Christmas and So Forth

December started out with a bang at the wedding of my Sweet Little Mandy Sister to her handsome squeeze, Doug. It was a lovely ceremony and I would post pictures here but Whitny hasn't sent them to me yet even though I asked like ten minutes ago and her kids are all at school now. Lazy. I will post them soon. They are adorable. See Doug and Amanda in the photo below? Of course you do.


We had a great Christmas! Full of family, food and fun. On Christmas Eve we had our parents and all our brothers and sisters at our house for a big party! We were only missing my two new nephews, Luke and Alex. I was in charge of the pajama pants this year since Linz played the baby card, so everyone got highwater pj's, I just like calves and that's all there is to say about that. The point is that all the important bits were covered up and everyone got a pair.

Jujo especially loved hers. (also, I stole these pictures from Whit's FB, you take good pics Whitty)

It was nice that all 45 people fit in the house, some leaked out and gathered around the firepit outside too. It was wonderful having them all here. I like them a lot. Arnon dressed up the kids and they put on the Nativity, there was food and wrapping paper and children everywhere.

We liked having Squiddy here and it is okay that he is still a single gentleman, that just means we don't have to share him.

The obligatory Christmas bag pictures.


Christmas morning the kids were up at 5am, after a little help from Ryan and some moaning from me. My bed was warm. But we got up and opened the kids stockings. They were all set out in the pit on a different cushion and Jeff in his morning fog of sleepiness started opening Peter's stocking. Pete didn't appreciate it very much and it took Jeff a second or ten to realize he was fighting over the wrong stocking. It was funny.

After the kids played with their stocking goodies for a little while we gathered up their church clothes and accessories and headed off to Grandma and Grandpa Livingstone's house for gift opening there at seven before church since Chris and Heather were to be heading to Tucson that morning and Jake and Cory were going to go to Mesa and we didn't want to miss them. Gift opening over there was really fun and wild and crazy. Loud and good. It makes me happy. Everyone was pleased with their haul and it was fun to watch people open things. Justin gave Arnon a gift that was in a box labeled, "Automatic Pet Petter" it had pictures of the contraption and descriptions about how it would pet your pet for you, for people who love their pets but don't so much want to touch them. Arnon was kind of sad to open the box and find it wasn't an actual pet petter but just some new clothes. Justin put her gift in a "gag" box. She thought that would be the perfect gift! I kind of want one too.

Cory got us all calendars again and it was "boys" year so they were all manly themed. I think ours was especially awesome, it is a toilets of the world calendar. So thru out the year we can enjoy looking at different interesting toilets. It is hanging in our kitchen and I am only mildly disturbed by it so far, it will be a fun year :)

We went to church at our ward and it was really lovely. We only had sacrament meeting and there was lots of music and the talks were very nice. I wish we had church every Christmas morning, it just made the whole day special.

After church we came home and the kids got to open their bags. They were all happy with what they got and played for a couple of hours while Ryan and I napped. Then we went over and had dinner at Livingstone's, it was yummy, I did the turkey again and everyone was happy with it, I hope I get to always do the turkey because it is so easy and everyone loves it - minimum effort; maximum impact!

Buggy loved getting to play with the babies, there was Jujo and Kinley there to cuddle. I'll admit, I cuddled a baby or two myself.

Our fun week continued with another big wedding. Chris and Heather got married! So the kids and I made ourselves pretty, we got facials. (that's what the above picture is, I'm not trying to scare you... okay, maybe I am)

The ladies and I got mani-pedis so we could be sparkly and fancy at the wedding.



The girls sang a song during the ceremony and they did very well. Uncle Kent helped them practice quite a bit that week before the wedding and they were confident. They ran thru it twice before the ceremony with the string quartet and the quartet loved them! They thought they were the cat's pajamas. Look at the violinist on the right, he was smiling at them the whole time. All the wedding guests gave them lots of compliments and they were pretty glow-y about the whole thing.

There was a big reception with dancing after and we stayed overnight at the resort, the kids stayed up late partying and woke up early to swim before we had to head home for our New Years Eve party that very night featuring Jefferson's 12th birthday!!



He was excited to have tons of family there, the video does not show exactly how loud that birthday song was actually sung, it was really really loud. And the very next day he got to receive the Aaronic Priesthood and be ordained to the office of a Deacon by his Deacon's Quorum Adviser aka, Ryan. Don't worry, the Assistant to the Deacon's Quorum Adviser is very responsible, it is Uncle Mitchell :) The Bishop's office was stuffed to the rafters with family, both of his Grandfathers, his Great-Grampa Bateman, and lots of uncles and family members got to stand in the circle at his ordination. It was lovely. He was grinning all day long. He passed the Sacrament for the first time yesterday and he did great. They had him sitting next to the tallest young man they could find so it was pretty obvious that he was a brand new deacon. He was very serious and all business while he passed the sacrament. I don't know how he got so big, just yesterday he was so small and sweet to cuddle with. Now he is all big and gangly and he has odors...

The rest of last week was filled with hanging out with the family members that were still here, we went hiking a couple of times. Showing off our lovely weather to our Canadian family, mainly trying to convince them to live down here and that rattlesnakes aren't that common. The only wildlife we saw were three fat jackrabbits hippity hopping around.

It was a bit of a marathon to get thru, two weeks jam packed with fun - but we loved it. We came away convinced we have a wonderful family and that we need to go to Canada in July and spend about two weeks there :)

Stay tuned for our new adventures involving ripping part of our roof off and replacing old and rotten wood, re-shingling the roof, and repainting the house using our own muscles and brains, and also my ever-loving parents who come get me out of tight spots. Love you Mom and Dad!