Holiday Parties Galore

As usual, our holidays were filled with as many family gatherings as possible. Christmas is broken up into three parts each consisting of eating a meal and opening presents. Round 1 is with Rebecca's immediate family and a breakfast of blueberry muffins and omelets. Round 2 is with her Dad's family in Murray with a lunch of croissants, cold-cuts, cheese, etc. Round three is back at her parents' house in Orem with her Mom's family and a big dinner. We finally finished all the unwrapping just before 9 PM! The picture of their dog Apollo resting on the gifts sums up the day pretty well. Everyone was very generous to us and we hope they enjoy the gifts we gave them as well.

Rebecca especially spent a lot of time putting together a book of our wedding pictures that we got printed for her and my parents.

Rebecca gave me the game Carcassone. It's really fun. We also gave her mom this prank gift we found at D.I. It's a bag of some sort with really random embellishments, some of which are Christmas themed, others of which have nothing to do with it. The inside is made out of a plaid flannel shirt and all of the pockets are closed with velcro. Below is the booty of candy etc. from our stockings. I bought a large bag of Lindor truffles from Costco for our stockings and later found out that Rebecca's parents had also bought us small bags of the same truffles. So anyone who visits us in the near future will be strongly encouraged to help themselves.

My parents and my brother Timothy drove to Utah shortly after Christmas and stayed with my Aunt and Uncle in West Valley. We had my parents over for dinner one night and played Carcasonne. It was also fun to see them at the extended family party on the 30th in Orem. There was a nice Cafe Rio style dinner and a musical talent show of sorts where each family was given 3-5 minutes but took more like 7-10 each. Our family was the exception. We sang Christmas Bells are Ringing from the primary song book and were done in about 2 minutes.

For New Years Eve, we drove up to my sister's house in Logan. My parents and brothers were there too and it was really fun to hang out, play games and eat tons of snacks and junk food. In my family, we rotate the gift giving and this year Rebecca and I gave gifts to Melissa and Seth. She collects nativity sets, so Rebecca made her a pop-up nativity card and we also gave them the game Ticket to Ride.