Happy Holidays!

It's about time for a Christmas recap I'd say!

Christmas Eve

We had a mini birthday celebration for Jaden and then headed over to our boss/neighbors' home for a gift exchange and lunch. Later in the afternoon we had one of our cute family of friends over for treats and a nice chat as they were headed home from a DC trip. Then we had a nice chicken cordon bleu dinner and later in the evening we joined Steve's family via skype for their Christmas Eve devotional and family gift exchange.

Christmas Morning

We may or may not have gotten up at 6:30 and WOKEN OUR CHILD UP (are we crazy??). But we had to leave for church by 9:15, so we had to have time for all of our presents and traditional Christmas morning breakfast casserole before we had to get ready. So no sleeping in for us!

Can you see the hint of frost on the ground? Some white Christmas for us... :)

Santa and grandparents came to our home!

Jaden's Christmas Highlights

Jaden's very own baby grand piano! Grandma and Grandpa Howell couldn't resist it, and we're pretty much in love with it as well. It teaches him high/low, fast/slow, notes, songs, music, learning...Steve and I may or may not have played with it on our own as well ;). Let the piano lessons begin!

Poor baby was so tired, when he lost his balance and fell down, he just decided to stay there :)

Steve's Christmas Highlights

A made-for-the-oven dutch oven with a cookbook written and published by Steve's very own dad...?!?! What a surprise! It was actually a gift for both of us, which was made evident by the color of the dutch oven--lime green all the way!

Audrey's Christmas Highlights

Lots of workout clothes and weights that I couldn't even lift while sitting down. I guess I have my work cut out for me :)

Our mess.

Then we had a yummy breakfast...

...and headed to church where we practiced/performed O Holy Night in sacrament meeting all in one shot. Whoops...

Jaden was SO tired that he spent the car ride home and next three hours looking like this:

Then perhaps the coolest part of Christmas was spending the afternoon and Christmas dinner with the missionaries! They didn't have anywhere to go, and we didn't have any family around, so it worked out perfectly! We tried to give them a good and relaxing Christmas experience, which hopefully they had. Dinner took long enough to get ready that by the time we were ready to eat, it was time to skype with my missionary brother Daniel! So the lucky missionaries got to see MORE missionaries on Christmas. Oh well. :) It was SO good to see my brother. It's amazing to see how he's changed from a new missionary to a seasoned missionary over the past 19 months.

After Steve took the missionaries home, we spent more time skyping both of our families and *finally* just relaxing! The day after Christmas was more relaxing than Christmas itself as we slept in and took a risk taking Jaden to Sherlock Holmes. He did well and overall we had such a great holiday. It was a very merry Christmas for us, quiet and full of love and the spirit of Christ. We hope it was wonderful for all of you as well!