Christmas 2010

This year was our year to spend Christmas with my family. We have tried to set it up to where we spend every other year with our families on Christmas. All of us met up at mom and dad's house in Apache Junction to spend almost a week together. James and Andrew and I left on Wednesday before Christmas to make the 18 hour drive there. We drove halfway to Las Cruces, stopped for the night and drove the rest of the way on Thursday to get there. Andrew was not a huge fan of being stuck in his car seat. He would do ok for about 3 hours at a time and then would go into a full scale freak out. We tried to plan our stops around that time frame to avoid as much of it as possible but he was definitely glad to be out of the car.
We decided to go bowling on Christmas Eve after running our last minute errands and shopping. We had a lot of fun.
Grandma and Andrew

Britt actually won the game

Afterwards we were running to Costco for our last - last minute shopping trip before Christmas and I got sick all over the parking lot. Not fun. We headed straight back home for me to go to bed and hopefully avoid getting everyone else sick and for me to feel better.
BrieAnn and Jake and their 2 little sweeties showed up and Cora was sick too. I avoided dinner and just hung out while Kalli and Steve, Megan and Britt and Kiersty and Seth built their gingerbread houses for our gingerbread house contest. (also included graham crackers when they ran out of gingerbread)


Kalli and Steve's Snow Shack. They even have an ice fishing pod.

Meg and Britt's conventional gingerbread house.

Kiersty and Seth's Conference Center complete with waterfall and rotating protest placard.

Before long both James and I were sick with the stomach bug from hell, Kalli got it at the end of the night and it was quite miserable. Mom and Dad kept Andrew in the house with them so that James and I could try and sleep. I ended up passing out twice and bashing my nose in and just in general feeling like crap all night and so did poor James and Kalli.
So Christmas morning James and I were pretty out of it. Him more than me because I was on the tail end of it. Pardon my very unattractive self in the photos of Christmas but we were lucky to even get these.
Seth getting his Boise State hat.

Kalli getting something. Not sure what.

Andrew getting one of his fun gifts. Poor kid has his birthday 2 days after Christmas so he didn't get much fun stuff from us. One toy and pajamas and clothes. Lots of books.


James getting his "tools" from Steve. He needed a gift card from Harbor Freight but Steve decided to make him work to get the cash.

Mom and Dad have lost a lot of weight this past year all of their clothes are too big. Mom got 2 pairs of pants and a new shirt.

Dad got a whole lot of new shirts and his Father's Day present, and a digital photo keychain. All kinds of goodies.


Andrew loving his walker

Kiersty got a huge, soft fluffy robe that was even tall enough for her.

Brittany and her ipod speakers.

Aside from the being sick we had a really good Christmas. We had so many gifts from Amazon we could have done a commercial lol. Unfortunately the stomach bug also hit everyone else in the family over the next couple of days except lucky Kiersty and Steve.