Monday, December 28, 2009

Christmas '09

Thankfully with Gary coming home 3 days before Christmas we were able to get everything together and ready. Christmas eve was great! Every year I make Chicken and Dumplins (Rick's mom's recipe) and Pomegranite Salad (my mom's recipe) for our CE dinner. Our neighbor Mina Cissneros brings us tamales and we LOVE this tradition. This year though we wanted to surprise the kids with a trip back to see aunt Kath and cousins in TN. Since we would be leaving our house at 2:30 on Christmas day that meant that we would have no traditional Christmas dinner. You know. The honey baked ham, mashed potatoes, yams the works. So I made an executive desision and we scooted dinners back a night. We had our Christmas Eve dinner on the 23rd and our Christmas dinner on the 24th. The kids were a little confused but I just told them we were having a surprise dinner on Christmas. Which was absolutely true! We just had it at Aunt Kath's! After our dinner we had a program reading from the scriptures and singing hymns. We had a little family testimony meeting and then took around some food boxes for needy neighbors. After that we came back to open our Christmas eve presents. New jammies. Love this tradition! Then the kids also opened their gifts from each other. This is when we surprised the kids about our trip. They were thrilled! We sent the kids up stairs so Santa could come and finally we got to bed about midnight. Christmas morning was great! I keep thinking that since the kids are older they'll want to wake up later. In my dreams! 6:30. They were ready to go. Christmas morning was great. Rick bought me a new camera and I left it at home so I have no pics to post of Christmas morning.
Here we are on our flight. We have never flown with Delta to TN. This was nice. A DIRECT FLIGHT! It was a small plane but we got there in just 3 1/2 hours. Sweet!
The Baker's met us at the airport and we followed them home to a Christmas feast! We ate talked and played and have been doing that for the past 3 days:) Here I am trying out the different features on my camera. Julie actually has the same camera so Jenni was good enough to just show me how it works. I am so not technology minded! Here's Jenni in black and white!

........and Christopher


Kendra, Julie, and Jenni in Sepia
Yesterday we went to church and T & K's ward is right across the street from the Nashville Temple so us girlies got to take a pic.

It's great to be here!





2 comments:

  1. Wow, how much fun would that be. A trip to TN on Christmas Day. I love your picture at the Temple. What a cool thing to have the Temple across the parking lot from your church. So glad that Gary made it home and that he must be feeling better. Glad you all had a Merry Christmas!

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  2. I'm SO GLAD you all got to go there to be with Trent and Kathy for Christmas time. How WONDERFUL!! I know they just LOVE to have company, and ESPECIALLY YOU GUYS!!! Dennis and I got to go and be there with them on Thanksgiving Day and we had a MARVELOUS time being with them. How FUN for you all to get to be together!! Lots of Love to you ALL---from Karen in Idaho (it's snowing here tonight...but I'd rather have your nice summer-like weather!)_

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