dear santa

(Mila decided later that she wanted to ask for a LaLaLoopsy girl instead of a Santa costume.)

christmas fun: parties and houses

The past few years in Utah we had a tradition of a white elephant gift exchange with some of our closest friends and their kids. Last year we also made gingerbread houses with them. So this year when it came time to celebrate the holidays, I knew we had to keep up those traditions.

First, we threw a Christmas party on Friday the tenth with some friends in our new ward. When all was figured out amongst us, we ended up making it an adults-only gift exchange/birthday celebration with about twelve other couples. It was a lot of fun, and we went home with a pretty awesome item that I stole to give to my dad. I'll have to get a picture of it because it was pretty much the coolest/weirdest/freakiest/goofiest knife ever. And I really do mean all of those combined.

I still wanted to do a family thing with the girls, so we invited some friends over for a Sunday evening of making those graham cracker houses. And the S family turned out to be some serious house-builders. It was so much fun!

I love that we were able to continue on with some of our Christmas traditions in this new place. Thanks for helping us celebrate, friends!

oh christmas tree

We spent the evening decorating our tiny little tree. This about as big as would fit in our house, and we got a fake one since we were headed out of state for the holiday anyway. The girls of course loved decorating and wanted to play with every ornament, which is why I mostly just decorate with bells anand a few other non-breakables. Small and sweet and cute. The girls loved that it was just their size.