Christmas 2010

Christmas of 2010 was a good one! We had the usual business, but I was definitely more on top of things this year, and we had a lot of fun!

We actually made the gingerbread house BEFORE Christmas, which was a huge accomplishment. The past 2 years the kids ended up making them mid-January! The outside lights however, still have not been hung on our home for 11 of our 12 Christmases together...well there's always next year!...

Jaxon was so incredibly excited to decorate the tree, as I'm sure you can see here :)

Christmas morning actually came a day early this year. We had hopes of flying to Utah on Christmas Day, which was going to be a long-shot, and so we wouldn't be stressed about getting out the door we asked Santa if he could come the morning of the 24th instead. The kids didn't mind a bit. :) Christmas Eve morning the kids were delighted to see that Santa did come, and enjoyed many great surprises! Some highlights include:

Tickets to the Rush concert!!!! The boys were so excited for their first concert, even though they had to wait until April! They were thrilled to get the tickets!

I wish Jaxon was better about showing his emotions....I'm not sure whether he liked this RC helicopter or not...

But I think Traeden did!!!

Araleigh was super happy to receive her magic oven (and I was super excited that it was NOT an Easybake oven, and that it "cooks" pretend food!!!!)

After the kids had all opened their gifts and were playing happily in all the wonderful chaotic mess of Christmas morning, we decided to look at the flights and see how our chances of getting on a standby flight on Christmas day were looking. Dave then discovered that there were some open flights that could get us there that night, which left in about 3 hours. We literally threw our suitcases together, got dressed, and were out the door in less than an hour. We flew from Chicago to San Francisco and then on to Utah and arrived Christmas Eve around midnight. We decided we would have fun surprising our family Christmas morning, since no one knew we were there or if we'd even make it in, so we stayed at a hotel in downtown SLC overlooking the beautiful Temple Square and took a cab to Sandy the next morning. It was so fun to surprise everyone! We had such a wonderful time spending Christmas with our families! We of course got in plenty of skiing while we were there and just had a really great time! It was a very memorable holiday!