Christmas

Christmas was an extra special time for us for several reasons--it was our first one with Makaela! It was also an extended vacation for us (12 whole days!!) and it had been quite some time since we had a vacation. As a side note, in the process of moving up to Washington, there was no break for Nathan/us. His last sunday at Wayside was July 25th, and his first sunday at CRCC was August 1st, so we used that week in the middle to move up and jump right in. Needless to say, after the craziness of the fall, we were so excited about our upcoming vacation!!

All of our flights went off without a hitch! Makaela did great! It always ends up being a long day for her as there are several hours of time at the airport/in the plane when she can't be crawling around, followed by several hours in the car to get up to Grandma and Grandpa's house. But we made it, and she was extremely excited to have the freedom to crawl around everywhere! We spent the first 4 or so days with my family in Visalia. We had a great time together. Christmas Eve Day was filled with preparations for our big mexican meal we do every Christmas Eve with our cousins/aunts/uncles etc. This year we all got together at my parents house and had a great time together! We've started an annual gift exchange which always prooves to be a blast and hysterical! It's similar to a white elephant exchange in its rules, however, the gifts are not white elephant gifts. This year there were 17 of us and we are all grown (except for the grandbabies) so we have tons of fun! Christmas Day was a low key morning in which we opened stockings, had a nice big breakfast, got ready for the day etc. We read the Christmas story together from Luke 2 followed by the opening of presents! My mother was a busy little elf this fall preparing lots of fun things for everyone! I think she was the most excited about present time because she was so excited about giving! We got some wonderful things and Makaela was spoiled!!!

Early the following week we headed down to the Lancaster area where we spent several days with Nathan's family. We stayed with some friends in Rosamond, but we were at his sister's house every day. Tuesday evening we spent with Nathan's dad and brother. It was good to have some face time with them as we hadn't seen them since we moved. Wednesday will be in a different post because we went to Disneyland!! Thursday, Friday, Saturday we spent with Nathan's sister. We also got to see a few friends at different times on those days. We are so thankful for the time we go to have with them down there.
New Years Eve Eve we did Christmas with Nathan's family. As it turned out, it was just Nathan's mom, sister, brother in law, the kids an us. We had decided to do gifts for the kids only and they had a blast playing with some new toys!! We enjoyed some more mexican food (Thanks Troy!!) and played a few games.

Our time down there was extremely precious to us and we were so blessed to be able to take such a long vacation. We treasured our time with our family and it seemed to go so very fast. I'm sure that our time with family will always go by quickly.

Moving right along--before the computer screen goes crazy--