise LOVED Chinese food - she asks for it when I ask her where she wants to eat) and on the drive back to my parents' house we hear this LOUD popping sound. Todd pulls over and it turns out the truck had the front passenger tire blow out on us. NO! His truck needed new tires but since we JUST bought a set for the van we want to wait for a little while. Nope. We ended up buying all new tires for the truck two weeks after we bought some for the van. Man, that stung. I lamented about how our savings were taking such a hit. Between Annalise's medical bills and two set of new tires, all within a month of each other was not fun. But as my friend put it, at least we have savings. A lot of people have to rely on credit cards for emergencies like that. So I felt blessed instead. But our van STILL had problems.
Now for the fun story of our van! We got this van that we loved and for such a good price. I was feeling like the Lord really had seen our struggles and helped us out on a good deal. Well... it turns out that the deal wasn't that great. Since Todd had changed the motor mounts in the van and it STILL had problems it was time to have the dealership look at it. Turns out the CV joints in the wheels were bad. It was odd since that was a problem with cars that were older and with more mileage than our 91,000. Well.... it turns out our van actually doesn't have 90 thousand miles... it had more like 200 thousand miles. Someone (the person who sold it to us) must have changed the dash (which is hard to do) and made it look like we have a lower mileage. I was sick to my stomach about the whole thing. Todd was able to fix the CV joints (after 2 days of struggling with the stupid that that should have only taken about an hour to do...) and it runs find now, but we're sad we got ripped off. It's not too bad, we paid about 1,000 or so over Kelley Blue Book for the actual mileage of the car. So our great deal turned into a not so good deal. We decided we would roll with it. We want to be honest people.
I have to say I'm glad that December is over, especially since it was a little taxing emotionally, spiritually and financially. I loved the fun we had but all the drama with car stuff and financial stuff I am more than happy to leave in the past.
January should be a fun month with Annalise's birthday and prep for our new baby in the beginning of February.
With All My Love.
Your Mother
