Christmas!!

*warning: this post is ridiculously long, feel free to take a break whenever needed*

For Christmas this year we went to see my parents in Virginia. We also got to see my older sister Lindsay and her family, my older brother Ryan and his family, my little brother Mikey, and my baby sister Jenny. We were missing my oldest sister Jaymie and her family, and my oldest brother Jeff and his family.

Our first day there we decorated Christmas cookies.

Ryan made me a penguin!

They're friends

Dad's Santa

Ryan's Santa

Mom's Santa

Caleb's creation

Ashlynne (left) and Ellie (right) TWIN COUSINS!

Doctor Who!

Brook's cookies. The Pac-man ghost is especially awesome

While we were doing cookies, Grandpa was watching the babies

Ashlynne. She gave me this look a lot, until we became best friends.

Rock 'em Sock 'em robots with Peter

Also, I made some awesome pies

apple pie

chocolate peanut butter pie

Getting ready for dinner

Ellie's new Christmas pajamas that I made her. Don't be impressed, they didn't turn out so well. The red mark on her cheek is from her falling down the stairs.

Silly boys

getting ready for the talent show (and a silly Pete)

Ellie did animal noises for her talent. We have a video, but the sound isn't so great.

We did a re-enactment of the Christmas story, but my camera wigged out a bit, so the pictures aren't that great.

Ryan, his daughter Ashlynne, and his wife Jenni (and their little boy, due in March)
Ashlynne was the angel

Mikey and Jenny were Mary and Joseph, and Caleb and Peter were shepherds. At this point Ellie was already asleep.

We opened one present, which is a tradition, and Will and I both opened the pajamas that I made. I didn't get any pictures of those.

Then we all went to bed.

The next morning, due to a miscommunication, Santa forgot where to put our stockings. William, being brilliant, created a stocking for Ellie out of the smallest presents she had, which happened to be from my sister-in-law Whitney.

Thanks Whitney!

After a breakfast of chocolate and donuts, we got ready for church.

I think this is the cutest picture. Even down to her tennis shoes (since we left one of her dress shoes at home)

Christmas dress

After church we got to open presents

tutu from Aunt Whitney

books from Grandma and Grandpa

In case you can't hear, she keep saying "please". It's pretty cute. It took us like 10 minutes to get it all out though. For her other presents, I pretty much had to open them because she was so excited about her toys, that she didn't care about the wrapped presents anymore.

Leftover mess and a sleepy Mikey

Ellie loves those dogs

That night we went and saw the temple lights

...?

My adorable parents

We hung around for a few more days, which included 2 awesome zombie games and several fun talks and movies. Ellie did pretty good, all things considered (teething).

The ride home wasn't all that smooth, with traffic delaying us several hours and the heat in the car not working, but other than that it wasn't too shabby.

As for our Christmas presents, we went a little crazy this year. Will got a 55" tv with a blue-ray player, an expansion pack for the zombie game and some movies, and I got a kitchenaid mixer, a chest freezer and my brand new laptop. And we also got a telescope that I'm excited to try out. And several other things that my tired brain doesn't remember right now.

So we say thank you for everyone who got us gifts and hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas!