Christmas Parties Galore!

I love this time of year! When you have so many opportunities to hear from old friends, and be with the ones you love. This weekend was both the Harrison and the Egbert family Christmas parties and we had such a wonderful time spending so much time with both our families. We started out Friday by watching Tyler Mergenthaler for a few hours in the morning while his parents loaded up their moving van. We will sure miss our friends, but are so excited for their new adventure ahead! All the best to you guys! Thanks for being part of our lives. My wonderful In-laws (Mum and Smurf) came down right around lunchtime to watch my two boys, while I took Tyler home and ran a quick errand. Then I headed over to the Provo mall for Adam’s Team Christmas party. We had lunch at Wingers, and then we were able to go and see the movie, “National Treasure, The Book of Secrets.” (Pretty good).

Adam and I both came home after the movie and team party, spent a few minutes with Mum and Smurf (Thanks again for taking the boys. You’re terrific!) and then loaded up the car and headed up to my parents home in Alpine for the Harrison Christmas party. What a fun time we had! Aunt Shannon started a new tradition of reading a book called “The Elf on the Shelf,” to the kids about how Santa has elves that help him watch if kids are good or bad. Each elf goes to the designated home of the child he’s assigned and moves hiding places everyday. Then at the end of the story we sent the kids on a hunt to find where the elf was hiding. Shannon had hid him in my Mom’s family room on the fireplace mantel. The kids loved it!

Then after a dinner of Pizza, salad, and tons of yummy sweets, we dusted off the old Karaoke Machine and had a great time singing and dancing with the kids. Everyone got into it and we had a lot of fun. The rest of the night we spent playing Luke and Shannon’s Wii, and Guitar Hero and took a trip down to Thanksgiving Point to see the Christmas Lights all the while singing Christmas songs. No one got to bed until after midnight.

Then Saturday morning we got up and all the Mom’s took the kids down to Thanksgiving Point to have Breakfast with Santa. What a great activity! (Totally recommended) We started off by having breakfast, and then Santa, Mrs. Clause, the Grinch, and Cindy Loo Who came out on the stage. Branson was totally mesmerized by the Grinch who later came and took pictures with the kids by our table. They also had a big Polar Bear walking around as well as a little ginger bread man who would give the kids hugs. All the characters walked around to each of the tables to get pictures with all the children. They also had the group come in that played Christmas music with bells and all the kids got to go up on stage and help ring the bells. They also had tonz of activities for the kids to do from frosting cookies, to getting their face painted, to making snowmen out of marshmallows, to making ornaments, to coloring and writing letters to santa. It was really a lot of fun. The rest of the day we pretty much just spent playing games, hanging out, and doing ping pong tournaments. Ad and I introduced a new game called “Killer bunnies” to my family and that was a BLAST. They all really got into it, and it was a perfect game for my family as we all tend to be a little quirky and demented! 🙂 Love you guys!

Picture of Branson with the Grinch and all his cousins

Picture with Cindy Loo Whoo

Branson and I about to see Santa

After that party, we rushed down to Woodland Hills for the Egbert Christmas party at Mum and Smurfs church. We had Soup for dinner and then all the boys played Basketball while the girls talked. Then they had a cousin gift exchange, and then an adult one. It was a lovely evening. The original plan was for everyone to go up to Mum and Smurfs after the party to watch the BYU bowl game, but Adam and I were so dead tired we decided just to go home, put the kids to bed, and crash! We still didn’t end up getting home until after 10:00 and then didn’t get to bed until almost midnight. Bless our little hearts! 🙂 Anyway, it was a wonderful, fun, and totally great weekend! We sure do love our families!

Alexandra meets her new cousin Harrison for the first time (She and her brother played with him almost the entire night!)