Christmas Wrap Up

In my last post, I had said that I wasn't going to stress this year. I managed to keep the stress level low and have probably one of the best Christmas'.

This year it was our turn to plan the annual Galley Christmas Party.
We had Santa come and hand out the kids Christmas pajamas......

Amelia

Eli

Shae

Garrison

Kayla (Garrison's Girlfriend)

We had carnival games for the kids with prizes from oriental trading.
We did a ring toss with pop, darts, beanbag game, golfing and a cupcake walk.
(Mandy made her ever so delicious cupcakes!!!)

Shae was in charge of games for the adults. She taught them a few games that she learned at her recent leadership training. They all had a lot of fun running around and doing something new.

This year we had decided to put more thought into the meaning of Christmas. In November, we talked to the kids about helping a family and getting less for themselves. We actually found 2 families that needed a little help and the kids got in and helped shop, wrap and deliver.
Christmas Eve we watched The Nativity Story as a family. If you haven't seen this version of the story, I highly recommend that you see it. (It is very accurate and makes it more relate able )

Kayla's mom went into labor and ended up in the hospital so Garrison and Shae went over to help "santa" get ready at their house. Eli and Amelia went to bed and "santa" got ready at our house too. The kids got home around 1:30. Amelia woke up when she heard Shae go in the room. The kids asked if we could just open gifts then and at first I said no but then Gary and I talked about it and figured that we might as well stay up and unwrap gifts and then we wouldn't have to get up early. (that worked out so nice, we might just do that every year)

Garrison and Shae on our way to Salt Lake.

The first night we stayed at the Pecks.
I love catching up with them, playing games and laughing.
It is never a dull moment when we hang out with them!!

Every year, Gary's mom gets the whole family tickets to a Jazz game.
The game this year happened to be on the 26th.
Gary and I always try to take the kids out for a nice dinner while we are in the city.
One of our favorite places is Buca di Beppo.
This time when we went, we got to eat at the "kitchen" table.....it is actually in the Buca Kitchen.

The table can be reserved for 5-6 people.
We just happened to ask about it and it was available.

This was our view.
We got to watch them prepare the food. They would show us different dishes as they were going out and the chef also gave us samples of different things.
By time our entree's got to us we were already stuffed. It was all SO good!!!

Here is the medicine cabinet in the ladies room.
It would take days to look at all the cheesy decor in the restaurant.

Here is Abby, Shae and Mya at the game

We had to kill some time the next morning so we went to the Planetarium.
The kids spent most of their time playing on this contraption.

This machine would tell you how much you weigh on earth and then what your weight would be on another planet. Amelia is on a neutron star and it would feel like she weighed
18640 billion pounds. That was her favorite!

Shae got a kick out of watching her Dad do the forecast. We were all the way across the room when she looked over, he was doing actions and telling about the weather. Funny thing is that he was by himself. She laughed about it all day and if you were to ask her about it now, she would probably start to laugh again.

It really was a great December!