December 25th, 2010
I don't know how Santa knew it, but he knew we were in Alaska! It was so fun to have a Christmas with Jessica where she knew more about presents and was excited to see something in the living room from Santa. She got some awesome things from him. When she walked into the living room she said, "Ooooooo!" It was so cute!
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| This is a very sleepy mommy with a semi-confused little girl. We stayed up very late on Christmas Eve and she didn't wake up until after 10am (both mommy and Jessica!) |
Her Grammy and Grampy (Jer's parents) bought her a kitchen set and Santa brought a bunch of stuff to go with it.
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| Jessica's kitchen set with her stocking. |
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| She had to check out each and every nook and cranny. Jessica left no spot uncovered... |
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| The funny thing was she was so serious about it. |
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| She found "food" in some of the cupboards. That got her very excited! |
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| I tried to explain some of the functions and features of her new kitchen set. She didn't really care. :-) |
Santa was good to Mommy and Daddy as well...
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| Daddy's stocking (it's the princess one in the front... haha) and his presents from Santa. |
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| Mommy's stocking with her presents. |
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| Fun times! |
Jessica also got chapstick from Santa. He knows how much she loves chapstick. She's just like her Aunt Becky that way. Aunt Becky LOVES chapstick!!! When Jess found the chapstick she dropped everything else that she was doing and devoted her entire attention to that chapstick. It was so cute!
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| She's figuring out how to open the chapstick. |
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| She looks hysterical when she applies her chapstick. Again, she is so completely serious and focused. So cute. So cute. |
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| After her chapstick she decided to try making breakfast. |
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| Yummy! |
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| Pretty soon she realized there was more in her stocking. |
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| Santa brought gummy bears! Hip hip hooray! (Or as Jessica is now saying, "Hooway!") |
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| I had to help her pull a few of her gifts out of the stocking. I love it when she lays on her stomach like this. Just a pretty princess! |
One of my favorite Christmas traditions is our families gifts to the Christ child box. I'm not sure how many years ago, but my parents took an old shoe box and wrapped it in pretty wrapping paper with a bow. They had us each begin writing down acts of service that we saw someone else do. We dated it and put it in the box. Then, on Christmas morning, before we opened any of our other gifts (after seeing what Santa brought us) my dad would pull down the box and read the acts of service we had performed. One of the funnest parts of this tradition is the reading of acts of service from the past. We all have our favorites. ("Amy changed Tony's diaper for mom - 1991" or "Becky put Amy's glasses up and saved her spot in her book after Amy fell asleep while reading - 1993" or "Derrall shared his spam with his siblings even when he didn't want to - 1994" that's a weird one but my brother loved spam...) Anyways, Dad always said that these acts of service were our families gift to the Christ child. Jesus Christ has done so much for us (as a family and individually) and service was one way we could show our gratitude for His sacrifice. One year my mom was asked to teach a Relief Society meeting (during the week) on Christmas traditions. She talked to all 6 of us kids (individually) and asked what our favorite tradition was. Without any hesitation, we each said this was our favorite thing we did. So, when Jer and I got married I made us a service box and we've tried to continue the tradition (keeping up traditions and establishing them is harder than I thought when I was younger! I never realized how much work my parents went to!) I wanted to take some pictures of my Dad reading the service slips from this year so I would have 'visual aids' when I wrote about it. :-)
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| Dad's pulling out this years service acts. |
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| Reading one of them out loud. |
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| He must have found a good one! :-) |
We all enjoyed unwrapping our Christmas gifts. Jer's family and my family have very different Christmas gift styles. My family is a fan of the 'grab and go' technique. Basically, my dad hands out the gifts and we begin opening all at once. It's crazy, fun, lots of laughter. We're all opening and looking, and talking, and laughing. It lasts about an hour and then we talk about what we got, look closer at what everyone else got, and usually begin playing games. It's happy chaos. Jer's family is a fan of the 'one by one' technique. His dad hands out the gifts and then we take turns opening our gifts. It's an opportunity to focus on each person and what they received. We all ooh and aah at the gifts. I love it because part of the pleasure of gift giving is seeing a persons reaction when they see what their gift is. Plus, we spend the majority of our time focused on other people instead of ourselves. It usually takes several hours and is full of lots of laughter, lots of fun, and lots of talking. After that we also begin playing games and hanging out. Both techniques ('grab and go' and 'one by one') are fun, hilarious, and focus on family bonding time. I love it. Over the past 4 Christmas's that we've spent together, we have decided that for our little family, we are going to use the 'one by one' technique. The first Christmas I spent with Jer's family (our 2nd Christmas married), he was really worried that I wouldn't like how his family spent their Christmas Day. Particularly the present part. He knew from spending our 1st Christmas at my families house that it was dramatically different. I didn't know what to expect but fell in love with his families traditions. It's awesome that we both have these wonderful memories and experiences from the holidays that we can pull from to decide how our little family will spend our Christmas's in years to come. Anyways. I digress. :-)
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| Daddy looks worried at some of his gifts... |
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| He's trying to figure out what Mommy made for him... |
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| Grandma, Tony, Becky |
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| Jessica finally started getting into opening her presents... |
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| Jessica: Not now Mom! I'm opening this one! You can take a picture later... |
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| Haha... When my sister-in-law Angie lived with us, she had the Hanana Montana Movie. Now, Jer CLAIMS that every time he watched it, it was because Jessica wanted to watch it. Funny thing: she was NEVER around while he watched it! And, he watched it five or six times in two weeks. "With Jessica" (aka "on his own"). So, for Christmas, Jessica gave Daddy his new favorite movie. Obviously, from the look on Jer's face, he's "thrilled!" (Actually, that's more of his, "Mommy's a nerd" face... hee hee" |
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| I had to take a picture of Derrall with his robot. When he was little (early 80's) this toy, Alfie, came out. It was a little toy robot that you could do all sorts of stuff with. Derrall got it for Christmas one year and he LOVED it! As the years went by, he got into computers, and finally is majoring in Computer Science at BYU. He will graduate with his Masters this April (2011) and then go onto a PhD program somewhere. He's waiting for his acceptance letters (which I am confident will come from all over... I think my brother is a stud!) In any case, his emphasis with computer science is artificial intelligence. Which is pretty sweet. So this year, this Alfie toy came on the market again. Sort of a nostalgic toy sale. My mom said she HAD to buy it for him! He could stick it in his future office! Pretty cool... |
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| Jessica got a backpack from my mom. She wanted to wear ALL day long! |
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| Seriously... |
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| If anyone even thought of touching her backpack she would go into hysterics... |
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| Grandma gave her some princess dress-up shoes. |
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| Her first high heels! |
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| She was so proud that she could wear and (sort of) walk in them! |
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