A Beautiful Christmas

Today is Christmas and we have had a wonderful day! I can't say that about this morning though, well it was wonderful but .... Last night when the girls were tucked into bed their clocks were checked and we discussed that no one would be coming downstairs before 6:45. Let me explain, Hailey won a $50 gift card to toys r us from John's company for a calendar drawing she drew, and so she had her new walkie talkie's ready to page dad before coming down the stairs. Abby slept upstairs on the futon so that all three of the big girls could come downstairs and enter the living room together, it was all planned out perfect. At 5:50, 3 little girls entered our bedroom to see why we wouldn't answer the walkie-talkie pagings that they had been sending, someone had changed all there clocks in the night to be an hour ahead of time... and who could that be? Don't ask me, parents would never do that sort of thing, maybe our dear elf Jewel returned with Santa and decided to do a little more mischief in our home.

We did have a wonderful Christmas morning and our girls all loved their gifts from everyone. Hailey got a new cruiser bicycle, a pottery wheel and a new outfit for her American girl doll.

Alyssa just wanted the Hawaiian American girl doll they had this year, Kanani, and she did get her. She came with a paddle board and she also got two other outfits. She asked for this doll because she thinks that she'll give this doll to Macey when Macey is old enough, it's the Hawaiian 2011 doll and since Macey was born in Hawaii Alyssa thinks she needs the Hawaiian doll, sweet thinking sister.

Abby was so excited to get her a little leap frog pad to play games on, it looks a lot like my iPhone. Thank you Santa, for now maybe she'll leave the games on my iphone alone. She also receive a little car type thing for outside.

Macey didn't join our family until a little later this morning, 6 am isn't when she gets up! She got a pink tricycle, a cute outfit, her daddy made her a rocking horse and last of all she got a really cute build a bear monkey that my sweet neice Ashley helped me make a couple weeks ago.

This year, my dad and mom came to visit us for Christmas, they got here on Friday and will be here until next Friday. I'm so happy they could be here, it's not often you can pull my dad away from the San Luis valley for more than a few days. Our girls love having their grandparents here and it's really nice to be in our new home and have an extra bedroom.
Alyssa has been in our Primary's childrens choir and so she sang a beautiful song in church. John went over early to make sure we would get good seats and when I got there about 5 minutes early, there was nothing left. It even went back into the gym. It was a wonderful way to splend our Christmas day, remembering our Savior. The choir and the Kohlers did a wonderful job and made this a perfect Christmas Sunday.

I didn't want to spend lots of time cooking on Christmas day and so we prepared most of our dinner the day before, it was very nice because all we had to cook on Sunday was the ham and then put a few casserole dishes into the oven for cooking. Having my mom here was wonderful, not having to do it all. I just remember last Christmas, living in Kauai we didn't have family near, but we did. We had Dale an Genevieve Keep and their family over for dinner, they were our family there and we miss them so much this year. It would be nice to be amoung all of our families at this time, we love and miss all of you that couldn't be here with us.

Leslie and Kyron drove their family up on Christmas day after their sacrament services and will spend the next two nights here. John thought it would be fun to set up a tent in the basement for the kids to sleep in, and they are excited! Our basement is quite warm and then Leslie can have Hailey and Alyssa's room with the futon and two twin beds for her little girls. Abby is the most excited to sleep in the tent, I don't think she'll ever want to come back to her bedroom again!