A Quick Christmas Vacation Review

** A collection of memories that didn't make it to Instagram **

The Idaho Falls Stake Relief Society Presidency in costume as the "Local Leaders."

The entire cast of the inspirational film, "Nehemiah Builds A Wall".

Kenna and Kylie continue the Haws kid Christmas cookie tradition.

Kristie-Mouse helps too.

Paper crowns from our crackers for Christmas Eve dinner.

Bubba really know how to rock a crown.

Kristie checks out her gifts on Christmas morning in her favorite chair.

Kylie shows off her new horse.

Kenna shows off her balloon-tying talents.

Mindy models the fruits of Kenna's balloon animal kit.

Bubbs was nothing but a blur as he played with his remote control car from Grandpa and Grandma Haws.

Ruby introduces Pa to the best chairs in the world during our post-Christmas shopping trip in Utah.

 Ruby finally got her long-promised trip to Build-A-Bear. She picked a Chubacca!

Mindy got in on the fun and made her own Toothless the Dragon.

Ruby got to play with her Chewy...

... but Mindy didn't get much time with Toothless.

Alton kind of adopted him for the duration of the trip.

Hot-Tubbing at the hotel with Grandma and Grandpa.

Watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special!

Holiday Wrap-Up

Flashback to Thanksgiving: Greggie and Kristina drove up to the Parents Place for Turkey Day Weekend, and we were thankful that they did because we put them right to work. They helped Homely and I with the lights.

And they aided my mom in the heavy labor part of the fudge production process.

And Greggie even helped violate, I mean, prepare Turkey Lurkey for dinner.

Investigating the turkey was actually part of an informal homework assignment from Greg's anatomy professor at BYU.

Considering Greg's aversion to germs and obsession with clean hands, I hope he got A LOT of extra credit for this.

Homely ran some treats around to one of his home teaching families and came home with two real Christmas trees. One for the living room, and a tiny Charlie Brown-ish tree for the front porch.

Because there hadn't been a REAL Christmas tree in the house for over thirty years, we were woefully unprepared to host our arboreal friends. A lot of different Macgyver-ish attempts were made to try to get an old tree stand to work...

... but in the end Homely and Greggie ended up making a Walmart run to procure a new stand for the indoor tree. Then the newly weds used a variety of books and dvd cases to help it stand in such a way as to not drive OCD Greg completely crazy.

The next day, I found a simple, redneck solution so the old stand could would with the tiny outside tree.

The Christmas Season officially started in my cute little Cow Town with our junior high staff Christmas party.

Visual approximation of our junior high staff Christmas party. I didn't get any photos :-(

And then the next week, Jolene and Paul hosted our December FHE/Ugly Sweater Party.

President Jones won the ugly sweater competition.

But when we sat down to an amazing dinner, we all felt like winners!

My Christmas break started out back at The Parents Place. It was so fun to watch Kristie celebrate her first Christmas.

The IF temple visitors center was having a special art exhibit, so Warren helped me take the girls one Sunday afternoon.

Kylie's favorite part was petting the "pony" in the nativity display.

Kenna wasn't feeling great and was less than impressed with, "The place with the Jesus pictures."

My mom, Becky, and I continued the family tradition of making sugar cookies. My IF niblets are excellent bakers.

Bubba made some pretty fun sound effects when it was his turn to cut cookies. After cutting out his cookies, he wanted to put all of the scraps on his pan too. He didn't want to waste any dough.

While the cookies were baking/cooling, the girls went on a treasure hunt. I wrote/drew clues and hid them around the house that led them to some Christmas activity books my mom had wrapped up for them. Kenna and Kylie enjoyed the treasure hunt to much, they wanted clues left for all sorts of things the next few days. I think we might have created some treasure-hunting monsters.

Eventually the cookies were frosted...

... and decorated....

... and sampled. 

Christmas dinner was celebrated with Christmas crackers (and the accompanying crowns).

Kristie didn't get a cracker or a crown... but she didn't seem to mind too much.

My folks and I made a quick trip to see the Utah niblets after Christmas. On the way, we stopped at Ikea to pick up my big, cute gift from my parents (More on that in an upcoming post. I have a feeling that my attempts at putting it together will be very blog worthy.)

My mom made Jenny's kids quilts for their beds, but the kids didn't really get the "for their beds" part.

They dragged them around for the three days we were there so they could wrap up in them at all times and in all things and in all places.

I gave the older five kids bow ties, but Alton got a new shirt with his awesome nickname on it. Behold Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All.

I'm sure he appreciated the shirt, but it appears that all Stormageddon really wanted for Christmas was his thumb and his momma.

Homely spent some quality sports watching time with his eldest grandson, both wrapped up in blankets made especially for them.

While the quilt-making grandma read stories to the other kids upstairs.

Except for catching some sort of evil alien virus the day after Christmas, this is shaping up to be one of the best-ever holiday seasons.

And not just because Warren gave me one of the best-ever Christmas presents...

A Cumber-pillow!

What a great way to start a new year!