Jorgenson Adventures: All Things Christmas

How embarrassing that I wrote nothing in December. Now it's going to be all mashed together in one. In my defense, for some reason when I try to upload pictures onto my computer from my phone it doesn't recognize any new pictures. Which is super annoying and makes getting pictures take way longer. So if anyone knows how to solve this problem, please let me know! (update: just spent 2 hours figuring this out. Painful!)

We started the season off with our third annual neighborhood Christmas food drive. My friend and I are the ones who put it on, and this year was the best ever I think. We decided to try to get more people to come by offering up live music. So we talked Zack and his friends Carter and Austin into putting a band together. Little did we know how much drama would be involved in this. I now understand why so many bands don't make it. They stuck it out though and did a great job! I think they maybe even liked it, even though there was no way they were going to tell us that.

The next activity was the Christmas Bus. Skiing in the morning, party in the afternoon. We did our annual performance at the care center. Awesome as usual. Zack was supposed to play his guitar, but due to a mess up with our ski carrier, we weren't able to fit the guitar in the car. So Kate filled in on the piano. All of the families showed off their talents, best of all the nativity with the littles. So cute! This year we headed to the church for games. This added a whole new level to the event. We played our guts out, and then filled our guts with pizza. And just in time the bus arrived to take us to see the lights! So beautiful! Such a fun ride with all of the kids. My grandma and aunt and uncle even came up from Boise to join us. We all had great fun, thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Spjute who plan such great activities!

The next weekend Jake took Zack and Kate to Jackson skiing. They got a deal at the Warren Miller movie, so off they went. They loved every second of it and skied their guts out. One day they skied 35,000 vertical feet! Sage and I hung out together at home, which I thought was awesome. She even got to go on the North Pole Train with her cousins! While she was doing that I went skiing by myself, which was kind of amazing, not gonna lie.

We had a Spjute non-Christmas Eve party at April and Toby's. This was great fun. They planned lots of fun games, including Family Feud hosted by Toby! Good thing someone in our family knows how to have fun! That same day we got to go to Grandma Tracy's to decorate some delicious sugar cookies. It was a fun-filled day for sure!

Christmas Eve was awesome. We went skiing in the afternoon, and then came home for a fun family night. Somehow this Christmas ended up being our 'Latin Christmas'. It was pretty awesome. We ended up doing a sub for santa for a family from Chile. When we took stuff to them they invited us in and fed us delicious treats straight from Chile, and we got to talk to them for 20 minutes in mostly spanish. It was so great. When I was on my mission I remember eating millions of tamales every Christmas. So when I saw someone selling authentic tamales I decided it would be fun to try it. So for dinner on Christmas Eve we had tamales and nachos. And it was pretty delicious I think! Then we shared talents. Zack played the guitar, Kate made us a treat, Sage did a dance, and Jake and I played the piano and guitar together. Great fun. Then we read and discussed the nativity. We finished up the night watching Christmas Chronicles in the theater. Jake declared it his new favorite Christmas movie so a successful night all around!

Christmas day was busy! We made Sage wait to open presents until 7:00. Then it was present craziness. The kids got nothing huge this year, just lots of random. This was the year of legos for Sage. She spent so long doing legos that she had to get up and stretch her back out. We headed to my cousins for delicious breakfast food and good family time. I love getting together with my mom's side of the family. Then we headed to Tracy's for more family time with all 100 Higley's. When we finally made it home I was exhausted, but then I had to go into work at 1:00am. Ugh. However, I'd call it a successful Christmas for sure!

Christmas break with the kids home was good and pretty low key. I forced myself to be cool with them sleeping in and just chilling. I managed to not come unglued, so all was well. New Years Eve was uneventful, because we're lame. Jake had to work most of the day. He got home and we rushed out to see a movie. Then we went to Chuckarama. Sage has been begging to go there for like a year, so we finally did. And it will probably be a few years before we go back. We're not good buffet people. Then we went home and Kate babysat and everyone else went to bed. We're super cool. Happy New Year!