Wednesday, February 5, 2014

We Wish You a Merry Christmas 2013!

MERRY Christmas! This year since we had guest it looked like we had present explosion! It was fun seeing so many stockings lined up, my camera couldn't really capture all of our bounty.
Santa didn't forget us this year even though we moved, and by the looks of the empty plate he enjoyed all his yummy treats the kiddos left out.
Cami got a Barbie Car, Josh his "2 awesome Diggers", Sophie a little laptop, & Phoebe a Mermaid barbie that changes color.
While we were waiting for everyone to wake up, which was a long time- almost 7am which is crazy late for my kiddos, we read stories in the study.
We had to gather here this year for our Christmas morning pic since we didn't go down stairs to a Christmas tree this year.
The kiddos were thrilled at the sight of the bazillion presents under the tree!
Everyone got all they asked for and a ton more!
Sophie's favorite gift this year was her own personnel pack of gum she got in her stocking, she didn't put to down for the rest of the morning. she held it in one had and struggled to open her gifts with her other.
Cory and I got lots of UofO items; I also got a UofO dart board, but it''s not pictured.
Umm not sure what to say about this one.....
After the gifts were all opened we had our way yumm-o awesome breakfast!
Then the kiddos were off to run and play with all our new diggs, while Cory went to Dave's home to open his gifts with him, and I cooked a couple more items for dinner!
For dinner we had our Brazilian guests & Davie join us, although it is not pictured here Cory commented that I made enough food for a whole Tongan team to join us. 
Following dinner we went downtown to see the Temple lights with the Madsens. All of December was so cold we never found a good time to go see the lights, Christmas wasn't as empty as we were told it would be, but we got an awesome parking spot so we were happy. 
Christmas this year was truly magical in our family this year. The kiddos didn't have one fight the whole day, and everyone was so magnanimous with their gift sharing I have to say we were truly blessed to have had such a happy day celebrating the birth of our Savior with our family and friends.

A Very Merry Fergy Christmas Eve '13

As part of our Christmas eve tradition we always visit the Gardner Village Elves. We didn't get out as early as we hoped so we didn't quite have the place to our selves like normally, but it was still pretty empty.
The cold unfortunately stole Sophie's happiness away, so we ducked in the Christmas store to enjoy their heat and look at all the pretty decor.
Before leaving we managed to get a happy pic with all of our little kiddos under the mistel toe.

When we got home I hurried to finish off the last couple of items for our Christmas eve & Christmas Day meals, i.e. lots of different kinds of breads! We had our traditional Italian dinner for Christmas eve. This year, however, instead of just our family we also had a couple guests from Brazil (Michelle & ValĂ©ria), Uncle Dave, and Grandma Fergy join us!
After dinner we decorated our normal gingerbread cookies for Santa which was a first for the girls from Brazil, it was kinds fun teaching them our traditions. Phoebe was a perfectionist with her cookies, Sophie just had to have lots of sprinkles, Josh was very neat with his decorations and well Cami... she went CRAZY with all of the m&ms and other toppings.
After decorating cookies I read a new book I got for the kiddos this year called the PJ Elves, I liked it! We then opened our Christmas Eve PJ pails.
After the story it was time it was getting late and the Brazilian gals headed back to their hotel for the night.
We continued with the last couple of our traditions, of acting out the nativity with our beloved play set  and then threw reindeer food out front for Santa's reindeer to snack on while he is at our house.
After feeding the reindeer we tucked the kiddos in bed and let them dream of all the fun they were going to have the next day.