Christmas 2009

I was happy to have a white christmas this year! There's something nice about moving in and then having snow on christmas. Actually I think it reminded me and Luke of when we first moved to Colorado. We had just graduated at BYU-I in December of 2007 and then drove our two cars out to Colorado shortly after. But we hit a wind storm going through Wyoming and were stuck for a day, but luckily we made it into Denver the night before Christmas Eve. And when we woke up Christmas morning there was snow everywhere, a fairly big storm had come through and we were just so grateful that we had made it into Colorado before the storm did. And we just had a small apartment with no furniture or tree or internet or TV but its one of my best Christmas memories! And so being in a new home this Christmas and getting snow, even though the snow came the night before Christmas Eve this year, it still felt very familiar.

And now we have a driveway to shovel! I think Luke enjoys shoveling, at least he'll do it several times to keep up with it. And so Jacob and I would go outside too and watch him, and Jacob loved sitting out in the snow and watching dad shovel!

diligently watching his dad

me and my happy baby :)

outside again on Christmas Eve and all the snow we got

tasting the snow

laughing at his dad shoveling again :)

my table centerpieces

my chocolate pudding pie

My favorite christmas tradition growing up has been that on Christmas Eve we would have rice pudding. And the Danish tradition is to drop an almond into the pudding and then dish it up for everyone, and whoever finds the almond in their pudding is the winner. And the winner in our family would usually get a chocolate almond candy bar. It's just a lot of fun! But only having two of us that would eat it, and Luke is not even so sure he likes it, I didn't feel like making it this year. So my "substition" was chocolate pudding... but it somehow turned out hard and discusting. So I just wanted to say I'm never doing that again, and maybe I'll stick to my traditions from now on!

ready for christmas eve dinner!

showing Jacob his stocking

staying up late on Christmas Eve

his PJ's say- My 1st Christmas

our tiny nativity set

our tree was basically dead by Christmas, but it looked prettier at night

and basically all these presents were for Jacob!

opening his presents Christmas afternoon

(he slept in really long Christmas morning!)

all he really cared about was climbing on top of the presents to look at the ornaments :)

Once we got all Jacob's new toys set up though he loved them! This one in the picture above is probably my favorite because he can stand at it and it plays like a million songs and keeps him pretty occupied, at least for awhile. But I have to give the credit to Luke's parents, they were great in helping us get some gifts for Jacob this year. Luke did get a new cell phone as a combined birthday and christmas gift- that was all he wanted! And I got some stuff for the house, and I'm promising myself that I'm going to get new glasses- I've had the same ones since high school!

Anyway, we didn't really care about gifts this year, we just felt so blessed to be in a new home, and with a beautiful baby, and with each other. Luke had two weeks off for the break and so we were happy to just spend time together and we had a great Christmas!