Merry Christmas!

 This year, we held Christmas at our house. I was super excited but nervous as well because I had never made a christmas dinner before ha! we had my mom and brother over starting christmas eve and we went out to dinner. The only place we found open on christmas eve was the Elephant bar which turned out soooo delicious! We spoiled ourselves there a bit cause, Hey! its christmas :P love having that excuse. haha After dinner, we just headed back. Funny story though is that we accidentally locked ourselves out of the house LOL yes, we are idiots! hahahaha thank goodness we had a friend of ours with a spare key so we were able to go pick it up from him. When we finally got back inside the house, I made my delicious hocus pocus buns which have really become a favorite of ours! (ill leave the recipe at the end of this post) While they were cooking, we opened up our traditional christmas pjs from under the tree. and then we put them on and ate our delicious dessert. By that time, it was getting pretty late so we each stuffed each others stockings (secretly of course) haha and then my brother and I finished up some gifts. He still needed to wrap some and I needed to pull some thing out for clayton that wasnt wrapped. There were so many gifts under the tree! i dont know why I dont take pictures of these certain things! haha

Christmas Morning, we all slept in till about 9 or 9:30 and then started splitting up presents. I made us some hot chocolate cause our home can get cold since we dont turn our heater on. trying to save money of course haha We open up one present at a time from youngest to oldest. Makes things more interesting that way :P After presents we do stockings. Clayton just stuffed mine full of socks! HAHA i asked for socks and he definitely didnt want me taking his anymore ha im so happy to have a bunch of socks now. Cute ones in fact ;)

After all that present fun, we made our traditional late breakfast :) eggs, hashbrowns, bacon, orange juice, egg nog, and we were supposed to have sausage but joe forgot it ha We had to hurry and get the turkey ready and get dressed to make our last minute movie time decision to see Les Mis! Too bad we didnt have enough time to get everything done and get there early cause by the time we were able to get there, the movie was sold out :( claytons heart was broken. he has been dying to see this movie. Anyways, while we were trying to rush to get everything together, clayton decided to prepare the turkey while i got dressed. He is so funny!

He dropped the turkey on the floor soon after this! ha he is crazy! We borrowed a turkey roaster from a super awesome family in our ward and she told me how to use it. Apparently, Clayton doesnt listen to every word i say to him cause he was missing key components left and right. I guess it was pretty difficult to prepare this turkey :P After finding out the movie was sold out, we ended up seeing Life of Pi instead. Here we are waiting at the theater.

The movie was sooo good. i had no idea what to expect because i have never seen movie previews for it. but i really loved it. it had such a great message :) we came straight home after the movie cause of all the family that were coming. All the family, meaning my grandparents, Joes girlfriend, and a family friend named Sam. We needed to hurry to get dinner together and sadly the turkey came out dry. it was definitely cooked for too long :( Oh well, every one pretended to like it along with everything else that turned out delicious!

After dinner, we ate grandmas amazing cool whip cake and then continued to socialize. when it was just me, clayton, joe and andrea left, we turned on a christmas movie on netflix and then took pictures in front of my christmas tree. clay and i sort of had a photo shoot haha these were my favorites!

Hope every one had a wonderful Christmas! So grateful for the birth of our Savior and the willingness that Mary and Joseph had to take on such a huge but wonderful responsibility. Such a great example of having faith! Lets hope that the spirit and love felt at Christmas time can be something we can dwell on and cherish throughout the whole year :)

*May your days be Merry and Bright*

For those interested:

Hocus Pocus Buns

Ingredients: One can of crescent roll dough

                 8 large marshmallows (or one for each roll you’ll be making)

                 Melted butter

                 Cinnamon sugar

Directions: preheat oven to 350.

                Unroll the crescent rolls and place on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment                                                                 paper.

                Roll the marshmallows in the melted butter.

                Roll the marshmallows in the cinnamon sugar.

                Wrap the marshmallows in each crescent roll, pinching the dough together securely. 

                Put the rolls in the oven and bake for 12 minutes. Enjoy!!