Christmas

Hello whoever reads this!  So, we had an awesome Christmas break.  It started with fake Christmas with the Armstrongs.  Sadly, the parents and Salli's family couldn't make it.  It was awesome though.

On fake Christmas Eve we hung out...details are slipping my mind.  I remember that Sam has an awesome army crawl (it's super cute.)  There are lots of other things worth noting also, but I don't have any pictures, so I'm not going to note them because they need pictures.

On Christmas, we had a little gift exchange, played some games, and headed to the church to dance with the Cerny's and the Reeves'.  Fun!  After all the dancing, the children (and Ryan) dressed up for the nativity.  They gave Finn a black cape.  I think he was supposed to be a wise man, but he ran around and screamed, "I'm BATMAN!"  It was hilarious!  Then I made lemon cookies with Malia.  And we had dinner at the Cerny's.  After that we headed to Shelly's house, played a quick game of bang and went home.

The next morning our home teachers came.  Yay!  Our plan for that day was to visit the Salt Lake Temple and Temple Square and then in the early evening go to a reception.  After the reception, we were heading to the Mikhail's house.  Then, before we left, we found out there was supposed to be a long, sleety storm and decided to just go straight to my parent's house instead.

I don't remember what we did that first day there.  The next day was the Madsen Family Christmas Party and it followed it's regular pattern.  One thing that was really fun though is that my grandparents asked Ry and me to man the kids pinata.  They're the ones that like pinatas the most, so that was really fun.  Oh another funny thing we did during the program too to play a joke on my family.  It worked and it was funny.  I'll let Ry write about it though.  :)

Then on Christmas Eve, Matt and Kyoko joined us and they brought Kei!  He crawls and stands now.  He was being super cute and interactive.  He hasn't been that way before, so it was super fun.  We did typical Christmas Eve stuff.  Ate dinner, played games, opened some presents, sat around and talked, read Luke 2, at one point we decided to sing songs...so my dad started singing Edelweiss, then another non-Christmas song, then another.  So Ry started singing an Anti-Non-Christmas song...I don't remember which one.

On Christmas we (My sisters, Ry, and I) got up early and made breakfast, like we always do.  Then everyone got up and we ate and then opened presents.  After Kei's nap we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house.  We reminisced on how weird it is to not head to Great Grandma's afterward.  After that, we went back to the Mikhails and hung out.

We hung out until Sunday and then headed back to Provo.  And that was it for Christmas!  Fun!