For Christmas Eve, we went to our new ward AND our old ward!  It was wonderful to be surrounded by new friends and tried and true friends.  That afternoon, we watched The Forgotten Carols together as a family (Savannah is home from her mission, yay!).  We love watching that every year and saying our favorite lines with the actors and singing along when the mood hits us, as well.  In the evening we went to Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik's house for traditional Christmas Eve candlelight dinner.  Homemade clam chowder!  Yum!  Then we watched a movie of the nativity and opened some presents and played the pipe bells and had a Christmas piano recital.  We love having Christmas Eve with Gazdiks.  When we got home, we put out our stockings and Ben shooed us all off to bed so that Santa could come!

On Christmas day, Savannah, Sarah, Megan, and Mariah woke the twins up at 6am to prove that they weren't too old for early Christmas excitement.  Since they had promised us they wouldn't wake us up until 7:30, they watched a movie while they waited.  Funny kids!  They gathered around our bed and sang and then we opened presents from Santa.  Everyone was pretty happy.  Then we had traditional French toast breakfast made for us by Kevin B.  After breakfast, we opened the rest of the presents to each other.  Fun times!  What a blessed family we are.

During Christmas day, some of us took naps, some of us built snowmen, some of us played games, and everyone played with new toys.  Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik came over for a turkey Christmas dinner and we called it a day.

All our kids in the same room reading, playing, talking.  Love.

On Tuesday we got our schedules to align once again (although not until 4:00!) and we went out for some burgers at In-n-Out and then to Barnes and Noble to get books with our giftcards from Grandma and Grandpa Elton and then to Kohls to get things with our giftcards from Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik and if we wanted more than we had money for, then we used our giftcards from Grandma and Grandpa Skinner!  It was fun.  Christmas again!

We had a pretty relaxed rest of the week.  Savannah read and played computer games.  Sarah read and went out with Allison a couple of times.  Megan worked on a birthday gift for Alisa (an amazing pop-up book that she made herself!) and also went hiking and put her new hammock up in the yard!  Mariah had basketball practice everyday and read and wore her new letterman's sweater everywhere she went.  Cali and Chey played some basketball with their dad and got together with their friends and read books.  Beth and Ben got together with friends and played Minecraft but not at the same time.

The Gillespies came and stayed with us on Thursday night!  They had a reception and wedding to attend and used our place to sleep.  We're glad they did.  It was fun to see them again even for just a short visit!

We had a very Merry Christmas and hope that all of our friends and family did, too!