Merry Christmas Day!

Aiden is finally beginning to understand Christmas.  Santa brought way too many presents and we are going to have to ask Santa to bring down the gifts next year.  Or save some for birthday.

This year, Santa came a day early.  We have a tradition to go to Goodwins for Christmas Eve.  Because Christmas was on Sunday this year and both Jodi and I had to play for the choirs at church, we couldn't figure out how to make it all work.  So, Jodi asked the bigger kids and they didn't care if we did it early, the younger kids didn't know anyway, so we just moved the advent calendars up a day (stealthily, of course) and did the whole Christmas thing early.  It was just like Christmas.  From the ham dinner (thanks, Jodi, it was amazing) to the nativity to the presents.  No one missed a beat.  Purely fantastic.

Aiden loves he cousin, Alyssa.  She is so cute with him.  

Jodi made sugar cookies and the kids decorated them for Christmas

We do the nativity every Christmas Eve.  This year, Aiden was Joseph.  And he was pretty cute, I would say.

Alyssa volunteered to the be the donkey and to keep Joseph in the nativity.  Amelia was the good parent and sat with Baby Jesus the whole time.  She is so cute and precious.

Everyone in the nativity.  Even the two dinner guests.  Troopers.

After dinner, we made reindeer food and laid out cookies for Santa.  Then Mrs. Claus found our house and dropped off jammies for everyone.  (another super-fun tradition that Jodi started)

We were able to sleep over and sleep in until 7:15.  Then the real fun began.  

Jodi has a tradition that her smallest child dresses up as Santa's Elf and is the helper for the day.  Since none of her kids fit the Elf costume anymore, my little elf got to be the helper.  And that is stinkin' cute.  

So...much... Thomas...

Aiden is one of those kids that doesn't freak out with presents.  I am sure he will, but he really just likes to sit and open them, then enjoy each one for a while.  It took us all morning to get through just a handful of presents, so we packed up the rest for later.

Aiden got a new bike for Christmas.  And Alyssa was nice enough to help him with it.  He is fascinated by the bell.

The kids played while the adults played games in the early afternoon.  Goodwins got this game that is a mixture of Jenga and Scrabble, only on steroids.

After a day of fun and frivolity, we went home and had a much needed nap.  Aiden opened a few more presents and we had dinner.  Then, we headed off to Smedleys to give them our presents to them.

By way of explanation - Breanna bought all her sisters and Aiden ugly Christmas sweaters and wanted Aiden to wear it.  He loves Nana.

Thomas sweats, Thomas loafers, Thomas pillow - this kid is loved.  

Most importantly - he got the Troublesome Trucks to go with his ever-growing collection of trains.  And they talk!!!!

They also bought him some DC skater shoes that are the BOMB and new church clothes (see below).

After Smeds, we went home and just watched movies and relaxed in new jammies.  It was awesome.  We had a few Christmas books left to read, so we just chilled out and had a great time.

And my washer broke.  

But Christmas morning, Aiden was playing with his trucks and didn't want to get ready for church, but when he opened his new church shoes from Uncle Chris, he was jazzed.  We went to church, and he fell asleep 15 minutes in.  YAY!!!  (Much needed nap...)

When we got home, we had a lovely dinner of leftovers from Jodi's house on my new Christmas dishes (thank you, Smeds) and opened more presents from Uncle Chris and Aunt Teresa.  Aiden got two movies from Uncle Chris, some more fun Thomas things and more church clothes (we were hurting for church clothes) and a new phone for mom (yay!!!!) and a new set of knives (yay!!!!)

We were so blessed this Christmas with three full days of festivities, lots of love from everyone in our world and friends and family who we would die without.  

Merry Christmas to all!!

Many apologies

So you don't think that Aiden and I just stopped our frenzied activities before Christmas, I must explain.  I found it was better to focus on the activities and having a blast rather than blogging.  But we did every single thing on the list.  WHEW it was fun.  Here are some pics from the days:

Whew.  Mom looks really super tired and weary.  

Aiden got the crappy flu one day and threw up everywhere.  So, our activity was to stay close at home and watch Merry Madagascar.  In our jammies.

We also made those super swell ornaments made of foam one night.  He loved it.  Best $1 ever spent

We also went to see Zoolights.  It was cold, but not as cold as last year.  The big cats were also super active, so that was fun.  Aiden, of course, saw the train and just loved it.  It is the first set of lights in the zoo and he just wanted to stay there.  Mean mom made him go explore.

Cold Monkey on the carousel

Another day, we went back to the train at Newgate Mall.  He seems to just want to do this activity every night, so we ended up doing it twice in December.  He was thrilled.

Oh yes.  We went shopping one night for our activity and Aiden needed a haircut in a bad way.  This picture was just too amazing to leave out of the blog.

Our annual "Faux Festival of Trees" - actually Aiden doesn't have the patience to go to the real festival, so we go to Tai Pan Trading and look at the cool trees there.  It is better for a 2-year old.

He wrote a letter to Santa.  He actually did help me write it.  It looks like I have palsy in my hand, but it was because a toddler "helped".  

So, with this and a thousand other fun activities, our 25 Days of Christmas comes to an end.  I would like to believe that we will keep this tradition going year after year because it really is so fun to focus on the magic of Christmas for a whole month.  I remember when I was a child, Christmas seemed to last forever and the magic was amazing.  I realize now that it is because my mother made the whole season fun.  I wanna do that same thing with Monkey.  Two years down.  About a million to go... I hope.

Days 11 and 12... okay, and 13

Day 11 was a fun evening - for me more than for Aiden.  I am the ward choir accompanist and we had a stake fireside where all the ward choirs sang two numbers.  Such beautiful music.  We really did amazingly well.  We have a choir to be super proud of.  Aiden didn't love it so much, but we did watch Mickey's Christmas Carol when we got home.

Skip ahead - Day 13, we played in the snow and Mom went a super-swell Relief Society party tonight while Aiden played hysterically with a bunch of boys in the Nursery room.  Mom had a nice dinner with ADULTS!  Nice change, but missed my Monkey.  Then we came home and sang Christmas carols under the Christmas tree and took goofy pictures... like this one.

But yesterday, we did a really fun activity - GINGERBREAD HOUSE!!!  So, last year, Aiden couldnt' get over the idea that we were wasting precious, precious frosting on a house made of precious, precious cookies. This year, I thought we could be a little more mature about it.  So he was.  I put the gingerbread house out on the table and turned my back to open the frosting.  I turn back to see he is basically teeth-deep in the roof and we haven't even opened the candy yet.

But Aiden is nothing if not stealthy.  So, I showed him how to put the gumdrops on.  He put is first one on, realized that there was frosting on his fingers, so he liked them off.  Then, he realized that he could just pretend to put candies on the roof and then he could stick his fingers in the frosting and lick them.

Awesome kid.

Aiden's side of the house

Mom's side of the house.

Day 10 - Family Christmas Party

The Annual Family Christmas Party - where over 50 people gather and enjoy the heck out of each other.  Dang, I love my family.  They are so fun to be with.  8 siblings, over 40 grandkids (with a few missing due to missions...) and food, games, and pure chaotic bliss.

We started off with brunch.  Egg casserole, french toast, biscuits and gravy, and fresh fruit.  I made the syrups - caramel, chocolate, and coconut.  Yeah, they were that good.  Rays were in charge this year and it was so fun.

We played this game with cereal boxes where every person has a different type of cereal (there are 52 of us, mind you...) the music goes and you pass to the left as quickly as you can, then to the right, then to the left.  At the end, whoever had the "special boxes" won a really fun prize.  It was hilarious and everyone got to play.  We ended up with 2 boxes of Trix cereal - a real treat at our house.

Then the nativity.  Stay tuned.  I will have a video up soon.  This year, Aiden's cousin, Marshall, that's two weeks older was supposed to be Joseph, but there was a "running up and down the halls saying no way, no way, no way..." incident, so Aiden got to be Joseph. (Side note,  Marshall got to be the centurion with cool battle gear...)  He did really great.

I have to clarify this picture.  Every year it is tradition that one of the older cousins (in this case, Michael), gets to be the "jackass" that Mary rides into Bethlehem.  This year, Mary was played by Gracie and her daddy brought her into the city to be taxed.  Awesome daddy skills, Mikey.

My cute Joseph.

Look at this total nerd.  We are all singing "Little Town of Bethlehem" and was just standing there all cute like.

Zoom into this picture.  Really... go ahead.  This is what I see...  Joseph: "Mary, whyou disrespecting me? I don't need no baby mama drama..."  Mary:  Eye roll "Whatever."  Uncle Mike:  I will just sit here and pretend I am not totally embarrassed to be the jackass this year...

So, as soon as the wisemen bring the gold to Baby Jesus, Aiden is ALL OVER IT.  Into the gold, the frankincense, and the myrrh.  Basically bathing in riches.  Somewhere in this scene, he tries to escape from the manger scene through the back entrance.  I am raising a thug.  

All in all a pretty memorable scene.  Gracie is such a classy gal.  What a beautiful Mary, eh? 

After the nativity, we entered into the gift exchange.  The adults all do a small gift to each other.  This year we did homemade bread and apple butter and a story. Chris did gingerbread house kits for each other... that sort of thing.  My family is so generous.  I really do love them all dearly.

We also have a tradition that we have a gift exchange with the non-married grandkids.  This year, Emily had Aiden.  She chose well.  Aiden got...

A super swell firetruck.  He loves it so much.  SO much!

Thanks to Cousin Emmy-Sue.  She knows us well...

Aiden sat and read the instructions. Nerd.

Check out the tongue.

What a wonderful time we had.  We were pooped.  So, we came home and had a nap.  (both of us... for 3 hours...)

Then we did our activity for tonight.  We watched Polar Express.  I didn't think Aiden would really enjoy it, but it has a train!  What was I thinking?!  He sat and watched the whole thing.  Surprise, surprise.  Frankly, I think the kids in that show look like Children of the Corn, but hey... once a year I can tolerate it...

Day 8 and 9

So, Thursday, Day 8, we did really typical Christmas stuff- went with Breanna to eat Mac and Cheese and then went shopping for Christmas presents.  Our Christmas has been done for a while, but we found a few odds and ends that you never really plan for.    Aiden loves, loves, loves Breanna and so it was a lot of fun.

Oh, and Aiden got a haircut.  No different, just cleaned up. He was awesome and very quiet during the haircut.

BUT!  Day 9.  So, Mom spent the day working from home and baking.  After a long day of this, we shared a cheeseburger and a drink of water from McDonalds.  Then off to Ogden (Again).  We were scheduled to do the Ogden Village Light thing earlier in the week but... DANG...  Too cold.  So, we went on Friday night.  Much warmer and so fun.

You may notice that the same post from last year and this year.. well, Aiden is wearing the same coat.  He hasn't grown much this year and still fits it.  In fact, it is big enough that he may even use it next year.  

He will say, Cheese, but never look at the camera.

So, this year they added a little train that goes around the whole block.  Basically, the teenage kid driving it goes fast enough that you barely get a chance to see anything, but it was a TRAIN...  So, we rode it and LOVED it.  The lights this year were even better than last.  It was still cold, but manageable.  We couldn't stay long because of the cold, but long enough to have a blast!

Oh, yeah...  Mom's sexy winter hat.  Listen, it was so stinkin' cold.  I had to break out the knit hat.  Not pretty, but nice and warm.  

Here is the train.  See?  Pure joy.

If you look closely, the sign says "Push button to start train..."  This was the Union Station house.  AND Aiden loved it.  He just sat there at the window and watched the trains.  

Enjoying the cold with pink noses and cheeks.  If you look closely at this pic, you will see his poor chapped lips.  Sigh.  We had to "share" Mom's chapstick after tonight.