Our Ultimate Life: A Very Merry Christmas

Justin and I had a lovely holiday up here in Washington! This year we went all out with gifts for each other. Judge all you want, but after last year we were ready to spoil each other! Given my current situation (my extended vacation, if you will), I had plenty of time to get creative and spoil Justin.

Christmas Eve I planned an evening of holiday bliss for just the two of us. While Justin was at work I prepped the house for holiday fun and made my mom's traditional Christmas Eve dinner: ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, Christmas jello, and since we couldn't have my dad's homemade strawberry ice cream we had store bought strawberry ice cream. ;) I baked the ham overnight on low heat (thanks to Mom's helpful directions and my many phone calls) and it fell off the bone! It was so so so so good. We enjoyed dinner with just the two of us, and then spent the night watching the Christmas classics: Frosty the Snowman, Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer, The Little Drummer Boy, and probably my favorite of them all: Santa Clause is Coming to Town. We played Phase10, Rage, and Ticket to Ride and drank homemade hot chocolate next to the fire and the Christmas tree. It was a magical delight! Justin's parents flew in from California that night and we offered to pick them up from the airport. That concluded our Christmas Eve festivities.

I made a center piece for our dinner table

All our dinner fixins

I got jello on my scarf...and I'm not ashamed

Christmas morning I made German pancakes with strawberry whipped cream which baked in the oven while we opened gifts. Justin got me a new board game, a beautiful red coat, and a gift I've been wanting of quite some time: a new camera! I'm so excited to start using it to document our lives! I got Justin a lot of work related gifts: a picture of us to go on his desk, new shirts, ties, and shoes, and a few other random things like an external hard drive and Star Wars socks. ;) I also got him some swimming gear so he can swim laps with me in the morning at the YMCA. We had a lot of fun opening gifts together one at a time and eating a yummy breakfast. We loved it!

Justin's parents came over for some breakfast later that morning and then we met up with Jon and Laura to open gifts from the Rose family. Judy got Justin and me some new dishes which we definitely needed, and a membership to Costco! Jon and Laura got Justin a new racket for playing racquetball which is great because now I get to use his old one. We spent the afternoon playing board games with everyone, and then that evening we were invited to a Christmas dinner by a family in the ward. There were three families, the missionaries, and us. It felt like being at my parent's house when I was younger and everyone would come home with all their kids. We loved it! We made some new friends and had a lot of fun watching the kids play and getting to know the adults.

Laura got Jon this nerf gun for Christmas. Apparently it's been on his list for three years! Justin is trying it on for size.

Now this week Justin and I get to go to Arco to spend New Year's with my parents! I'm so excited! We leave early tomorrow so I'm getting everything ready for the trip.

For Christmas my mom said she doesn't want any gifts and if we were to do anything she wanted us to give the gift of salvation to someone as our gift to Christ! My sister in-law Jory in all her fabulousness suggested we all go and take a picture, and then we would all send our pictures to my mom's email on Christmas morning for her to enjoy. I'd say that's quite a priceless gift to see all your children are temple worthy and sharing the gospel with others!

Seattle temple

Keaton and Amanda at the Idaho Falls temple

Alex, Hart and Jory, and Gabe and Christy at the Boise temple

Lance and Katie

Chase and Rachel at the Oklahoma City temple

Mitzi and Anna at the Boise temple

Trisha and Travis at the Idaho Falls temple

A few other things worth documenting: Justin and I have new callings in our ward. I'm on the RS activities committee and Justin is the EQ secretary. They also asked me to coach the young women basketball team so I'm totally excited to start holding practices. Our games are on Saturdays and I can't wait to start working with youth again!

We found a sushi place that we love! We recently enjoyed a smorgasbord of sushi the other night that was most excellent!

The sushi would come around to you and you just picked the plate you wanted. Meanwhile we watched the chefs make the sushi right in front of us. Fun fun!

Here is what our apartment looks like: I realize I never posted pictures so here it is:

We went ice skating at a rink in Tacoma. After about 30 minutes we had had our fill.

Pho is a big thing up here so we went to a Vietnamese place in Tacoma to try it...we were not impressed, but it was a fun-ish experience (I craved a cheeseburger after that...)