Our Christmas

After procrastinating for several days and busying myself by catching up on other people's Blogs I will finally buckle down and update my blog. Christmas, obviously, was a few weeks ago (it feels like months) but I thought I'd share some of our memories. We spent Christmas Eve and Day with Ben's family. Their tradition is to have Chinese on Christmas Eve. We went to a restaurant in West Jordan. It honestly wasn't very great food (especially compared to the local cuisine I've now had.) But Ben was pretty thrilled when he got this Giant Fortune Cookie.

After dinner there was a big snow storm that came through. Grace loves snow and wanted to go outside with Daddy. She kept trying to get down, but didn't have any shoes. After many failed attempts Ben finally gave in and let her walk around in her tights. He then had me take a picture of his bad parenting. It's a pretty cute picture though.
We of course had the traditional nativity reading on Christmas Eve. This is all the Harper kids dressed up in our makeshift costumes. There were many complainings, but it's just one tradition you can't give up.
Ben, Grace and I went home for the night and did our own little traditions. We were so excited to give Grace her presents. I have been planning to get Grace this little car for months but almost didn't because of the move. But I decided it was worth it because she loves our friend's car so much. She was so excited Christmas morning. "Wow, Wow" is what she kept saying. She didn't even want to open any of her other presents because she was busy playing with her car. Here is a picture of the haul of presents she received this year.
Ben and I also had a good Christmas. He got an Ipod, which he was totally surprised about, and I got a bunch of scrapbooking stuff, which I am so excited to start using now that I'm settled in here.

Since we have three families to celebrate Christmas with our celebrations usually last all week, but I'm totally okay with that... more presents to open! This is our gift opening with my Mom and siblings.

We also had a Christmas with my Dad & Deb, but I didn't get any pictures of that. Overall we had an amazing Christmas with wonderful gifts and the chance to share what we have been blessed to receive.

I know this post is super long, but I have to mention one of my favorite things of this past Christmas. I was in the RS Presidency in the Lehi ward and we had the chance to wrap and deliver bags full of presents to families in our ward. Not only was it so fun to see the gifts and think of all the families we were helping, but it was so great to deliver them!!!! The four of us loaded into a van and doorbell ditched all the houses. Yes, we did get caught once, but the exhiliration of ringing the doorbell and running as fast as you can without getting caught was so great! I will never forget that night and was such a fun bonding experience for us girls. I miss them and the fun we had!