Our First Christmas

Merry Christmas! Happy New Years! Etc, etc. I've noticed a trend in my recent blogging. I only update around important events like holidays. My friend Emily said to me the other day, "I've tried to look at your blog lately but all it ever says is, 'Thanksgiving.'" Oh, woops. Actually, I've heard that from a few other people too... So, I'll try to be a better, more frequent blogger. For now, you get Christmas! I have a ton of pictures here, though, so hopefully it will be satisfying.

Before the Christmas season even started Bryan and I started getting really excited about decorating our own home and starting our own traditions. Little by little, decorations were put up. Here is, for the most part, the end result.

When Bryan was growing up his family did an advent calendar every year, where you open up a little box for each day of December leading up to Christmas day. His mom gave us this nice one, where the things you open are ornaments that you can hang on this tree. It was fun having something special to do each day and taking turns hanging the ornaments.

I had to work up through the 23rd, so Bryan had a week after finals were done of just playing and relaxing during the day. We went up to his mom's that night. We always love going up there and having a break from Provo to spend time with family.

Here we are on Christmas morning, ready to go to church. We hadn't opened presents yet because we were waiting to be able to open them with Shelley, Dustin, Ella and Grandma Marilyn. Shelley and co. arrived soon after church was over (it only lasted 45 minutes!) and so we made the Whitney's traditional Christmas morning breakfast of poached eggs on toasted English muffins with ham, topped with hollandaise sauce.

Once Grandma Marilyn arrived the present opening commenced! Sadly, I realized I didn't get a picture of her.

I had three presents for Bryan and I labeled them 1, 2, and 3 in order of how excited he would be about it. First, I gave him a bag of snickers. He asked for them on his Christmas wish list so who was I to deny him? Next, I gave him a bunch of sauces, as he loves sauces. Finally, I gave him...

The expansion to Pandemic, the board game he got for his birthday and loves. He kept saying something to me about his mom getting it for him and the whole time I'm thinking in my head, "I got you that!"

We snuck Shelley's bread maker out of her house and installed a missing piece. Then we wrapped the whole thing up and gave it to her! We thought it'd be pretty funny for her to unwrap something she already owned.

Here is Ella modeling one of her many princess dresses that she got from Grandma Sandi for Christmas.

As soon as the present wrapping was over, the boys were already on the Wii playing new games they'd received.

Later we played one of our family favorites, Loaded Questions. With seven players it lasted quite a while!

While the adults played games, Ella watched Barbie Nutcracker. When Barbie danced she mimicked her movements like a little ballerina!

I felt like I was taking all the pictures-- I wanted to be in one!

After Christmas Day we just spent time together, playing games and watching fun things like Fear Factor (I would never eat live scorpions, I don't care how much you'd pay me). A while back I taught Bryan's family a fun card game called 'Idiot' that is very addictive. We played that a lot and named a certain family member Idiot of the Year (thought he will contest this). I also made a couple of pies, pictured below.

A few presents I got for Christmas were an apple corer, french rolling pin and pie plate... all were perfect for this apple pie, made entirely from scratch. The recipe is from Our Best Bites, an amazing cooking blog I have previously mentioned.

On Tuesday we flew out to Maryland to spend time with my family and had a bit of a second Christmas. Here are Lindsay and Ava opening our gift to them. This is all I got of the present opening time.

Here is my mom's classic Christmas tree. The tree is so tall that the bow on top is kind of smashed. :)

In our stocking we got a Snickers loaf. Yes, those are apparently real and yes, they are amazing. We enjoyed it immensely.

Here Ivy is using my flat iron. Don't worry, it wasn't plugged in. No children were harmed in the making of this photograph.

My mom made Christmas dinner anew for us! Here is our lovely spread!

Ava is so happy and adorable. She is a joy to be around!

Bryan and I had the opportunity to go to the temple with my parents one night. It was very nice to go back to the place that started it all! We walked around and saw the lights a bit before going in.

Bryan proudly displaying a Thai Book of Mormon in the DC Visitor's Center.

The most important light of all! Almost exactly eight months later, we returned!

Some of us decided to go to DC for the day to see a couple different museums. It was Elijah and Ivy's first trip on the Metro! I think they thought it was pretty neat.

We went to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum first for a short while. I was just trying to take a picture of this T-Rex and Bryan happened to walk into it. He called himself a "photo bomber" when I showed him later.

Elijah refuses to turn his head to take a picture with this triceratops.

Ah! Attack of the underwater dinosaurs!

Sweet Ava in the lobby of the building museum.

Playing with the dollhouse in the building zone for kids. There was a cool Lego exhibit we wanted to see but it was kind of expensive. Hopefully an adventure for another day!

Elijah and Ivy playing in the miniature house that was inside of the building zone.

Bryan had just as much, if not more, fun as the kids in the building zone! Here is his robot masterpiece!

Here is the group that went. I had a cute picture of Bryan and Elijah building something together but I couldn't get it off the camera.

Each night we took turns making dinner and cleaning up. One night Ava wanted to help sweep! What a good little helper for mom and dad!

We had a great time this Christmas break visiting family here in Utah and on the east coast. It was kind of sad for it to end. I almost forgot I even had a job! However, it was nice to get home and get back into our normal life. We didn't realize how much we missed our soft bed until we sat on it!

I hope everyone had a great holiday season! Look for more blog posts to come on here and on The Whitney Whisk!