Lets Recap, Shall We?

Let's back up to Christmas, or Christmas Eve I should say. Christmas Eve marked my 34th week and we started our morning with a routine check-up. That phrase makes it sound like something exciting happened... but alas no. It was truly only that... routine. I was back to measuring right on and they said "we'll see you again in 2 weeks." In the evening we had our Christmas Eve service which was packed out with almost 500 people there. It's always so fun to see every one's families all together and spend some time together as a church body remembering the birth of our Savior and praising Him for coming into our world to ultimately receive the punishment for all our sins--all so we can have a personal relationship with Him. That is such a wonderful truth to dwell on as we focused our time over the Holidays. After the service, we made the long trip (all 15 minutes) down to Nathan's mom's house for Christmas Eve dinner and a few presents. It seems inevitable that one of the nieces or nephews in Nathan's family gets some kind of music gift and typically Nathan ends up playing with it more than the kids do. Here is evidence that Nathan is completely entertained while our niece, Emma Fogde, just sits and looks at him.

Nathan playing with Emma's gift.

I do have video of this, but will have to upload it later.

Christmas Day we had a lazy morning (oh so wonderful after the busyness of Christmas musical etc. at church). We hung around our house and eventually opened a few presents we had gotten for each other. Nathan got me a really cute and comfy nightie and robe from motherhood maternity that is made for easy nursing during the wee hours of the morning :) He also got me some body spray and lotion--it was really special because the scent was what I started wearing the day we got married and whenever I wear that scent the smell brings back memories of our wedding. Aw :) I got Nathan 2 sweaters and a body spray that he had said he liked. After we opened our gifts, we spent the rest of the day at his dad's house hanging with the rest of the family.

Us in front of our Mantle

Let's fast-forward to New Years (aka Board family Christmas). New Years Eve we headed up to my parents. Our family had decided to do Christmas together over New Years. Typically my family eats Mexican food on Christmas Eve, but since a few of us were with our in-laws for Christmas, they waited and we all had our big Mexican meal on New Years Eve instead. After that we did our traditional gift exchange with our cousins--there were 17 of us total. It was, as always, super fun with lots of laughs and much envying. Just kidding, but there was a whole lot of stealing going on. Nathan and I ended up with a game called "The Last Word", a Starbucks gift card, and an Olive Garden gift card. After much conniving, we each managed to steal the gifts we wanted and have them frozen so no one else could steal them.

17 gifts for 17 people... let the fun begin.

I would say this is when everything was all said and done, but my brother had that drill stolen from him, so this was not the end. I think the whole process of picking gifts and stealing gifts lasted about an hour anda half.

New Years Day was the Board Family Christmas. We again took it easy for most of the morning as some of my family scurried around trying to finish wrapping gifts and such. We watched A LOT of football (good thing we all like it!). Then we got to some gift opening. Baby fogde received some very cute and very comfy things that I am sure she will enjoy! After the gift opening was finished, I'm hoping what we did next will turn into a new tradition. We had a "build your own Calzone" for dinner. We had all the makings for delicious calzones and we all made our own. There was supposed to be a contest, however, the process of transporting the calzones from put together station to the cook them station was quite rough. Consequently some of our calzones turned out looking very mangled... good thing that was not an indicator of how they tasted. It was tons of fun and I really hope we do it again in the future!

Emma decided to play us a little tune on the piano :)

The beginnings of Build Your Own Calzone...

whoever thought of this was a genius! (my mom)

Nathan's finished product turned out pretty well...

it didn't look quite as mangled as some others did (like mine).

He was very proud because he truly did it all by himself

including rolling out the dough and sealing it all up in the end.

Good Job Honey! Now you can make them at home :)

It's tricky to all eat together when there are 8 calzones to cook and only 1 oven so some people BBQ'd theirs. They were just as tasty with a bit of a BBQ flavor to them.

Preparing to enjoy all of the finished product.

Overall, we had such a wonderful time with both of our families enjoying the different traditions of each side. We were blessed to have it work in our schedules to be with both sides over the holidays. Here we are now into a new year, and we have very exciting things on the very near horizon!!