Enjoy the ride: Christmas 2014

Finally, let's document this thing!

Christmas was amazing. It was the first Christmas Eve/morning that Jacob and I have ever spent alone, at home, with our kids in our almost 11 years of marriage.

We loved it.

Our kids got out of school on the 19th, so we had several days leading up to Christmas to spend some time doing Christmas traditions. Baking, delivering, wrapping, and watching movies topped the list and we just enjoyed some relaxed days together.

Christmas Eve was a gorgeous Phoenix day and we went out as a family on a 3 hour bike ride. We rode along a wash to a beautiful park and had a fun afternoon hanging out together.

Both Jake and I grew up in families where you have a fancy Christmas Eve dinner, so we continued the tradition and ate a beef tenderloin roast, twice baked potatoes, shrimp platter and vegetables. We had my favorite pineapple cheese ball for the appetizer and ice cream for dessert. It was delicious.

After a three hour bike ride, the kids were ready for bed and then the magic happened as the fat man visited our sleepy household.

The morning came with great anticipation (and still in the dark at 5:30 am) as the kids piled into our room and lined up to run in and see their gifts. We loved being with our kids and watching their joy the whole morning as they found surprises, gave and received gifts with grateful hearts and played non-stop.

Office supplies...bring pure joy to this girl

New Nikes for everyone

Boy toys

Lauren's stash

Ellie's stash

Ada's stash

Tommy's stash

We ate a great brunch of belgian waffles, little smokies, and bacon wrapped water chesnuts, complete with fresh squeezed orange juice with oranges from our neighbors tree. Deliciousness.

Once we got breakfast cleared up the kids had some time to play while Jake and I finished packing, loading and getting ready for a flight to Utah.

Our sweet friend Shelby dropped us at the airport at 3:00, where we boarded a plane and were in Utah by 5:00 to celebrate Christmas, round two.

Jacob's dad picked us up and then we found that Christmas had come to their house as well. We exchanged gifts and saw his parents and sister Jen and her family and ate a delicious meal with them. Then it was off to my parents house where we had Christmas part three and finally bedded our kids down almost 16 hours later at 9:00 pm.

We spent the next four days with my family and the four days after that with Jacob's family and enjoyed every minute of it. Almost all of our siblings were there, and the cousins were in heaven playing 24/7 while the adults enjoyed visiting and doing some fun activities.

We were also the humbled recipients of some very generous gifts from our best family friends and some extended family members. I don't want to embarrass them, but hope they know how much we appreciated their thoughtful gestures to lift our spirits at Christmastime.

We watched two BYU basketball games, went sledding at the bruin bowl, had our annual dinner with the Philipps, met Ty Haws, got pedicures, attended the temple, ate out at some good restaurants, saw a movie in the theater, went sledding at Soldier Hollow, played the present game, visited with friends and extended family, and had a blast in the snow.

Then it was time to pack up and make the drive home in a one way rental car. (Cheaper than flying round trip). We made it home in one piece, unloaded our mountain of stuff into a parking lot where Christine picked us up and gave us a ride home in her family's surburban.

We found all well at home (no ceiling collapses or pipe bursts this time) and were gratefully exhausted after a fun and family filled trip.