Merry Christmas!

I have enjoyed this past week sooo much! We had a wonderful Christmas this year. I planned to host Christmas Eve for Justin's family. Days before I got all the food I would need to make Christmas Eve dinner with all the fixings, and I've been practicing the music for the Beal Christmas Eve Program for a month. I made rolls and bread days before so I'd have less to do on the day of.

Wednesday evening James and Bonnie rolled in from their long Idaho drive. We fed them dinner and then Justin told me he and James needed to leave for last-minute gift shopping. They were gone for what felt like an hour or so. When they got home Justin came into the family room all in a huff about putting Rocky in the office. Rocky is the dog we've adopted until next August. This annoyed me because Rocky wasn't doing anything to warrant such a punishment! I told Justin this and he firmly planted his foot down that Rocky needed to be in the office for a while. Rude! But fine...whatever. He was in there only a few seconds when I heard him crying. "Justin!" I said, "He's crying! Let me let him out!" But when I heard (what I thought was) Rocky cry the second time, I realized the crying wasn't coming from the office....I rounded the corner to the kitchen, yelled at Justin, "That's not Rocky!!!" and in walks James with the CUTEST black lab you EVER SAW!!! He had a red collar and a big red bow around his neck.

I. Died.

I stood there and cried/laughed for about 30 seconds until James handed him to me. Oh my goodness...my heart...we love him so much! His name is Jackson, and he is 8 weeks old. If you already have a dog, the puppy and other dog shouldn't meet for at least a day since puppy is still transitioning from losing his momma and siblings, so that explained why Justin wanted Rocky in the office (because I fought Justin on that, he didn't get a chance to set up the camera to record my reaction like he wanted, so I ruined that for him. Woops). Puppies can only hold their bladder for as many hours as they are months old...so we basically have a newborn in the house that gets us up every 2-3 hours in the night to pee. That part isn't fun, but he is just so cute and so so fun. Justin has already trained him to "sit" and "come." We are thrilled!

Christmas Eve I woke up to take out Jackson at 5:00 and just stayed up. The ham I made had been cooking overnight, so it was already done. I prepped everything else and Christmas Eve dinner was ready at 9:00 AM. Sound like someone you know? ;) I wrapped it all in tin foil and put it in the fridge until we were ready to eat at 5:00. We had a lovely meal, and then transitioned to the family room for the program. Justin's family were great sports about it considering most of them hadn't heard some of the music before. But it was great. We watched "It's a Wonderful Life" to top off the evening.

Our bishop lives in our neighborhood and he got his wife a new car for Christmas. He stored it at our house and asked us to drive it over between 11:00 and 5:00 Christmas Eve. I had insomnia around 3:30 so I got Justin out of bed with me and we drove it over for them. It was fun to be in on that surprise.

Christmas morning we headed over to Jon's to open gifts. We had a big breakfast of stuffed French toast and breakfast casserole. We opened gifts and had a lot of fun with all the surprises. Justin's parents got me an ice cream maker (woohoo!) so I made Dad's strawberry ice cream that night. It didn't quite freeze in the mixer, but I was too impatient to let it continue to freeze in the freezer before eating it - big mistake. It was waaaay too sweet. But now it's okay.










We had a baby shower for Bonnie the day after Christmas. The boys all had fun playing racquetball and eating at Five Guys. Most of the family ended up going to Star Wars that night and we stayed behind to babysit for Jon and Laura. This morning James and Bonnie joined us for Sacrament meeting, then took off for their long drive home. It was a lovely Christmas, indeed!