Christmas Day

I woke up at 5:30am, 6:00am, 6:45am. etc. At 7:30am the kids finally woke up and came into our bedroom. I teased the kids, just like my dad used to tease me, with comments like, "Did you think Santa came?", or "I'm not sure that Santa left us any presents this year". We got up and got the cameras rolling (another thing my Dad used to make us wait for) and let them come out.

Sydney ran right past her present, which is funny as is almost as tall as her. Ryan went right to his unwrapped Santa gift.

Here is what we got:

Sydney - A "maker-thing". Translated is a kitchen with a microwave. We bought this "maker-thing" online. Deni had been telling me that we need to start putting it together just in case there were parts missing. We spent about 3 hours the night before Christmas eve, and we still weren't done. We are both glad we didn't wait till Christmas eve to put it together. Sydney also got some puzzles, books and clothes.






Ryan - Star Wars Transformer that transforms into the Millennium Falcon. Ryan also got the 20th Anniversary edition of "Transformers, the Movie". Ryan also got some books, dvd's and clothes.










Deni - I had a few surprises for Deni this year. My first surprise was her favorite picture of her and Ryan printed in a 11X14 on Canvas, along with a black frame for it to go into. I really like canvas prints, if I had the money, I would get hundreds of pictures printed on Canvas to hang in our house, but for now, we will start with her favorite picture.



Next I got her a iPod shuffle - 1gb. It is amazing how small and lightweight the shuffle is. I had it about 2 weeks before Christmas, where I kept it at work and made sure it worked (aka -charged it up and played with it). It is a really cool MP3 player, perfect for working out, riding a bike or running. It will hold 240 songs.




Brett - This year was "year of the bike-Christmas". First of all, I got a Cookie Monster bike Jersey. I first saw these up in Park City and told Deni I was going to get her the one with Oscar the Grouch on it for her. Deni took the kids with her to buy this and this is the one they picked out for me. I also got a pair of bike gloves and thanks to Sydney, a pair of Sesame Street bike socks. I also got some Race Lite bike tires that have a Kevlar piece embedded into them so I won't get flat tires. When I was riding my bike to work I was getting at least 1 flat tire a week, which was beginning to get expensive. The new tires are kinda expensive ($30.00 a tire), but should keep me from getting flats, which will be nice, especially during races.

We all had a great Christmas this year.

Santa came

Christmas eve is finally here.

We had 1 hour of church today (instead of 3). Deni sang in the choir. They sang a beautiful version of Away in a Manager. I like that song. The sacrament program was a spoken word/choir ensemble where all the organizations sang a song. So when it was my turn, I went up with the YM/YW and sang.

After church we (Ryan) painstakingly waited for noon to come around. At noon we drove Ryan up to the MTC in Provo to each lunch with my parents. My dad is serving at the MTC as a Branch President. My parents have been taking the grandkids one by one up to the MTC, so they have a little MTC experience. It was finally Ryans turn. Ryan got to eat lunch with them and then attended church at the MTC, in mom and dad's Japanese MTC Branch. Ryan was so excited to go. He was telling people that he was going to learn Japanese while he was there. From the sounds of it, he enjoyed the day very much, as did the missionaries.

After the MTC, we had invited my parents over for dinner at our house, so they brought Ryan home.

At 6pm, Ryan was ready to go to bed so that Santa could come. You would have thought that we had fed Ryan pure sugar. I've never seen someone so excited about something.

We read the Christmas story from the Bible and let the kids open their one present of pajamas and then got them ready for bed. Mom and Dad left about 7pm. Mom and Dad gave us a new book that we opened called "The Three Trees". Deni read it to us as we all laid down in bed. Because the Christmas tree is in the upstairs Family room and the kids beds are downstairs, we temporarily moved the kids to the upstairs guest bedroom to sleep, or at least tried to.

After about 15 -20 minutes of both kids coming out and telling us that so and so is touching me or is bothering me, we split them up. I went into the guest bedroom with Sydney and Deni took Ryan down to his bedroom. What felt like 10 minutes later, Deni came in and woke me up. When I got up, I told Deni that it was time to get everything out. That's when she said that Santa had already came. Apparently, it had been about an hour. What??? I missed it. It appears that Santa was in a hurry this year and didn't need my help. Well Santa left one present that he needed help putting together, so Deni and I finished putting Sydney's Santa gift together. It was about 9:30pm when we got finished.

By that time, Ryan was asleep. We moved him back upstairs to the guest bedroom and barricaded the hallway off, just in case they got up in the middle of the night.