Goodbye Christmas

 Why does it come and go so darn fast?? 

Decorations will be completely gone tomorrow.

 I miss the music already. 

Guess it's time to get our party on and ring in the New Year!

UGLY sweaters

 Sporting this season's finest at our Christmas Eve ugly sweater party.

 classic eyes closed family photo

 My Mom even made a sweater to go on the trophy.

 Lucas tried sneaking into other Family photos. :)

 The Gang (most of them)

 Cousin gift exchange

Christmas Updates and Out takes

 So tell me WHY it is so hard to take family pictures? Really. I just don't get it. As grateful as I am for Ashli doing them, I don't think it was the best of ideas. (Jimmy thinks it's comedy hour when she's around) Most people worry about their children behaving during pictures. I worry about my husband.

{I must admit, we did get some pretty good laughs looking through these afterward.}

Our Christmas was as hectic as any other day of the week for us. (very unfortunate) I wish we had more time in the day! Most holidays I take the week off to just bake and relax. Not this year. I worked my hiney off up until Christmas giving myself VERY little time off and instead of enjoying preparing for Christmas - I was in a mad rush.

I was glad to see lots of family and share more memories with them all. 

The Fagan family had an ugly sweater party that ROCKED. 

Lucas enjoyed leaving cookies and milk out for Santa.

The Millers hosted a GINORMOUS Christmas breakfast. I indulged in more bacon than ever should exist. (I never even used to like the stuff.) ps. Lucas loves his pillow pet, Grandma!

After breakfast we spent time at home... awaiting family to arrive from out of town, eating tooooo much and playing games. I also got a nice afternoon nap in! I didn't even feel guilty about it.

As per custom, when family gets together, SOMEONE always gets sick. 

My nephew was being such a party pooper - wanting to sleep all Christmas day. Come to find out - he had appendicitis! In for emergency surgery on Christmas night. 

We enjoyed time spent giving gifts, playing games, talking all hours of the night, having sleepovers with the kiddos, and even had some fun at the Hospital visiting Mason. 

Life never stops, does it? Neither does Heavenly Father's bounteous blessings! With all that went on Christmas night, instead of feeling sad or upset about what could have been a ruined holiday, we were just all grateful to be {more or less} healthy and to be surrounded by so much love.

I hope you all enjoyed Christmas this year!

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!

I was 9.

I vividly remember reading the Christmas story with my family, each taking turns with verses. My older sister and her husband lived with us at the time. I was fairly confident with my reading skills and when it came to be my turn, the words began flowing out of my mouth, maybe more freely than I had planned. I said every word in the worst way possible. Gentiles were not Gentiles... if you get my drift. It got worse. I don't want to write anything vulgar, but I think you can imagine some of those lengthy words getting slaughtered. The thing is, I just kept on going. Until my Brother-in-law, Louis couldn't take it anymore. He bursted into laughter and we had a hard time keeping the story sacredly read. I'll have you know, when the word "ASS" came along, I skipped it. I know a bad word when I see it. 

That said,

I was asked to tell the Christmas story in our church Christmas service today. 

I'm not sure how it went, as I was letting my words flow freely - as per custom. 

(Louis wasn't there to stop me)

Even if I did horribly, I felt the spirits' warm fuzzies. :) It was nice to sing the Christmas hymns honoring Christ and his magnificent arrival and to hear others testify of Jesus Christ. 

Enjoy pictures of baby Lucas as Jesus in 2008:

I hope you're all enjoying the season!