Christmas!!

For those of you that don't know us.  We live in Arizona and have been here for the last three years.  This means that we travel to Utah for the holidays to spend time with our families.  I like to put up our Christmas tree though.  This years new additions were the tree topper and ribbon.  We also took Lynlee to see good old Santa Clause.  Turns out she does not like him haha.  I hope next year she has grown out of that phase.  We also went to the Mesa temple lights.  Sorry if any of the pictures are crummy I forgot my camera a lot of the time and so my phone captured most of our memories this year.

Our beautiful tree :)

Perfect crying baby Santa picture :)

We left on the 21st (the supposedly end of the world haha) for Utah and stopped about half way in St. George/Washington for the night.

On the 22nd we made it to Ogden for a family Christmas with the Sheltons!!  It was really good to see everyone except Richard, Becca, Nike and the newest twins John and James.  We are so excited to get to see them in the future.  Anyways, we had a big family dinner and went caroling to the neighbors.

Since we don't live in cold weather Lynlee wore two jackets.  She loved singing with everyone :)

You can't see everyone, but there were about 30 of us caroling and two dogs.  It was a lot of fun.

Lynlee hanging out with cousin's Macey and Hazel.

We then exchanged gifts and enjoyed each others company it was a really nice time.  Next day was church and we weren't feeling so great.  Lynlee and I were battling colds (which we had the whole vacation) and Matt battled a stomach bug.  Had a great dinner with everyone and then headed down to Riverton with Christmas with the Mendenhall's. On Christmas Eve we met up with one of Matt's really good high school friends.  She got married this past year and we hadn't met her new husband.  It was really nice meeting him.  As we got ready to leave a big snow storm hit :) this is one of the reasons we love coming up.  We have missed the snow, but still don't like driving in it haha.

Driving back to my parents in the snow.

That night my family has a tradtion of watching this VHS movie of Return of the King, a story of the birth of Christ,  my parents VHS machine officially broke and so we watched another version my parents had of the birth of Christ :) I was a little sad because that was one of my favorite memories.  

I was a dummy and didn't take pictures on Christmas.  Lame I know and not so good for capturing those memories.  Oh well, live and learn I guess.  We spent the morning at my parents, went to brunch with my dad's aunt and uncles, and came back home to Nate and Melis to skype with Mitch and Lyndsey in Kentucky.  It was nice to relax the rest of the day.  My Mom, Nate, and I all had colds it was pretty sad.  Crossing our fingers no one gets sick next year.  

The next day was my little bro's birthday he turned the big 16 (seriously I can't believe how old he is getting). We went to Les Miserables to celebrate.  We had to go in two shifts so that someone could stay and watch Madyson, Ryker and Lynlee.  We were slightly worried leaving Lynlee because of her freaking out everytime Mom and Dad left the room, but she did great and this is what we came home too.

Hanging out with Grandpa watching a movie.

The rest of the time we just hung out.  We met up with some more friends of Matt (Jeff, Jarid and Rick) and one of my old college roommates, Jocelyn and her awesome new husband Peter.  Made it to the extended Mendenhall family party and Matt's cousin's wedding (one that I had never met because we moved to AZ before he got back from his mission.  On the way home we stopped in St. George to stay with my college roommate Chelsey Sharp (seriously love this girl she changed my life).  Her family is so gracious to let us crash at their palce.  Love ya Chels.  

We got home around 5 on New Years Eve got some pizza and cracked open some sparkling cider to bring in the New Year and fall asleep.  We had such a great time.  Someday we will live closer and won't have to use our vacation time for the holiday's, but real vacations haha.  Someday right?  Sorry for the pictures, but that is the shortened version our Christmas adventure.  Can't wait for next year Lynlee will be more fun.