Christmas at Grandma's House!

What a fun Christmas!!!

This year we got to spend Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa's house!! 

In Utah.

With SNOW!!

I remember one year when I was 10 or 11, we went to my grandparent's house in California for Christmas. It seemed like it was the best Christmas ever! I remember getting a Cabbage Patch Doll that year. That holiday is one of my favorite memories!!

Now that I'm the parent, I realize just how hard it is to pull off a "destination" Christmas. It was a lot of work, but sure worth it!

This is the classic "waiting-to-see-what-Santa-brought-us" picture!! There are several of these same style pictures that were taken of me and my siblings throughout the years. Priceless!

Pure excitement and joy on these happy sleepy-eyed faces! Love that photo bomber in the back!!!

That night, McKay left Santa a note with some cookies. Santa even signed, "Yummy!" back. Love these believing kids!

Makenna was so excited to get her Utah necklace

Connor opening something super exciting!!!

McKay was super thrilled about these "night-vision" goggles

We are probably the last family on the block to get one of these, hence the super suprised looks on the kids faces!

You can also see Kenna in her snuggy here

Something funny that happened with this present: We found a guy on Craigslist that was selling an old Wii with a bunch of really cool games and some controllers. We had already bought this new Wii, but decided to buy the old one with all the cool games. The cost of the whole package was less than the games would cost to buy by themselves. 

We met the guy and picked up our "package". I had it all set out, ready to wrap while the kids were at school. Well, I got a little distracted and did not get to wrapping the presents. And I also forgot that they were all sitting out. So, you can guess what happened: the kids saw the Wii and the games out. I was thinking inside my mind, "Stupid Rush!!!!!!" (A thing Brett's dad likes to say to himself when he's done something stupid. And that would be me at that time!!!)

Luckily, Brett is a little quicker on his feet than I am and said, "Oh, well we didn't want to show you guys this present because we thought it might make you jealous. But now that you've seen it, I guess it's ok to tell you about it. We bought this Wii and games off the internet for a family that we are doing a Sub-for-Santa for." 

The kids bought it. Phew!

They were disappointed it wouldn't be ours, but understood that since we were going to Utah, that was our main present.

Hence, the total EXCITEMENT!

Merry Christmas!