Christmas

Yeah, I know, I know!!! I've already been "informed" from several sources that it appears that I "forgot" to blog about Christmas. So not true!! I only had time for one post last time and I was too excited about Jaden being in Sunbeams that I couldn't help myself. For all you anal retentive types that reading about a January event before a December event, well... so sorry. My advice? Read 'em out of order! Christmas this year was really good. Really quiet too! We decided that we were really needing to stock up the family time since Bryan is never home and so we kept our holiday "commitments" to a bare minimum!! Bryan HAD to go to his works Christmas party. It was MANDATORY! Can you believe that? To add salt to the wound, it was $30 a person!! Needless to say, he went alone! We went to our wards Christmas party and the wonderful, stupendous Mallorys put together a "night in Bethlehem" for us. It was really nice. No Santa. Awesome!! Just what I needed! We got snow the night of the ward party too! Several inches before all was said and done. I'm good for the year, my snow quota has been met... just in case anyone with influence in the weather department is reading my blog! Christmas Eve morning we went to the Dubes' annual Christmas Eve Breakfast. YUM! They always cook a breakfast fit for kings and invite a lot of people to come and eat it! Christmas Eve we did the whole new Christmas pajamas thing. I hoped that it wasn't a mistake after I saw the way Jaden reacted. I thought, "Great. What did I just do??!! Now there is NO WAY I'm gonna get this kid to bed!!" To say he was excited over his Mickey Mouse Pj's WITH feet is an understatement. Which, by the way, is the picture that goes with this post. All the kids liked their PJ's and went to bed without too much fuss. It was a late night for all, but thankfully, Santa's elves were a little smarter than last year and had everything already wrapped. Christmas Day was nice too. It was quiet... well, Hutcherson standard quiet! It was just us. We did the whole "mom's turkey with Grandma's stuffing" thing that we missed out on at Thanksgiving. Our oven lost an element on Christmas day so we didn't eat turkey until like 6:00!! We had planned on a 3 or 4 pm meal, but the turkey took forever! It was sad too because it was dry and I NEVER make dry turkey! All was good though, 'cause we were together. I miss Bryan now that his company command makes him very, very scarce around here, but days like Christmas I am reminded off the years that we spent Christmas without him at all. It was a wonderful day.