Monday, January 2, 2012

Christmas 2011

We had a nice, but VERY busy Christmas this year. It was the Bennett's year for Christmas and I was pretty excited for that. Four of my siblings live up in Ogden and they were all going to be around this year. Not to mention, my new little nephew is here! So stinkin cute! Christmas Eve, we spent the morning at our house finishing our wrapping, watch Christmas movies and getting everything ready to head up north. Man, it took forever to get everything ready, packed and loaded. We finally got on the road in the later afternoon. We went and picked Jessica up and headed to moms. I was SO happy Jessica came! I miss her so much.

The house was nice and festive when we got there. When I walked in, I saw that my mom had set up a nativity set the size of Lincoln and I knew we were going to have some trouble! I told my mom that I hope her nativity was made out of plastic cuz that thing would be destroyed within the first 5 minutes of us being there. She didn't to mind. I guess she remembers what life was like with 7 kids. We then unloaded everything and put our presents under the tree and got ready for dinner.







My mom doesn't do her Turkey dinner on Christmas Eve like a lot of people do. She does hers on Christmas Day. I honestly don't remember what all we had for dinner that night, but I do remember the Green Bean Casserole she made. It was AMAZING!!! I had never had it before and to be honest, I STILL hate green beans, but THIS was delicious! After dinner, my mom asked if we would help wrap  her presents. Me and Jess of course wanted to help out. It was fun to wrap presents and watch Christmas movies together. We of course had family drama in the middle of all that mess, but what is the Holidays with out it right? I tried to put it out of my head and remember my cute boy and how much fun we would have with him the next day. We ended up wrapping till almost 1:30 in the morning. MOTHER.... next year, you need to get an early start to all that! ha ha ha ha!






Lincoln LOVED that nativity set! He was surprisingly gentle with it and didn't break anything. Thank goodness. He would poke his head through the little manger and just look at everything. It was pretty dang cute. One of our family traditions are Christmas PJ's! I LOVE the ones we got him this year. Thank you Gymboree! He looked so stinkin cute in them too. He never tried to get into the presents under the tree either. He just didn't care. He was more entertained with the nativity and my parents dog. It's so funny how much he loves animals.








The next morning we woke up before 8am. In Jory's house, you wake up at like 6 or 7am. This is always a bummer for me. No one in my family ever wakes up before the sun comes up to open presents. We never have. We've always adored our sleep! Lincoln however, is an early riser. So we got up with him and opened our stockings together while we waited for everyone else. Lincoln peaked in his stocking and saw a hot wheels in there and got REALLY excited. We opened it up for him and he headed straight for the table with the Nativity set and started driving his car in and around it. He seriously had NO interest in anything else from his stocking. Well, except the OTHER Hotwheel car! ha ha ha!!!

SADLY... this is the ONLY pictures I took on Christmas day. S.A.D!!!




We finally had to wake my family to open presents. Lincoln was a spoiled little boy. My parents got him a TON of stuff. When he unwrapped his big package of Hotwheels, he was SUPER excited and didn't care about anything else he got (well, until we got home anyways). Afterwards, my mom made a delicious breakfast of muffins, fruit and quiche. Oh how I LOVE quiche!!! We then got ready and went to church. My mom said sacrament was only suppose to last an hour. Oh no... it was over an hour and a half. Way too long for Lincoln but luckily he fell asleep. It was a really nice meeting and I am really glad we went. Afterwards, we had to hurry home and get ready to head over to Camilla's house for a "sibling party"

We then went back to my parents house and had a turkey dinner with them. Can I tell you HOW full I already was by this point?? But my mom had taken the time and care to do this for us, so I forced down some more food. It really was delicious though. It all was! And what is the holidays without gorging yourself sick right? THEN... we packed everything up and headed out to Almo. Holy crap, we were TIRED!! It was a two hour drive up there and we pulled into the sticks about 9pm. I just wanted to go to sleep. We had a little gift exchange with them when we got there. Grandma Tammy got Lincoln a really nice WARM winter coat. I was sooo happy because he really needed one and he was too big for his other one. We stayed up a little longer talking with Tammy after that and finally I just went to bed. I couldn't handle keeping my eyes open any longer.

The next day we hung out with Tammy and Cami for a while and ate the other Quiche my mom had sent up with us to share with them. I don't think they liked it as much as I did though! ha ha ha!! Oh man, it sounds SO good right now. I am starving! Around lunch time, we headed down to Josh and Dayle's house to have another little gift exchange with them. Crazy Christmas I tell ya!  We spent the rest of the day hanging out, playing WII, eating and taking all the crazy kids outside for a run around break. We talked till 9pm and then decided to just head home instead of waking up early to drive back home. It was midnight before we pulled into our drive way.

Although we really did have a great Christmas, it was TOO busy! From what I've heard, it was for a lot of people. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that Christmas fell on a Sunday this year and for those of us that go to church, it was one more event to attend. Not to mention a lot of people have a lot of family and being Christmas we want to be able to see EVERYONE! Next year, however, we will NOT be having a busy Christmas. It was just too much and I found it was hard to feel the Christmas Spirit. Granted, we will be in ID next year, so I know it won't be as crazy. Jory and I talked about how the Holidays are suppose to be relaxing and sitting around ENJOYING your family, binge eating and just doing nothing for the most part. This year it was too much running from one place to another. I think Christmas is suppose to be more simple, stress free and not to mention drama free! Next Christmas, it IS my goal to take more pics Christmas Day!

1 comment:

bBchronicles said...

Great post - beautiful photos!