Christmas 2023

Reagan had some adventures getting home this year for Christmas. He bought an overnight bus ticket which would have been perfect-get on and sleep the whole way and arrive in the morning. However, he missed his bus coming up, had to stay the night in the airport and then rode the day bus home the next day. We are grateful we got to have him home for a week!

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve we made Rock’s yummy pizza stone pizza. Reagan hadn’t experienced it yet and it is our new favorite meal to make! The kids raced to see who could get theirs done the fastest. I think Libby won.

Yes, we are missing one child this year. :-( But I’m happy Cade is where he is so it’s ok.

Levi and Reagan both wanted a sweater like Rock has, so that was the Christmas Eve gift this year.

No, that’s not Cade, that is Rock still going strong with his No-Shave November beard.

This year the new book we opened at Christmas time was actually the Christmas Eve book. I’m sad Cade had to miss it because he would have loved it. There was only one book that my kids would have been ok reading instead of our traditional Twas the Night Before Christmas, and this was it.

Christmas Morning

They left room for Cade’s “ghost” in the line up a the bottom of the stairs.

The picture on the paper is of Reagan on Alli’s banana chair “watching” conference. She suggested it would be a good gift.

GQ boy got a bed, and some hot sauce from Santa.

A whole running season’s worth from Libby.

This is Libby with some of her favorite gifts. Her purple converse from Santa, her polaroid camera from Santa and her purple fleece jacket from Levi.

Reagan made sure everyone got legos to put together that day.

I can’t believe I somehow missed photographing the building process picture this year, but here are the finished products…

My favorite gift that I gave this year was this cross stitch for Allie and Cam. Allie made one for Rock and I our first Christmas and I’ve waited a long time to make one for Allie.

We had dinner that evening with my extended family and that was Christmas Day.

Reagan had more bad luck when he tried to go home after Christmas. When he showed up at the bus stop at 11:00 PM, to head home for a friend’s wedding the next day, he found out his night bus had been canceled. He then had to figure out a way to get back to Utah before 11 the next morning. He ended up buying a plane ticket and got to Utah just in time. This meant that I got to get up at 4:30 in the morning for the 2nd time in 2 weeks to take one of my boys to the airport to catch a plane.

For New Years Eve this year we had our standard finger food night. The highlight was cheese fondue and apples, surprisingly enough. After dinner we put together a mystery puzzle. You have to solve the puzzle and then the puzzle morphs into something else crazy and cool. We spent 5 hours on it in total but didn’t actually finish until the next morning.