December 2013

This is how we opened December 2013. Thankfully it only stayed like this for about 10 minutes before the rest came off.

As always, December was full of celebration, parties, family and friends. Our tree goes up right after Thanksgiving every year. This year we decorated it on Sunday night. The boys love looking at the ornaments, putting on the hooks, wrapping the lights around the tree and opening the Christmas season.

The other thing that we do fairly early in December is our annual graham cracker house decorating party. This year was a full house. We had to borrow a folding table so that everyone had a space to work. We put Grant and his friends standing at the folding table, Cole and his friends at the dining room table and Tyler and Alexander Studley at the Cars table. There was so much frosting, sugar, candy and graham cracker everywhere by the end it was like a bomb went off. It was a success again though. Every year, the crowd is different the masterpieces vary and it gets just slightly more wild and loud than the year before. It's a tradition I hope to continue as long as I have kids at home. I think even the boys as high schoolers will have a good time with it.

We were blessed with a pre-Christmas visit from Aunt Brooke. She came just in time for a giant blizzard to roll in and roll out. We did manage a day trip to the Grand Canyon and gave her lots of snuggle time with Sooner. She came with us to our ward Christmas party and would have come to the annual bar association Christmas party but for the blizzard.

We managed to maintain some normalcy in December. Tyler still went to open gymnastics on occasion and the boys still played hockey.

We also got a couple days visit from Brad and Amanda and David, Melissa and Andrew on their way to Phoenix for Christmas. It was fun to spend some quality one on one time with my little brothers. It doesn't happen often. There was a rousing game of Monopoly involved, a pregnant Amanda and an announcement by David and Melissa that #2 was on the way. We took a quick trip out to Walnut Canyon to explore the ruins. Unfortunately, due to the blizzard we had had, the stairs down to the ruins were closed off. Grant lost a tooth on December 23 but decided to wait until December 24 to put it under his pillow so he could have a Santa and a tooth fairy visit on the same night.

We are a tradition keeping family so we put out the obligatory letters to Santa, the cookies and chocolate milk and the carrots for the reindeer on Christmas Eve. This year Grant was able to scribe for Cole and Tyler (and maybe help with ideas for what to say and ask for). Grandma Mellen was nice enough to add a pooping and farting Santa on a toilet to our collection of Christmas decorations. We put the cookies and milk next to it on Christmas Eve. The boys were also able to open one present each. They each opened their dinosaur digging kits. The one downside to Christmas this year was that Chad got deathly ill. He was dead to the world so I was on my own for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning traditions. Chad was so bummed to miss it all.

Of course, Grant and Cole were up before light ready to open presents. We let them pillage their stockings and gifts from Santa until Tyler woke up and Chad could move himself from the bed to the couch to try to participate. The boys got all sorts of new toys and sports gear. Grant got a BB gun and a new hockey stick. Barry took his obligatory spot in the middle of the pile of used wrapping paper. It wouldn't be Christmas without him in the middle of it all.

After presents we had aebleskivers, packed up the presents and the car and drove to Phoenix to spend a few days with Oma, Kitty, Shelli, David and Brad. It was a full house at Oma's house but it was fun. The boys and I got some good quality Kitty and Shelli time. We also had some Glenn family photos taken. Chad was able to make it to the photos and back to the couch. By the day after Christmas Chad was doing better so we were able to go play mini-golf with the boys and try and recover some of the lost holiday with Chad.