Christmas 2011

This year for Christmas we had planned to stay home because Andrew wasn't really getting anytime off work.  On Thursday Andrew suggested we leaved Friday afternoon for Vegas.  We also decided it would be a good idea to surprise my mom.  My parents were out when we got to their house so we had bought a huge gift bag and made Joie hide inside with a bow on her head and pop out to surprise Gigi when she walked in the door ( I have a video perhaps I will post it later).  It was hilarious and, according to my mother, a wonderful surprise.

We had a fun Christmas Eve where we rode a Carousel close to my parents house and did all of our other Christmas Eve traditions.  We ate DELICIOUS pizza at a place called Grimaldi's, opened our Christmas Eve jammies, made reindeer food (oatmeal mixed with glitter so the reindeer can find it), and Pop Pops read The Night Before Christmas.

I thought the picture of Joie torturing Berkeley was hilarious.  Sometimes she just loves her a little too much.

Santa came and apparently Joie and Berkeley had been very good girls this year because they pretty much hit the jackpot.  Joie got a scooter, tons of toys from Toy Story (Woody, Jessie, Bullseye, and Slink), tons of My Little Pony toys from pretty much everyone in the family, and tons of other fun things. Berkeley got the Elefun busy ball popper, Leapfrog Fridge Farm, and a ton of other fun toys.  The kids are pretty much spoiled rotten.

One of my favorite people on earth, my aunt Marrietta was their for Christmas with her husband and sweet baby boy and it was amazing to see them.  My dads parents came by a little later Christmas day with my cousin Hayley (one of my other favorite people) who just got back from her mission 5 days before Christmas.  It was amazing to see everyone.  We had our traditional Tamale dinner and put the kids to bed and started to settle in.  Then disaster struck.  At 10:00 I got super sick.  Like vomiting every 30 minutes and super high fever sick.  I wasn't surprised because Berkeley seemed to have the same bug 2 days earlier so I knew it would probably pass in a few hours like hers did.  But no.  Around 3 AM while I was still awake vomiting, I heard my dad, my brother Ben, and Andrew all start throwing up at the same time.  It was disgusting.  The next day we all spend the entire day writhing in pain on the couch.  My mom called my Aunt and her husband at the hotel and she got sick at exactly 3 AM as well and went to the hospital to get fluids because shes 8 months pregnant.  Around 4 in the afternoon  Joie started vomiting and got a really high fever as well.  Thank goodness my mom was around to help with the kids because Andrew and I were completely out of commission.  Andrew had to go home that night because he had work the next morning but Joie and I were way too sick to travel so we stayed.  We woke up feeling so much better but my poor mom was sick then.  It was basically the stomach bug from hell and needless to say we probably wont be feeling up to Tamales for a very long time.
Besides this, Christmas was absolutely lovely.  This time of year went by WAY too fast. I had such a wonderful time this year helping Joie really understand the true meaning of Christmas.  She fell in love with The Little Drummer Boy and loved going outside at night to see my parents light up nativity.  She would pick up baby Jesus from one of our nativities every day and she would say softly, "Look Mommy, baby Christ".  It was very very sweet.  I hope I helped her understand the true meaning of Christmas this year and hopefully every year she wont just be excited for the presents and Santa but she will be excited to put out the Nativities and remember our Lord Jesus Christ.