Christmas Day

Christmas was fun, busy and stressful this year. We went up to my mom's house a couple days before Christmas, because we sort of missed the snow and wanted to drive around and see lights on trees, other than palms, accented by the snow. We also needed some Christmas cheer, since this has been a difficult year for us.

Christmas morning we woke up to the snowy blizzard outside my mom's house. It was nice and relaxed with Chris, Tyler, Becca, and my mom. We only took a couple of gifts up for Tyler, since I didn't want to overwhelm him or have him spread all the pieces to his toys out at my mom's house. (Mostly, I didn't want to have to haul everything up there, just so I could haul it all back home.)

All of my family, except Mike and his family (who were blizzarded in at their house), came to my mom's house for the usual Christmas brunch. It was filled with the usual craziness of talking adults and laughing, playing kids running throughout the house. The grandkids did their usual gift exchange, which was very fun to watch (kids are so sweet with excitement over opening gifts). Tyler got a stuffed dog, which fell asleep hugging on the drive home. He loves dogs; infact, his favorite word is doggie (second favorite is mom, although he prefers dad).

Unfortunately, our trip was cut short due to worries about the storms. As soon as the kids had finished opening their gifts from my mom, we had to start heading home in an attempt to avoid a bigger blizzard and huge storm between Beaver and Cedar City. We were sad we didn't get to visit my grandparents or Chris' grandparents. Luckily, we made it home before a monsoon-type storm hit St. George a couple hours after we got home. Apparently, they ended up closing the I-15 between Beaver and Cedar City later that night and didn't open it again till the following day, so we did luck out coming back when we did.

When got home, we finished opening Tyler's presents and had a cozy Christmas barbeque dinner (despite the monsoon outside). Although, it was a small Christmas for us, we had a great time watching Tyler open his gifts. After opening each gift, he exclaimed either, "Wow!" or "Cool!" ("Cool" is his new word.) Kids make Christmas so much more fun. I don't know what we'd do without him.