Adventure #25: Christmas and New Year's

"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." - Charles Dickens

December 7 - 31, 2014

I love the Holiday season! We have been especially blessed this time of year: I graduated, Jordan got accepted to Podiatry School, and we are expecting a baby in July! If you missed these announcements, I wrote about them more in the previous post.

Jordan flew in to Salt Lake Sunday morning, and we went to the Christmas devotional that same night! Our friends snagged us some tickets and I'm so glad they did. After worrying about Jordan all weekend, it was nice to listen to uplifting talks about our Savior and the Christmas season.

We got pretty decent seats considering we barely got there in time (parking was HORRIFIC!!!).

The whole night I was just so happy I had Jordan by my side again.  :)

After the devotional, we crossed the street and hung out at Temple Square. It really is such a magical place during Christmas. 

A few days later we were pretty excited about life, so we spontaneously decided to get a Christmas tree! It was so much fun! We shopped around for a tree stand and then looked around a couple places for a good tree. We went to one Christmas tree nursery place in a shopping parking lot first. We walked in about five feet, looked at the price tag on maybe two trees, and then promptly walked back to our car. Holy cow! Those trees were expensive!!! Even the little Charlie Brown trees were nearly $30!!! A nice, full, 6' tree was priced at $80-$100!!! Ya, Jordan and I don't have that kind of money for a tree. We heard that Smith's had pretty good deals on Christmas trees, and they did! We got ours for $25!!! It was so beautiful! Our tree was very green and very full.

The only issue we had was trying to get the tree back home with us. Luckily Jordan is a master-packer and fit the tree quite effortlessly into our back seat!

Ya, it did have to hang out the window, so thank goodness Smith's is only a few blocks away from our apartment!

Most people thought our tree was fake! We took it as a compliment because it really was a perfect tree. It lasted all the way through February. It could have lasted longer, but I wanted to get our apartment back to normal (you'll understand more in the next post).

Jordan and I finished out the semester and then headed down to California! It was a very relaxing week and we got to do some fun things. First we saw some awesome Christmas light displays. This video doesn't do it justice. The whole street had synchronized lights to music you could listen to on the radio! And it was only 10-15 minutes away from my parents house. It was seriously awesome.  :)

...and afterwards we watched a Christmas movie, drank hot cocoa, and snuggled up next to the fire.

I've gotta say, it was nice being home for Christmas again (last year was the first Christmas away from home for me). Baking our traditional treats, watching our traditional movies, and listening to the same music we listen to every Christmas. I appreciated those traditions much more this year. There is just something about those Christmas traditions that are familiar and peaceful. This is probably our last Christmas with our families for the next few years, so we soaked up every moment.

The day before Christmas Eve we played lots of games, including a basketball shootout! It was a ton of fun! I wasn't very good at it, but it was so much fun to play against my dad, my brothers, and of course... Jordan! The video is not super exciting, but I like it, so here it is....

On to Christmas Eve! Christmas Eve dinner was awesome. I love my parents' food! The ham, potatoes, salads, rolls, etc. I wish I could eat their food all the time.

My mom probably wouldn't be too happy about this picture, but it's the only picture I have of our dinner. We didn't have all the food out yet, but it still captures the memory for me.  :)

We also had a spectacular Christmas morning! Jordan and I were spoiled and we were pretty happy about the gifts we got for everyone else. The best part of Christmas morning was our pregnancy announcement. At this point, we hadn't really told anyone (we wanted to tell both our families in person, so we told my family on Christmas and his family a few days later).

Like I said, we were with my family Christmas morning. We opened presents as usual, but then Jordan and I brought out gifts for my parents and brothers for the very end. We had them open the gifts at the same time and they had the best reactions. I'm so glad we got it on video (I would put it on the blog but the video is at my parent's). James and Ryan looked very confused - we gave them a book titled "How to be a Child's Favorite Uncle" and a photo frame that said "I love my uncles." For my parents we gave them a picture of the ultrasound in a frame that said something like "Great News! Incredibly Good-Looking People Become Grandparents."  My mom saw the ultrasound, screamed with joy and threw her hands up in the air (for a second or two), and then immediately began to cry. Then my dad had the most normal reaction and said "Congrats! That's so exciting!!!" And gave us a big hug. It was awesome. It was so hard waiting until Christmas to tell the family, but it was sooooo worth it! 

We spent a few more days at my parent's place relaxing and having fun. Then we drove back to Utah. We pulled up to our apartment, unloaded the car, repacked, reloaded the car, and headed up to see Jordan's family. We had already been driving all day, so an extra hour and a half wasn't a big deal. When we got there everyone was so excited! We had found out a few weeks earlier that Jordan's little sister Shaylee was pregnant. As soon as we walked in we found out that our sister-in-law Mary was also pregnant. Jordan's mom immediately turned to us and asked if anyone else was pregnant (hint-hint, Jordan and Kristen?). 

We were so caught off guard! We had been waiting so long to tell his family in a certain way, and didn't know if we should say anything yet. So we told them we weren't pregnant. A minute later Jordan and I were downstairs with another copy of our ultrasound picture trying to figure out how we could tell Jordan's family sooner. We borrowed our nephew Johnny and had him carry the ultrasound picture upstairs to show the family. As soon as Johnny walked in the room, Mary said, "Johnny, what is that in your hand?!?! Bring it over here!!!" Mary saw the picture and screamed. Then one by one, the rest of the family saw the picture and screamed. It was fun to watch the reactions go from one side of the room to the other. 

After we had a good laugh, we started talking about due dates. Shaylee was due July 10, Mary was due July 8, and I was due July 15, but then it got changed to July 9th. So all three of us are due within three days of each other!!! Crazy!!!

We had so much fun with Jordan's family. We played Settler's of Catan and ping-pong, and just had fun talking and laughing. We took some family pictures as well. Below is just a picture of Jordan and I while we were taking family pictures. 

We were with Jordan's family for New Year's. It was nice to be there because the year before Jordan was working a lot and so we spent New Year's away from any family. We watched a movie and drank some sparkling cider. It was great. :)

A night or two later we played a spontaneous game of Masterpiece (a board game with famous paintings). It was like 2 in the morning, and we had five minutes to dress up and create a character. We also got some left over sparkling cider and tootsie rolls (our "drinks" and "cigars"). It was a blast. We were laughing almost the entire time. Brittany and Jordan did a great job speaking with accents, too. I think we should make it a family tradition!

I did want to share one video of Jordan and his dad playing ping-pong. They're just talking, but while they are talking, they are spinning their paddles the exact same way. I started laughing when they did it at the same time. Sometimes Jordan is like a clone of his dad. It's so cute.  :)