A Warm Christmas

This Christmas, Cody and I were able to get time off work to go to Arizona for Christmas. It's been two years since I have been to Arizona for Thanksgiving or Christmas so I was super excited to be spending time with them this year. Before we left we got our tree set up (or I did because Cody was pretty sick with the flu for a little). I loved our little tree. I got Christmas Balls for the tree this year and its kind of amazing how much cuter the tree was this year than last year. 

I made Hot Chocolate cupcakes. They were so good and they turned out so cute! It was kind of a mess to put the toppings on but that was my favorite part to do. I added hazelnut and cinnamon to my cupcakes and boy were they delicious. 

The monday before Christmas we went up to Cody's family to have a Christmas party. It was fun to have every one there. We had a delicious dinner and snacks to go with it afterwards. We played a game called Help Your Neighbor. That is a simple fun game and my nieces were so cute while playing it. Cody won two games and I won once. Cody was the lucky one. 

I found that I was a lucky person when it came time to act out the Nativity. Only one girl in the Nativity and tons of boys. Good thing I have lots of Brothers in law and I didn't have to participate. I got videos of it. It was pretty cute. 

Doesn't my husband look pretty snazzy as a wise man? 

(the vidoes didn't download like I wanted them so you will have to scroll to the bottom of the page).

On our way to Arizona we stopped by a few places. This first place has a scenic view of this beautiful mountain. When you round a corner, you see this red rock that is just gorgeous in the sun light! I took a panoramic view of the rock but of course it does not look as beautiful in pictures like it does in person. 

We then stopped by the bridge to see the river below. The river was so green it was kind of gross. I think it was algea. (however you spell it). It was nice to see the rock again though .

Christmas was just a blast with the family. The night we got there, we went to the temple lights. Family tradition. Surprisingly there were not a ton of people there but enough to see people we recognized. A lot of the time spent in Arizona was playing games. We are a game loving family. Spoons, scum, five crown, nertz, settlers, gin, rummikub... 

Christmas Morning. I didn't wake up at my usual time of 5:30. I let my family sleep in a little bit. 

I had Tessa, Jon, and Jocelyn for Christmas this year. I decided that I would do a slideshow of Jocelyn's first year for them. It took me a long time to put it together because I wanted to do it for free. Eveytime that I thought I found a free program and did the slideshow, I would go to burn the DVD and it would say to pay 60 dollars for it. I ended up finding a program already on my computer that did exactly what I wanted it to do. I got Jocelyn some bubbles and she was being so cute with them. 

Jocelyn would want to eat the bubbles. So we would blow a big one and then she would try to catch it in her mouth. It was super funny. One time she did not like the taste of the bubble and her face was priceless. 

One of the projects that I wanted to do while there was to make bows for Zaylee. Tessa made the ones below and Tori and I made the flowers. They turned out really cute. I have so many bows for Zaylee now. It's going to be fun to deck her out in them. 

Tessa and I found a commercial that we thought was funny. It was of a car doing snowboarding tricks and there was a warning to not do this at home. It's a fantasy. haha. 

Tori turned 19 while we were there. We went to Cafe Rio for her dinner. My mom got some lemonade and let Jocelyn have a sip but Jocelyn grabbed on to that cup and was not letting go! I am not  sure if she loved the lemonade more of if she loved feeling like a grown up with her own cup. It was cute though. 

Tori did her farewell talk that Sunday. I was glad to be there for it. She did so well on the talk. We were planning on going back that day but Cody and I had the day off on Monday so we decided to go the next day. It was fun being with everyone that Christmas year.  

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