For our last event of the mini Christmas day, we of course opened presents!! I honestly love giving presents! I love picking out the perfect gift for each person & the best part about this year was that I actually had the money to do it! Here is what I got everybody
- For Jayson I got a light for the grill so he can cook out at night. I had heard him say he wanted one a few weeks back so I ordered one from Amazon. Out of all the presents I bought, his was probably the one I was least excited about. Why do men have to be so hard to buy for?
- For Liz I got a custom necklace from etsy with all the kid’s name on it & there birth stones in the middle.
- For Hannah Banana I got her the a kioyseki straightener, I have the same one and she was always saying how much she loved mine, so I decided to get her, her very own!
- For Kenzie & Londyn I got them Wiggle cars! Can I just say I love these things! I first discovered them when I would babysit my cousin Kim’s kids & we would drive them all around her basement. Funnest. Things. Ever! Even Jayson & Elizabeth got into the fun
- & I got Christian a power tools work bench. Hopefully he will grow to like it, but he seems to like the wiggle cars 100x more. Well at least I know what to get him for a future gift.
After I had given them all their gifts, they gave me mine & I just about cried. Or maybe I really did get a little teary eyed. I couldn’t help it. It was just so beautfiful!! Never in my life would I have imagined I would actually own a COACH BAG!! But now I can proudly say I do!! Thank you sooo much Waller’s!
Isn't she beautiful?
After all the fun & excitement here in NC, I got to pack up my bags and fly to SLC!! No feeling in the world can be the one I get when I see my family for the first time in 3 months! I couldn’t believe how big my Briar boo and Aydri Shay had gotten! Suprisingly, miss Briar must have remembered how much she loved me from last time I seen her, because I got a running hug from her. WOW!! Talk about Nirvana!! My mom had made some yummy soup & breadsticks for all the siblings to come over and eat. Food, Friends & Family- Couldn’t ask for anything better! Christmas time is busy season for my hard working daddy-o, so I didn’t get to see him until about 10 o’ clock that night :/ I didn’t make it much longer than that before I passed out for the night.
The next morning I got ready to head out to lunch with one of my best friends, Nicole. My sweet dad had filled up my car with gas and made sure it was all clean and pretty. YUP he loves me :0) We went to lunch and pretty much the best place in the world: Café Rio & then headed next door to a place almost equally delicious; Farr’s Fresh! We said our goodbye’s and I headed back to my car, only to find a note from South Ogden Police department saying I had been the victim of a hit and run! At first I thought it was a joke, but when I got out to inspect it, I found that much to my dismay it was not joke :/ All above my rear wheel tire was all crunched and ugly. So I gave the officer a call & long story short: If you’re going to be the victim of a hit and run, it may as well be in café rio parking lot because there are ALWAYS cops eating in there to see it. They tracked the guy down & got his insurance to pay for the damage. Thank my lucky stars. But really, I swear next Christmas season my car is staying safely in the garage! Last Christmas eve my car got backed into & now this?? Ridiculous. But it was still driveable so I drove it right on over to my sista’s house & we made some killer CHEESY homemade mac & cheese for dinner & had a sleepover like the good ol’ times.
Ooey gooey cheesy goodness!
We woke up bright and early the next morning to head to the mall to try and beat the crazy there. We did a little last minute shopping and then went and seen the newest Mission Impossible. Mark’s choice. Then I headed over to Lane & Krista’s to spend what was left of the day with them. Aydri showed me all of her cool new stuff she had recived since the last time I had been there, I ate to much of all Krista’s yummy baked goods and we talked and talked the night away.
I got to wake up the next morning to Aydri’s sweet little voice & eat breakfast with her cute face. We played around for a little while then got ready and met Lane for lunch. We went to Kneaders bakery which I had been dying to try since it opened in Layton & it did not disappoint! Who wants to go with me again when I get back? :) Someone from the bunch came up with the brilliant idea that we should eat lunch outside in the freezing cold on the picnic table by the library. It was pretty fun despite the freezing temperatures.
Then we went in to the library to warm up and Lane showed us some of the work he had been doing in there. He really spruced the place up :) After we hung out a little longer I decided to make my way home and actually see my awesome mom for a little bit before I headed over to Ty & Stef’s cute new house to spend the night there. We had pizza and watched Brair play. She just loves me. As soon as I get home for good, we are going to have a Briar boot camp & by the end of it, I WILL be her favorite person in the whole world :)While at Ty’s house, he MADE me make a bullet. Leave it to Tyler to make his own bullets, and persuade me to make one to. Considering the fact that I hate guns, when all was said and done, it wasn’t half bad.
Then we started watching some movie, which must not have been too good, cuz Stef went to bed before we even started it and Ty was passed out not even half way through. Then I snuck down to their guest bedroom to get some shut eye. We got up, ate breakfast and decided Tyler looks like the skinny version of the guy from the hangover & Due Date movies. The decision affected what we did later in the night, so read on. Then we headed to the mall for my 100th time and did a bit{more} of shopping. Then I went home to get ready for the Christmas eve party at M&M’s.
At the Christmas eve party I finally got to see my Grandma and Grandpa Rose who I had not seen in like 6 months. It’s always a good time with them!
We had a beautiful dinner & I tried my first Tofurky. Not bad, but I decided I’m not much of a meat substitute person, there is more to food then meat. Then going from our look alike decision from earlier, we dressed up Tyler to look like the guy one the Due Date cover. Oh. My. Gosh. This is why I love my family! See for your self.
Mir had planned all sorts of fun Christmas themed minute to win it games for us to play like pin the nose on the reindeer. Honestly, I think everyone else must have cheated because theirs were all on the board and mine was well… not.
Then Aydri carried on the tradition of giving all of us her personally picked out presents from all a dollar. I got the cutest bird pen. I love it! I’m going to take that pen with me all over & we are going to have some great adventures together! Lane got the sexy tie shown in the picture below.
For the past 2 years, my entire family has been sleeping over at Mark and Mir’s mansion on Christmas eve. I LOVE our new tradition. Being the youngest in my family, I was SOO sick of waking up Christmas morning and having to wait 20 years before everyone else would show up. Now it’s perfect because we all get to be together and it’s better to watch the little ones opening presents than sitting around with a bunch of boring adults. So for the rest of Christmas Eve, some of us went to bed while the other {fun} ones stayed up to watch” It’s a wonderful life”. When that was over, we sat out presents and everyone went to bed. Except me. I stayed up until 3 o’ clock in the morning working on the Child family year in review that I should have had done weeks before. Finally, nowhere near being done I decided to sleep anyway because I didn’t want to be the Grinch on Christmas day.
Finally the big day arrived. We all awoke and waited some time before Aydri woke up. Then we all went down stairs to see literally hundreds of presents covering the basement!! It was insane!
We all dug in and had so much fun opening present after present. I gave Aydri and Ipod touch, in hopes that maybe she would actually be happy to see me instead of my iphone when I came to town ;) Briar got a rockin’ ride on princess 4-wheeler. She couldn’t have been cuter riding on it! I had drawn Mark’s name for the Siblings and got him a radar detector. Lucky Lane about pooped his pants when he seen the gun Krista bought him, one he apparently talked about in his sleep. Way to go Krista for pulling off the surprise!! You see, Lane hates surprises so he always knows exactly what he is going to get. But not this year!
Like all good things, Christmas came to an end. I actually spent the night at my real home, it was wonderful! I feel so blessed to have so many other houses that take me in and allow me to sleep over! I am the luckiest girl ever!
Monday was my last day in town & I couldn’t let it go to waste, so it was packed with all sorts of fun stuff. For the first part of the day, I just hung out at home with mom & dad & of course my cute dog, Zeke. I missed him so much! He didn’t do it this time, but when I came home in September & he saw me for the first time, he jumped on me and gave me a huge hug!! AWWW!! We played outside with my dad for a while. Then me & dad went inside to eat lunch & played a board game with mom. After that , we got ready to head to Salt Lake. We met Lane, Krista & my cousin Jessica and her new hubby Crew at the front runner station and headed to Salt Lake. We met M&M at California pizza kitchen. (Tortilla soup=YUMMY!) After dinner we went Ice Skating!!! Of course, I sucked but it was still super fun! We ended the night with only one minor injury to Miranda :/ I guess I was having to much fun to take any pictures skating, but I did get a few of me & miss Aydri. Neither turned out good. One she has a grouchy look but the other one my eyes are closed. Pick your poison :)
We took front runner back to Layton, stopped & seen Jessica’s & Crew cute apartment & headed back home to spend one last night in my bed...
With all my bags packed back up, mom & I headed back to the airport with one final pit stop at another one of my awesome friends, Mickelle’s house. I literally just had to swing by and drop off her present so I didn’t miss my flight :/ We have major catching up to do! At the airport, I got some extra time to spend with my mom because my flight got delayed a few times but eventually we said our goodbyes with only a couple of tears, knowing that this was the last time we would have to do this. & that was it. Next thing I knew, I was on a flight back to my other home in NC. Time always flies when you’re having fun.
There truly is no place like home for the Holidays!! It has been a really interesting experience actually “Coming home” for the holidays. In a way it made it better because I had so much to look forward to! I loved and cherished each moment I got to spend with my amazing family. Now here I am like a month later finally blogging about it :]If you made it this far into my novel of a post, hope you enjoyed hearing pretty much every detail of my mini adventure :] Hopefully I will be seeing ya’ll soon!
