Christmas Break

First of all:

Fabulous Megan designed these, thanks again!

We had a super fun Christmas break. It ended up feeling like a little long to be gone from home for me. I might be up for staying home for Christmas next year, we will see. But we loved seeing all the family we did. Collin's mom seriously spoiled us and we were fed good, got lots of gifts, and had lots of fun! Collin's bf brother Tyler came up from Arizona to spend the holiday with us too. We all had a good time watching lots of corny Christmas movies, good movies, and Friends!! We were in Utah for 5 days and then headed up to IF for Tara's baby shower for the last 3 days. One week gone total! Again my pictures are random and I will just briefly caption them for you!

We went up to Sundance and snowboarded for the first time in 2 years! It was so fun. Yay for no knee surgeries this year!

The stockings were hung....er...stuffed....

Guess who was Mary in the Christmas Pageant!

Ashlyn was in absolute heaven with her Robertson cousins, as usual. They are so great playing with her. The Christmas play was hilarious.

This was my favorite. We needed a shepherd!

Christmas morning Ashlyn was NOT into anything. She first got mad that she couldn't watch the Dora movie she got in her stocking right away..... then after opening 2 consecutive gifts that were clothes, she lost all interest in Christmas morning. She eventually went down for an early nap. Whatever. The rest of us had fun! :)

We went to Frozen! Best movie! This was Ashlyn's second time to a movie. The first she was like 15 months, we lasted like 10 minutes. I thought for sure she'd love it, but meh. We skipped naptime for it and that was against my better judgement. Live and learn. She was antsy and kind of wandered around between our 4 seats, and we just kept feeding her candy to keep her happy. She had a major meltdown in the car on the way home and it took me like 25 minutes to get her to stop crying once we got back to Nana's. She went to bed early that night!! But anyway, I LOVED Frozen! So, so cute. I bought the soundtrack. :)

BAM! Just Dance with Mom, Ms. Prego, and Collin! This was hilarious. 

Wouldn't be Christmas without some ugly selfies.

These 2 brothers..... looking good. They had a lot of fun together. 

This was early on Christmas morning.....when she was still excited!

All the books she got... we had to stop and read them as she opened them. I love that she is such a book lover. I hope it lasts!

This looks like Collin's in the hospital! ha ha! Don't worry, he's not! Ashlyn came in to drag him out of bed every morning.

Gorgeous girl in her super cute Christmas dress Grandma gave her! We just went to sacrament meeting before we hit the road for Nana's. She looked beautiful!

We had special Christmas hair, of course. I figured Christmas was a good excuse to spend the time on an all-around veil style. Time consuming, but really cute! 

When we got back we had our friends' doggie Carl over for a few days. These 2 dogs would pretty much completely ignore each other.....unless there was a morsel of food to be found. Then they would all-out brawl! Scary, but funny! Anyway, Ashlyn absolutely loved playing with Carl. Unlike Lucy who just lays on the couch all day, he would actually chase her and play with her! She was sad to see him go. 

And I suppose you want to know about gifts..... well this year as usual I got Collin boring crap he needs and he got me something awesome. I'm used to it by now. ;) I asked him what he wanted for Christmas and he said, "to get out of debt." Well, our debt is our mortgage, car payment, 2 small student loans....not anything the $50 each Christmas budget we decided on would cover! So, I got him a bunch of new school clothes, shoes, socks, etc. BORING stuff! But that's what he gets. His birthday's 2 weeks before Christmas so he got some music and books then. The Christmas stuff was pretty lame. But I warned him!

And when I opened my gift.... it was an itinerary for the Europe student trip he's taking kids on this spring. WHA?!?! He signed me up! At first I was beyond pumped because I thought he had gotten enough kids for me to go free. Sadly that wasn't true, it still will cost us money. (want to get OUT of debt, huh?! just joking.) But he had his reasons... he is getting some sort of merit pay bonus and there are a few other ways he figured out to pay it where we wouldn't have to dig into savings at all. AMAZING!!!!!!! I cried when I saw what it was. I have wanted to go on this trip SOOO bad! But only if there was a free way! This is the next best thing I suppose. And it is awesome! The trip is 9 days, to London, Paris, and Barcelona! I am going to try to save my $$$ so we can do the extension which is 2 more nights in ROME! But we will see. Can't be too picky, right! Anyway, that was awesome. So awesome. I am one lucky girl. This is probably the last chance we will have because he isn't planning on doing any more student trips after this. So yay! He also got me some new running clothes, which I was in bad need of. Nice!!

We felt so blessed this Christmas. It was great to spend time with family, and with each other. We are lucky to have such great family and friends. Merry Christmas everyone!