Christmas 2018

As usual, Christmas was great! Throughout the month of December, we delivered treat plates to some friends and neighbors, did our 25 days of Christmas nightly reading, finished our New Year's resolution of doing a family service activity once a month, and got ready for Christmas Day!

(As a side note, here's David with Santa at our ward Christmas party. Brooke was too nervous to sit on his lap like most 2 year olds are.)

Since we spent Christmas with John's family this year, that meant we got to be a part of the Christmas Eve caroling tradition. My family does this too, but we always went to houses of people we knew and gave them a plate of treats. In John's family, they put on a 45 minute program of songs at 2 different retirement homes and then eat KFC for dinner. Apparently, while his Uncle was in Japan during the holidays for a business trip, he found out that many of the people would celebrate by eating KFC. So... just for fun, that's what they do now too. Although, to be honest... I'm not a big fan of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Maybe at some point I can convince them to eat Chinese takeout or something... Although, I'd probably have better luck convincing KFC to start selling Chinese food. Lol.

After dinner, it's tradition that John's Grandpa tells a family Christmas story about his grandfather bringing Christmas gifts to his family during the Great Depression. I'll need to write that story out at some point and put it on here. It's a well loved story and tradition for each of John's family members.

With Christmas Eve pretty much done, it was time to get ready for Christmas Day! Once we got home, we realized we didn't have any cookies in the house, so the kids put out chocolate milk, a carrot for the reindeer (although after a night of treats, maybe we should've just left carrots for Santa too, lol), and some chocolate peanut butter cereal bars. Santa didn't mind though since David pointed out that he didn't leave a single crumb on the plate.

A few things Santa brought Brooke this year were a play kitchen and Barbies while some things David got were Lego's and a couple of games. They were both pretty excited and had fun opening gifts from family as well! Once we were finished opening presents, John asked Brooke what her favorite thing was that she received this year. Her answer... "Pink!" Haha! Technically, that covers all the bases since everyone that gave her a gift gave her something that was either completely pink or had pink on it. She is such a fun, little girly girl!

Also, a sweet thing John did for me this year was fix my wedding necklace and a necklace he had given me when we were first married. The necklace I wore when we were married broke in my suitcase somehow pretty recently after we were married and the other one was broken by a cute little 2 year old who shall remain nameless... ;) Anyway, I was completely surprised and it was such a sweet thing for him to do! I am very excited that I'll get to wear those two necklaces again! Hopefully they don't get broken by our new little one coming this next month... Time will tell.

After presents, we called my family and then went up to John's parents' house. His twin brothers are serving missions in South America for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints right now and Skyped in at the same time to say "Merry Christmas"! Other than that, we played games, gave and received gifts from John's parents and ate a bunch of yummy snack foods that John's mom put out for everyone.

Overall, Christmas was great! I'm glad that even though I can't travel far this year (since I'm less than 2 weeks away from my due date) I have family close enough that we still get to spend time with them during the holidays. Next up: New Years and our little guy's arrival! After a doctor's appointment today, I found out that I'm dilated to a 3 1/2 which actually doesn't mean much when it comes to predicting the day I'll deliver, but it's nice to know I'm getting close! I need to be able to sleep on my back and stomach again! Even though I'll still wake up every three hours at night, at least once the baby's here it won't just be because my side aches and I need to roll over! Haha!