Christmas a little late...

We experienced FOUR CHRISTMAS'S this year!!!  Yep, that was fun!  And busy and stressful of course.  I think David just watched as my stress got higher and higher as we got closer and closer... he was pretty prepared for it though, I guess he knows me :)

Christmas #1 - Our own
David told me that he was going to wake up at 5am to wait to open presents, just like he did when he was a kid.  I'm lucky that it didn't really happen because I need my sleep and with this week of off work, I needed some catch-up time!  We got up and rushed to get ready for 9am church.  Our church wasn't until 12:30 but that cut into #2 so we decided just to find one of the many churches around SLC and stop in for sacrament.  We were back home so quick and took some time to open presents from each other, awe.

We were both spoiled by eachother, at least I think.  The highlights... David got a 3DS game and I got a sewing kit!  I just got a sewing machine and hoping to learn, now that I have thread and other essentials, I can start.  We got a few other items for each other too, but we'll leave it at that so we don't need to know just how spoiled we are.

We quickly got ready, and gathered presents and treats up and headed out to go visit Grandma Ginny at 11am.  We just stopped by for a bit before her lunch and brought her some treats.  We had already given her a present early (family photos on wall) so we just chatted.  It was hard to leave her, but we knew she would want to be right back home if we had taken her to #2 with us.  She was happy to have us visit and even had some carolers at her place so we were able to distract her and leave her w/out her being sad.

Christmas #2 - The extended Clark family Christmas
Next up we got to the Clarks and they were arriving back from church.  All the kids showed us their gifts, we snacked on some food, and as more showed up we'd swap gifts with each person.  Well, the siblings actually draw names and we exchanged the evening before, but we had grandparent gifts, parent gifts and a couple extras.  They just swap randomly throughout rather than having everyone watch, so that was new to me.  David's parents gave us the last piece to our Willow Tree nativity set!  We're excited!  Someday when we have a home we just may keep that out all year.  Everyone loved what we gave them too, and we were happy because we tried to be thoughtful for all our gifts.  Snowman statues, house decor for Heather, small things or dinner with the grandpas, etc.

We spent most of the afternoon/evening with the Clarks until after 7pm, pretty long, but it felt like a nice day and we didn't do too many running arounds.  We also stopped at Jon & Annie's for a few hours to chat about our current life :) ah, they are just a cute family and great examples to us.

Christmas #3 - The Everts (my Dad's) family Christmas on the evening of Dec 26th

The 26th we woke up and flew down to AZ, plane was delayed so we didn't end up arriving till around 5pm.  The family decided to wait on Christmas for us, how nice! Everyone wanted to open up presents immediately, but we had to wrap ours first so they waited.  We had a nice dinner all together and then swapped presents.  This year we gave everyone home decorations - wood stacker blocks that I made, a glass ornament, and homemade desserts.  It was a lot of work, but it made it that much more special.  The nieces and nephews were cute to watch get into their presents too.  We learned some of our family are WAY into Star Wars, so David hit it off with them as always.  We rushed through the evening so Max could get to bed and then the older crowd stayed up and watched the 1st Grimm episode, what a different Christmas tradition :)

Christmas #4 - The Everts (my Mom's) family Christmas on the eveing of Dec 29th

Lastly we ended up at my mom's home a few days later and the smaller crew celebrated the Arizona way.  We had tamales and beans and rice.  The in-laws got spoiled by mom this time - all peppermint and other fun treats that Eric and I don't really care for but Amanda and David do :)  Funny.  We opened presents and here's us afterwards.  We had fun eating, chatting, and then opening presents and trying to take a picture together.

And we could practically include a #5 with the Evans/Speirs Christmas Eve bowling tradition that I hadn't been to in years!  Pictures on this to come in another post.