MERRY CHRISTMAS

We had a great Christmas Season this year. We were a little late getting started with things, but once we had our tree it finally felt like Christmas. The weekend after we got our tree we went up to Provo/Orem to do our Christmas shopping, we hadn’t been at all yet so we had a lot to do. We went up Thursday night and stayed through Sunday. We were also celebrating our Anniversary so instead of staying at family members houses we got a motel, and it was so fun to get away and have it just be Andy and I for the weekend. We got to do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted and only had our schedules to mess with.

On Friday night we went up to Salt Lake to look at the lights at Temple Square and to deliver Christmas presents to Elder LeGrand Redd. It was snowing horribly bad and we didn’t go over 40 mph the entire time, but it was well worth it! The lights were so pretty and the snow made it even better.

Then on Monday after we got back we had the Black family Christmas party over at Francom’s. It’s usually tradition that we all get together on Christmas Eve and have a really nice/yummy candle light dinner, but since Andy’s parents are on their mission we decided to have the party ahead of time and let each individual family have their own Christmas Eve together. Each year at the party there is a piñata, this year was no exception. We start with the youngest kids and let them take a whack at it, then we work our way up until someone breaks it. Amber was the big hitter this year and split it open, the kids go crazy trying to round up all of the loot. We also do our name gifts, each family has a different family instead of individual people, and Andy’s parents had us this year so I wasn’t expecting anything but they surprised us. They had Suzie pick something out for us so we would have something to open; she got us a really pretty mirror to hang on our wall at our new house. Thanks guys, we love it!!

Rachel, Derek, Katie and Kade eating dinner.


Here is our new mirror. As you can see I am very excited about it.


Here is our youngest niece Jessica taking her turn at the pinata.


Everyone is gathering all the good stuff.

On Christmas Eve, it was just Andy and I so we decided to do something fun. After getting the house all cleaned up and looking good, we went out and went sledding. Andy made a really cool sled the day before so we hooked it up to our 4-wheeler and pulled each other around. We had jumps and hills and turns, it was so fun! Then we came back inside and had Christmas Potato Soup in bread bowls. It was very yummy after being outside in the cold.

Andy pulling me on our new sled.


Here Andy is making a track over this pile so we can pull the sled over it.

Andy can’t sleep in on Christmas, so when morning came at 6:30 he started trying to get me out of bed to go open presents; I think we ended up rolling downstairs around 7. Andy totally surprised me and got me a Nikon D-60 camera so I can start taking pictures. I love to take pictures, but our camera doesn’t do really well so he got me a really nice one so I can learn to take better ones. I got Andy a 223 black rifle. After we opened up all of our presents we went around to all of our families houses to see what everyone else got. Then we went back home, talked to Andy’s parents and then headed out to push and shovel the 10+ inches of snow that we got. My dad went to St. George to spend it with Billy it was weird not to see him on Christmas, and then they moved her to Blanding on Sunday. They are getting married on the 10th of January. It was a very quiet Christmas with just Andy and I, but I LOVED it!

Christmas morning before the destruction. It always looks so nice with all the presents.


Andy checking out his new gun.