Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas! We flew to Spokane on the 21st & were so excited to see all of Jeremiah's family - especially his youngest brother Jonny who'd just returned from a mission to Argentina a week before! This was the first Christmas Jeremiah's entire family had been together for about 10 years due to all the boys being on missions at different times! On Saturday all the boys went snowboarding. On Sunday after church we had a HUGE family get-together to celebrate Jonny's homecoming. Here's a picture of both sides of Jer's family (his parents each come from families of 7 kids)! That's a lot of people, huh?! And there were at least 35 missing from the picture! So most of these people went to one of Jeremiah's Aunt's house for the homecoming party! It was quite the get-together!

On Christmas Eve we went to Grandpa & Grandma Divis' house with about 1/2 the people from the picture! It's tradition to go there every year. I love that Jeremiah's family has lots of traditions! After dinner we all squeezed into the living room so Grandpa Divis could read us the Christmas Story from the Bible. Callie sat with him & told him when he was done that he "forgot about when they went to find a place to sleep & the man said you can't stay here - there's no room!" We'd been using our Little People Nativity set at home to talk about the Christmas Story! :) Anyway, here's Jeremiah's parents' house:

The living room was insane Christmas morning! But there were 15 people there for Christmas so that's a LOT of presents!

Jack loves his handy-man set that his cousin Sophie gave him! (it's Jeremiah's new tool belt that he's wearing)

Jeremiah's dad MADE this crib for Callie's new doll! Can you believe it!?

I had sent most of our presents up ahead of time & Jeremiah's mom did the wrapping for me but she had the stuff for the stockings put away unwrapped & Callie found some princess bubble bath in there on Christmas Eve & was so excited that she'd found it! I told her that I'd planned on giving it to her for Christmas but since she'd been getting into things she shouldn't have & found it that she couldn't have it any more & she was DEVASTATED! She sobbed for like 10 minutes & even later after she hadn't cried for a while she was still a little worked up about it & eventually cried some more! So Jer's mom told her that maybe Santa would bring her some instead. Although later that evening she asked about it again & I told her the same thing & she told me that she didn't want Santa to give it to her, she wanted me to give it to her. Well Santa put it in her stocking after all & she was SOOO excited about it! She was more excited about that stinkin' bubble bath than she was about the 2 things she'd actually asked Santa for (a new dolly & a Barbie to be best friends with the 1 other Barbie she has)! :) Even now when somebody asks her what she got for Christmas she tells them princess soap (soap, bubble bath - it's all the same to her). She does love her doll though. She'd seen it (a Bitty Baby) in the American Girl catalog months before & it was the only thing she asked for up until about 2 weeks before Christmas when she added the Barbie. She loves to change her baby's diaper & clothes & she sleeps with it & is just a great little mama!

Well we really had the best time in WA! We stayed until the 31st & I honestly could have stayed longer. Of course it's always nice to be in your own home, but I can't even say that I missed my bed that much! The one we slept on was very comfortable! :) The only nice thing about being home (regarding sleeping) is that I don't have to go down the stairs in the middle of the night to use the bathroom (we were on the 3rd floor)!