AWAKEN BY BACON

So much determination.

Watching them interact was so much fun, because we dont 

I could stare at this Christmas village for hours.

The cutest little cousins

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are filled with family, good food, exchanging of gifts, music, laughs, and overall a good time. On Christmas Eve day we watched Elf as a family which caused us to quote "Bye Buddy, Hope you find your dad" the rest of the weekend. Around 5 we headed over to my grandparents house for pizza, and my favorite thing ever, Grandpa playing the accordion. Nola loved the music, she was dancing up a storm, and just running all over the place. Me and my sisters had a dance party to the accordion music, and Devan did the Leprechaun dance.  Nola wore the cute little moccs which were her uncle braydens all day and night. It was so cute when Bray found out they were his. He thought it was pretty neat. 

Once we were home,  We gave Nola her Christmas eve present which was a picture book. By this time she was pretty sleepy and ready for bed. I was feeling the same! After sitting down and writing what we wanted to give to baby Jesus this year, singing a verse of Silent night, and setting out some milk and cookies, we were off to bed. I remember how hard it was to fall asleep as a kid on Christmas eve. As a parent, I was pretty dang excited, as I snuggled up to Zach and lay there thinking about our first Christmas as a family of three, I couldn't stop smiling, but the exhaustion took over. 

Christmas morning we woke up around 7 to the smell of bacon. We kept saying how nice it was to be  "awaken by bacon". After poking the two brothers and brynlies pleadings for them to hurry up and get up, we gathered around for the nativity story. I went in and woke Nolie, and brought her out to our little circle on the floor. I love the way she acts right after she wakes up and to have her looking sleepily and sweetly at everyone in a circle, was one of the highlights of my day. She wanted to go around and give everyone loves. After brynlie gave the recap of the birth of Jesus and we said a nice family prayer we headed down stairs to see what Santa had brought. Nola was in complete awe. We cramed in our tiny front room, which becomes substantially smaller on christmas due to the tree and presents, and watched each other open gifts. Nola was having a bit of trouble with her wedgie jammies, and face planted it right on the carpet. Then she couldn't get back up. It was super funny. She got pretty good at opening presents and helped everyone out by ripping off the paper and stealing all the bows. 

Santa brought some nerf guns and darts for the family. Zach being the tease he is, grabbed one and shot it right at my chest from about a foot away. He was thinking back to his childhood days of the weak, wimpy nerf guns.... well now a days they are much stronger. Believe me I know... I had a giant welt for the entire day. He felt horrible. haha I got lots of extra hugs and kisses and I think even a pity foot massage that day from him. BEST CHRISTMAS EVER. 

Nola crashed at about ten on christmas morning, sprawled across zach and my laps at my grandparents home. What an eventful couple days we had. We ended the day playing some games, and laughing our eyes out. That drawing game gets me everytime! What a wonderful time of year, spent with the ones we love, and remembering the birth of the Savior of the World. He is the greatest gift. 

BABY JESUS

 With Nola being so young this year I struggled with how to teach her about the true meaning of Christmas. Our savior Jesus Christ. Every day we would look at the few nativity sets I have and I would tell her about the different pieces. I made sure to highlight baby Jesus. Right around this time Nola was learning to give kisses, so I asked her if she wanted to give baby Jesus a kiss? This became a daily ritual. It melted my heart to see her give baby Jesus kisses. I hope I can teach her how much she is loved by her big brother Jesus Christ!

Everything is ten times more magical with a child! We had such a lovely time decorating our tree. After figuring out the whole light stringing business, we pulled out all our ornaments that Zach and I picked out together for our first christmas four years ago! I love pulling out something I haven't seen for an entire year! When I see these ornaments I'm immediately flooded with memories of past christmas's, of just Zach and I. Now we have a new member of the family to share it with, and it couldn't feel more special. It was also fun to add some new ornaments to our collection this year, including Nola's first christmas ornament. (a little lamb with wooden legs). She even picked it out!

Having a decorated tree was not as hard as I thought it would be with this little whirlwind zooming around the place.  She was pretty good to leave the tree alone, for the most part. Besides her favorite few ornaments, one of them being this little fox. No matter what she was doing she always managed to snag this fox right off the tree. I didn't mind though, I purposefully put the non breakable ornaments on the bottom, just for her. I'm sure the reunion between these two will be sweet, when that box of ornaments comes out again the first of December. 

Because we were going to spend Christmas in St George this year, we had a Christmas celebration with the lloyds a week or so before Christmas, and we also had our own little Christmas morning, a couple days before we went down south. Zach and I enjoy going to the store together, but then splitting up to find our stocking stuffers. It makes for an eventful evening, it was pretty hard sneaking out of target with that window scraper, without him noticing though. Nola's sock didn't contain very much but she did get some freeze dried pomegranate puffs, and some sippy cups. I loved this sweet deer doll I found at Anthropology! I wasn't sure if she would love it as much as I do, because its not soft and fluffy, but she gives her love and plenty of play time! Zach surprised me with climbing shoes, for me and himself, which I am super excited about.  And I got him a new camera strap. Of course Nola loved the bows, and paper the most! Not only were they entertaining but also a nice snack too. How cute are her Christmas jimmies, that belonged to me when I was a wee little one?! They were just a tad too small so they gave her wedgies sometimes, it was hilarious!   It sure was fun celebrating just the three of us. 

THE PERFECT TREE

We decided to put our small artificial tree up for adoption this year. Thankfully he went to a lovely home with Kasen and Ashley, and even got a name (Carl). That little tree sure was good to us the past three Christmas's. This year however we knew we wanted to get a real tree. We have pretty tall ceilings in our apartment and we decided to go big! You know what they say... go big or go home. And we didn't want to go home?... 

Our initial thought was it would be fun to venture out into the mountains and chop down a tree with an ax and stuff. But that didn't happen this year. Instead we grabbed the Hoopes, piled in the element, and scoured a few local tree lots for the perfect tree's. Our first attempt was a nice quaint little lot called Roots. The trees there were nice, but pretty pricey, and we honestly didn't get a great vibe from the people who owned it. Next we drove around some random neighborhood following Siri to the nearest lot.... which ended up being someones front yard. A boy about 11 years old came out and told us the rates of the tress, and we were shocked to find out they were even more expensive than the first lot. That dang Siri... always leading us to strange places. side note: I have this deep fear that GPS have a mind of their own and secretly want to drive us all off a cliff.... in high school on a girls trip to SLC, my mom told me to be safe and a million other things, along with watch out for deer. Well,  Dill my dads little car, had a GPS who lead us to a creepy side street in the middle of no where at night and guess what we found... DEER!! Im telling ya, they are creepy, and not to be trusted.

Anyways... Our third and final spot we came across on accident, and we were so dang happy about it! Cummings Tree Lot, is such a fun place! The man who helped us out was great, he showed us a bunch of different trees, and gave us a great deal! There was christmas music playing, and cute festive lights, and even warmers in the middle to stay warm and toasty. We found our perfect tree in the very back corner of the lot. It was about nine feet tall and fairly skinny and a bit patchy. It had quite a few imperfections actually, but for us, it was perfect. 

The whole cutting a tree down in the forest like a boss, sounds somewhat appealing, but honestly I was completely satisfied with heading over to Cummings Tree Lot for a fun evening picking out the perfect tree. We might just have a new tradition on our hands!