December and ALL that it brought with it.

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! Our Christmas was grand and wonderful. I am sure you all can only guess that the following pictures are only going to be about none other than our Christmas.......you are right! You all probably care less about what we did for Christmas, but hey, I am going to bore you anyway.

Although December seemed to fly by, I truly enjoyed every minute of it! I tried to find time amidst all of the holiday chaos to just take time to breath. The perfect solution always seemed to be sitting in the front room by the tree and looking at the pretty white lights. Loved it!

We also put a tree up this year in our downstairs family room. I decided it would be fun to string cereal for the tree and my children decided it would be fun to eat all the cereal off the tree.

We will definitely be making this cereal thing a Christmas tradition.

One day while I was sitting in the living room {enjoying the pretty white lights} I could not get over how beautiful winter looked from my front window.

So I took a picture of it.

The best part about this picture is that Jim is the one on the 4 wheeler with Braddock on his lap pulling some random kid on a sled. Gotta love Jim.

Christmas Eve night was the bestest. We all {meaning my family, Alyssa, my mom, and Jerry} headed over to my sister Jacey's home in Spanish Fork for a Christmas Eve Extravaganza.

This picture was thrown in randomly, but it's cute anyway. Braddock and Emma are laying in their cousin Lucas' bed getting ready for Santa! They loved everything about Christmas!

Anyway, back to the Christmas Eve Extravaganza......................

We all wore our best Christmas attire {AKA: White Trash Wal-Mart Christmas shirts}. We also feasted on delicious baked shrimp cooked by none other than our wonderful mother!

My mom had dogs on her shirt. If you know my mom, you would know my mom would never wear dogs on any of her clothing unless of course......it fell on the night of our Christmas Eve Extravaganza.

I also don't know why they are holding empty stockings.

Me and my sister Jacey.

Me and Alyssa sporting the Christmas fashion {jewelry and hideous pants included}

My cute Jim with Hallie and Ben.

Jim and Jerry wrestling. Ridiculous.

Jim and I! { P.S. Jim's shirt is so creepy and so is my hair.}

After stuffing ourselves with shrimp, pasta salad, garlic cheese rolls, French fries, and lots of Sparkling Cider, it was time to crash and get ready for Santa to come. Poor Jim had to run home at 11 o'clock at night because he forgot our stocking stuffers!

Christmas morning was so much fun. I never thought it would be so exciting to see your kids come out and wonder what they got from Santa! It was so exciting, that I forgot to take pictures! Braddock got some Lincoln Logs, clothes, and books and Emma got a baby doll that came with a bottle and binkie.

And mom?

Well what to my wondering eyes should appear but a....

Laptop computer! My husband is wonderful.

I feel bad that I did not take more pictures of Christmas, but I usually don't during the exciting moments. However, we loved our Christmas! Thanks to all of our family and friends for the wonderful gifts. We enjoyed every minute with all of you!

Okay so our family's Christmas gift was the remodeling of the downstairs. Like I have said before, much of what has gone into this home is blood. sweat. and tears.

I thought I would show you a glimpse of what we have done.

This is one of the guest rooms. It used to be a sick-nasty storage room. When I took this picture, there were beds on the floor for Jim's family that came to visit. Don't worry. They're not there anymore......not that you were worried. Now the room is empty and I need to beautify it.

This room used to be another sick-nasty room that we converted to a storage room. New sheet rock, paint, and flooring did the trick!

Our family room!! Yea!!! My husband rocked that fireplace. He is hot. New lighting, sheet rock, baseboard, carpet, paint, electrical was done by him as well. Did I mention I love him?

Another view of the family room.....

I have so many other pictures to show, but I will do that in a later post as you must all be pictured out!

Now, I will leave you with this picture because it is happy and makes Christmas all that much more grand and wonderful!

We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!