Christmas in San Diego

Cousins

(Allison, Cole, Savannah, Holly, Cameron)

One of the highlights at Christmas...the TRAIN!
Holly fell on the tracks more than once. =}


CHRISTMAS EVE TRADITIONS

Luminaries:
Every Christmas Eve the community of Westwood puts out luminaries along the front of their house and all along the main streets. My siblings and I used to fill the white bags up with sand and put the candles in, then at 6pm we lit the candle and then drove around the neighborhoods to see all the glowing luminaries lining the streets. It's so cool. It was neat to have our kids carrying on the tradition!



Candy Trains: If you ever visit Grandma Humberstone's, Krystal's, or our house on Christmas Eve, chances are you'll receive a sweet choo choo treat! We've made these candy trains at Christmas time for as long as I can remember. It's great for the kiddos!
And of course, the Caroling, oh the caroling, while Grandma plays piano.
(Cousin Tanner, Aunt Merrilee and Uncle Steve Boyack)

Parker Boyack and our one and only "Singin' Daddy-o". You can tell he really gets into it! =)

James, Leah and Cameron (well, his backside anyway). =)

Krystal and Allison

Christmas Traditions

Stockings:

The first thing a kid wants to do on Christmas morning is check the milk and cookies and their stockings to see if Santa really came. So, of course, we always have Savannah wake us up before going into the family room so we can see her reaction. Since we were staying at my parent's house, Savannah was upstairs in the new bedroom and Doug and I were downstairs, so I told her to softly talk into the monitor in her room and say, "Mommy, I'm ready." So, at around 7am, I heard her say softly in the monitor "MOmmeeee. I'm reeeeaaaaady". So we woke up Grandma and Grandpa and ran up stairs to get Savannah.

It looks like she's flying down the stairs. She was pretty anxious!

Savannah asked for a scooter for Christmas, but since we were at Grandma's in San Diego, Santa left her a letter on her stocking telling her the scooter was waiting for her at Nana's (who lives two blocks from our house) because he knew we wouldn't have room for it in our car to take back to Utah with us. That Santa is so clever!

We couldn't tell if she was excited about the scooter...

...or about getting a letter from Santa.

She had to call Nana immediately to make sure the scooter was really there waiting for her. And of course, it was.

Stocking time!
Santa always leaves a HUGE apple and orange in our stockings. They are the best apples and oranges you'll ever taste!

Holly got a candy cane in her stocking...

...and she was pretty excited about it. =)

Opening Gifts:

Savannah is into dressing up, and doing hair. So, we added a few things to her collection.

Doug really spoiled me this year. He got me this camera (Cannon SD 800 Power Shot) with an 8GB card to go with it! WAHOOO! But that wasn't all. Sitting next to me are two more wrapped gifts...the small one being a 2 GB card which I opened with a bit of confusion thinking, "I just got an 8GB card for my camera...what could this be for?" I opened the last gift only to pull out a professional grade Cannon digital camera! My hands were shaking as I pulled it out of the box and I kept saying, "Are you KIDDING ME!?!" I couldn't believe it. I was in tears and completely ecstatic! (Now I just need to take some classes to learn how to use it!) Thanks Duger for an awesome Christmas! XOXO

Doug's comment when he opened this gift from Savannah was, "I'm officially a dad" having received a tie for Christmas from one of his kids. Too cute. Grandpa and Grandma with the kids.

James and Leah did gifts for our family this year (they rotate families each year) and these are the gifts we got from them!
Leah makes these purses and sells them. I was so glad she gave me one. I love it!

This Christmas for my parents and siblings, I wanted to make something meaningful, so I did a 4 generation project. The one for my parents was a quilt with a family tree on it that said, "Our Family" at the bottom. (I was planning on making it myself, but when I found this one, it was so perfect and so much better than what I would have done, so I just had to get it.)
The project I did for my siblings was a 12x12 scrapbook page with the 4 generations.

They all seemed to like it as much as I hoped they would. Yeah!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!