Christmas in Utah Part 3.99

To end the day Joe and I met my brothers and their families at Rock Creek Pizza (it was on our list of places to eat while in Utah). Unfortunately they don't have the dough croûtons any more, it was definitely a disappointment! But being with family made up for it! It was also the first time I was able to see Joclynn since being in Utah.

Nathan, Elizabeth, Jessie, Jacob

Jessie & Jacob (hyper)

Nathan & Elizabeth (also hyper)

Ben & Katti (parents of Elizabeth & Jacob)

Joclynn & Nathanael (Hode) (parents of Nathan & Jessie)

Of course hanging out chatting and eating was lots of fun, so we continued the fun at Hode's house and played a ridiculous game called MadGab, it was hilarious, and of course everything is even more funny at midnight.

Jessie and Nathan are showing off their tree for me

After several rounds I think we went down and played some Mario Bros. on the Wii. If that really happened I think it's the same night I totally fell sleep playing. But it was a great way to end the day!

Christmas in Utah Part 3.5

After the Temple visit we rode with Joe's parents up to Layton to visit Joe's Grandma (Sharon's mother). She's currently living in an assisted living center, and those are always so hard for me. I feel bad for everyone in there, and I immediately feel the need to cry. But Grandma seemed to be doing all right. She was watching some shows and kicking back in her La-Z-boy.

I'm glad we went, especially so Joe could see his Grandma, it's been awhile.

Christmas in Utah Part 3

On December 21st Ian and Tykena were sealed together along with baby Olivia for time and all eternity in the Salt Lake City Temple. It was beautiful!
Their sealing was going to be in the afternoon so Joe and I decided it would work out great to do a session before, along with my parents. It was the first time Joe had been to a session at the SLC Temple, it was my second time, and it was great. I really enjoy being there. After the session we had a little time for some Temple cafeteria food :) It was fine, we tried cracked wheat (totally an old person food), and Dad bought it so it all worked out.
We made it up to the sealing room and hung out with the family while we waited for everyone to get there. This was our first live sealing we attended, since being sealed ourselves in 2007, so I was definitely excited. I was especially excited to see Ian and Tykena be sealed to their beautiful baby Olivia. They arrived and looked lovely kneeling across from each other (even if they also looked a little nervous). Then little Olivia was brought in in a cute old fashioned buggy. She was all dressed in white and looked so cute! When they were sealed as a family it was amazing! It's such a precious and special experience that I'm so blessed to have been a part of it. And now they are in our family forever!
After the sealing we waited for them to come out so that we could congratulate them and take some pictures!

Here is Olivia, Dotty, and Audrey, the 3 girl grandbabies

Ian & Joe are brothers :)

A beautiful eternal family!

It was super cold! But everyone survived, and I don't think we had too many melt downs. 

Joe and I needed a picture together!

Here is everyone else hanging out:

Annie with Jeremy relaxing

Libby and Dottie!

Sam, Katie, Joe (running in place to keep warm with Robbie)

Dotti, Audrey, Robbie

Joe's making sure everything is OK

Of course after being at the Temple all day everyone is starving! So we went to the Cheesecake factory.

After I got this look from Ian, I started photo stalking him:

A final picture with almost everyone :)

I had a wonderful day with the family, especially since we were able to share the day at the Temple. It's always so special doing Temple work as a family. I love Ian, Tykena, and Olivia, and I love that they are now sealed!

Christmas in Utah Part 2

On Sunday night the Grigg's were nice enough to invite my parents (and us) over for dinner. Ian and Tykena also joined us because they were living in the house at the time, and we needed to meet little Olivia! It was a nice, quiet evening together.

Sharon set a cute Christmas table for us. Sharon and mom must be chatting about it in the kitchen :)
And here's Olivia!

After dinner we did some major chatting and catching up.

Olivia likes it when you blow on her wild hair :)

Tykena, Ian, and Olivia

We like each other.

And this was totally cute!

Christmas in Utah (the crafting part)

Joe and I had my brother Chris and his family and Katie and her family for Christmas. I really wanted to do something crafty, but something that the kids might be interested in too. So I found this in my blog prowl: Family Yahtzee! It's so cute! Even if the kids aren't into it, at least it looks cute :)
It actually took a really long time to make, well longer than I anticipated anyway. We originally were going to have Home Depot/Lowes cut up a piece of wood for us, but they didn't have exactly the size we were after, but we thought we would try a smaller piece just to see. Well that was a terrible idea. The guy that was trying to help us out started using the huge electric saw thing they have, and it was scary! The saw kept kicking around the piece of wood. So eventually the guy decided he would manually cut us some squares, well all of the saws they have out for people to cut their wood with are not sharp and really are meant just to cut once or something. Anyway, it was painful watching him struggle to cut us squares, so I told Joe to tell him that he had cut enough for us and we would cut the rest! In the end we just bought the blocks at Michaels, but I had to go to several Michaels to find enough blocks! It was like the world was against me, or everyone was doing Family Yahtzee as their Christmas gift :)
Joe and I made these together which was awesome. We set up a card table in our living room and had various movies playing in the background while we painted, mod podged, and created our gifts.

It was totally worth all the hard work, I'm really proud of our accomplishment. It was fun to create these with Joe, he's really good at helping me, but it was especially fun to have him be involved from start to finish with this one. He was of course the biggest help with the images, but he's a great cutter too, which I'm terrible at. We used plain chipboard boxes from Michaels as well as the two inch blocks. We then painted it all the same off white color. Once that dried we put the colored paper on with mod podge, then the picture over that with mod podge. The pictures smeared a little, and now I know you need to spray pictures with a setting spray before you try to brush them with mod podge. We did the same for the boxes, we put the paper on with mod podge, and basically just covered the whole box with mod podge to help seal it all up. We printed the "Family Yahtzee" logo just from our print directly on the scrapbook paper. We even printed out copies of the score cards and instructions!
Now we need to figure out what to do for our 2010 gifts!

Christmas in Utah Part 1

We were able to go back home for Christmas in 2009 which was awesome! We even made it back in time for the Sibling party! We flew in December 19th in the morning and had the sibling party that night at Rachael's. It was so much fun! I love my family, everyone is so awesome! Rachael made us a great dinner and we had a nice time chatting and catching up. Becky and I even got our picture together since we missed it in Disney World!

We of course had to take some posed pictures! 

Oldest to youngest: Chris, Becky, Rachael, Ben, Nathanel, and me!

I'm not quite sure what is so funny, but we are a hilarious family for sure!

And then all the sisters & sisters-in-law (minus Joclynn, which was totally sad, she was taking care of a sick kid) left to right: Katti, Emily, Rachael, Becky, Angela
Rachael had this game planned. I don't remember the name of the game, but we played where you had to follow a rhythm of clapping your hands and your legs and saying your number and then another person's number, then the receiving person would do the same thing, their number and another person's number. We inserted Santa "number" for festivities sake...If you messed up the rhythm you had to open a present from the middle and put it on! We were all a bit hesitant to play, because honestly, it sounded a bit more silly than we are used to. It turned into hilarity!

After the craziness we played our little white elephant game. We passed around the gifts and swapped and settled on one to open. And it was awesome. Joe and I were quite proud of part of our gift.

it's this ridiculous alligator claw on a stick! It's real and disgusting! We saw a whole bunch of alligator parts at a gas station on our way back from Florida. It was perfect!

Ben always makes something totally funny. This year it was a mock on "The Giving Tree" along with a card from the Sham-Wow guy. The image he's "holding" is of that ballet that was passed around the internet. It's funny because our mom made Ben and Hode watch it as if it were the most amazing thing ever.

To see more of the gifts check out the Picasa album:

Sibling Party

The evening of course was not complete without a little Guitar Hero (even though we prefer Rock Band at our house)

The evening was fantastic! Being together with my family is the best thing. I definitely miss hanging out with them, and when we visit, I try to get as much of them as I can. The yearly sibling party is fantastic, and I hope it lives on forever!