Christmas 2009

This Christmas things didn't go exactly as planned, however I think it will forever remain one of our best Christmases ever!

 Christmas Eve it started to sleet a bit in the morning.  My hubby's sister and her kids came in from Austin, TX and we had planned to go over to his mom's house where they were all staying. We saw that the weather was getting pretty rough and we thought it would be best to head over to my MIL's house before it got too bad.  We left home around 10:30am and drove over to her house in MWC.  It was sleeting all the way over.  About an hour after we arrived the snow hit.

We knew that there was going to be snow, but there was conflicting information on just HOW MUCH snow.  At first they said "flurries" then later in the week they said "1-2 inches", then they were reporting 4-7 inches.  We ended up getting a total of 14.1 inches (an all time record) and it was a blizzard!

We made some soup for lunch and I baked some sugar cookies to later decorate with the kids.  The snow continued to fall and conditions outside got worse and worse.  We decided it would be best to stay for the night there rather than try and make it home.  My husbands uncle even ended up staying because he was one of the cars in a 50 car pile up on I-40!  Thankfully he was able to make it to my MIL's house.  Also my husbands brother and his wife and kid ended up staying also.  So, there were 17 of us in my MIL's two bedroom house!

Christmas eve we have a tradition to have pizza, and well, there was no place open to get pizza due to the blizzard, so the men decided to walk in the blizzard up to Target to get some frozen pizza.  The guys got all bundled up in layers upon layers and covered their faces and eyes to avoid getting their face completely wind chapped.  Here you can see what they looked like when they were ready to leave.  It took them well over an hour to get there and back even though it was only a few blocks away.  I heard my nephew lost a shoe in a snow drift on the way there.  Thankfully he found it!

So, the kids began to get cabin fever so it was time to decorate the cookies.  We had a blast doing that.  The kids seemed to really like it.  My hubby started filtering pizzas in and out of the oven.  We had our pizza, then my MIL baked a cake. We have a tradition to bake a cake and sing happy birthday to Jesus after we read the story of His birth out of the bible.  This year I got to read the story from the bible.  Each one of the children holds a piece of the nativity set and moves it into the manger as we get to their part of the story.  They love this and look forward to it every year.  

After that we ate cake, had hot cider and my MIL made snow ice cream (we stayed clear from any yellow snow!)  We were all pretty exhausted and headed off to our various corners of the house to go to sleep.

The next day it was sunny out and we woke up to a gorgeous blanket of snow on everything.  My first white Christmas!  It was beautiful.  The kids opened up their gifts (well the ones from Grandma at least...my kids gifts were at home).  The great thing was is that my kids didn't even CARE that there were gifts there.  They were nice to have and all, but this Christmas was about so much more than presents.  It was about family, and time together.  It was amazing.

After breakfast we decided to venture home.  The roads were scary, but with my husbands excellent driving and his 4WD truck, we made it just fine.  The kids opened their presents  and we started to prepare dinner for family.  The family came over to our house for Christmas dinner.

The day after Christmas we went back to my MIL's house and we all went sledding.  Once every few years I decide to pull the stick out of my rear end and have fun.  I'm so thankful I did, because I felt like such a kid sledding and playing in the snow.  I can't remember the last time I had that much fun.  I laughed until my side hurt.

My hubby sledding!

My nephew and I in a snowball fight