Christmas 2009

Our Christmas this year was wonderful! We were blessed beyond what we deserved. Can I just say, God is good. And a lot of people are really good, too - very generous and thoughtful. We have been very humbled by everyone's generosity to us this Christmas season. It seemed like everyday we saw a new miracle. What a blessing!

We enjoyed spending time with family and friends and taking a little bit of a break from the craziness of life. And getting to have Elena around is a special treat - it's so fun to see the magic in little kid's eyes. It's so fun to have her growing up and getting really excited about holidays and traditions.


It all went way too fast though - it felt like Christmas was over before it had barely begun! It made me sad this year when everything was over... I hate looking at the decorations now and knowing that they just need to come down. :( But not until Saturday, at least! I told Eric, I think Heavenly Father knew that I needed a little bit of a pick me up after Christmas is over because we now have, not only New Year's to look forward to, but my birthday and our anniversary! January is a good month, too! :)

Anyways, so here is a bit of our Christmas, in review:

The weekend before Christmas, we went up to Temple Square to see the lights. It was freezing! But, so beautiful! We got an awesome parking spot just above the conference center and walked down a beauitfully lit sidewalk that we had never seen before in our years of going up to look at the lights. The quality of this picture is terrible, but at least you can get a feel for how lit up everything was - it really glows like that:

So, we think we now have figured out the ultimate way to see the lights on Temple Square. Park above the conference center, come down the walk and cross the street to the Promenade, go left and check out the luminarias (pretty, but not our favorite part, which is why we do those first), then cross back over the Promenade, by way of the beautiful pink trees by the streams in back of the Joseph Smith memorial building, and enter the gates by the temple (by the red tree), approach the Assembly Hall from the front (probably my favorite part of Temple Square!) and look at the beautiful lights all around, head right and finish at the Nativity scene. So there you go - the insider's guide. haha.

Apparently, neither Elena or I can take a good picture... it's either blurry or one of us has our eyes closed. :)

Christmas Eve:

Eric helping Elena put out cookies for Sandy Cwaus (as Elena calls him).

The tree - all ready and waiting.

Christmas morning:

Unfortunately, Elena and I were a little sick. So, no one got a ton of sleep and Elena was ready to get out of bed bright and early. We started our day at 7:30, (What was that I said in my last post about getting to sleep in??) but we still had a lot of fun!

Elena (obviously a little bleary eyed and not too excited about life yet...) checking to see if Santa came and ate the cookies and milk.

Checking out the tree...

Elena and Dad waiting to get things started:

Hooray!

Here's Elena passing out the presents from under the tree:

Elena's turn to open a present...

Thanks to everyone for the awesome gifts! Eric's highlights included: a large stack of movies, money to spend on his fish, Home Depot gift card, new jeans, and a remote control airplane. Mine included: cute decorations for my house, some terrific cardigans, and a ton of stuff for my kitchen - serving platters, new dishes, a hand food processor, a juicer (for yummy lemonade in the summer - party at our house!), and a creme brulee set! Elena's highlights included: play-doh, some books, a sweet stack of Disney movies, cute clothes and lots of bows, blocks, dominoes, bubbles, dishes for her play kitchen (which she matches up by color when she's serving us - the purple fork with the purple bowl, etc. Funny girl...), and a nifty tent/obstacle course thing. It took us a while to finish opening our gifts because Elena was so excited about each thing she opened and wanted to stop and play with it. :)

And speaking of playing with things: here is a picture of the maiden voyage of my creme brulee set. :) They turned out pretty well. I'm not totally sold on the recipe I used though. Anyone have a killer creme brulee recipe?

Hooray for another wonderful year! I love Christmas!