Holidays (A forgotten post)

I just realized that I made this post a few months ago and never actually posted it and since I hate to see all that hard work wasted...

Well, I am finding myself post holidays finally getting over my new years blues...so to speak...and excited for a fresh start and whole new year of memories to create and fun to look forward to!! It always seems to be such a bitter-sweet holiday, New Years. People all over the nation (well, actually the world) are celebrating a new year with crazy parties, staying up late, noise makers, sparkling cider (at least for us CRAZY party-ers), and watching the ball drop only to wake up the next morning depressed about a number of things, including... having to tear down the Christmas decorations, starting a diet and better exercise regime, getting back into a schedule with school and work, saying goodbye to loved ones, etc. Basically, back to reality! However, once you get through the blahs and feel the effects of your new diet and better eating habits along with the comforting feeling of a routine life seems to be great once again!! So here we are, moving forward and setting goals as a family.

Before we move too far along, however I thought I would do a quick summary of our holiday fun. I decided that in order to simplify this year, I wouldn't bring my huge camera but instead our little video camera so there are not pictures this time, but I am hoping to get a point and shoot that I can use for these occasions. The problem is that I am picky with my cameras so the one I want has a manual mode and is a little spendy so I will have to wait a bit on that one. ;)

*Christmas Eve: Dad, Demi, and I did our annual "Elf Shopping" however, since we were secretly trying to finish up Mom and Dad's Christmas present we had to get up extra early. Uncle Paul asked us kids if we wanted to all go in on building the Christmas advent house from the movie Christmas Vacation. We went out to his house periodically to help him with different parts. I was in charge of the pictures in the windows. We decided that instead of using the pictures they used we would use family pictures so I had to print them onto velum. Anyway, Christmas Eve we still had some finishing touches to do but Dad wanted to get started with our shopping around 8:30 so we decided to head out to Uncle Paul's at 6:30.

* Christmas Eve night: went out to Melissa and Trevor's for dinner and pajama opening. Also, a quick story I have to share...Grandma Simone was telling a story about her great uncle who drown when he was a little boy. It is a story she tells every year because there is more to it and it has a great message. Anyway, mid story, Simone is telling this beautiful story, everyone is getting a little teary eyed, and little Sarah (5) suddenly asks if she can share a sad story as well. As soon as Simone's story is over she tells Sarah she can go ahead and tell her story. Sarah goes up to to where Simone was sitting, front and center, and with a somber tone that matched the mood set by Simone's story she begins telling this story..."Once there was a grandma with her two grand kids and she went out to her car to get some presents and when she was bringing them back into the house the grandma got run-over by a reindeer." We were paralyzed with laughter for the next minute straight.

*Christmas Day:

We woke up and Nana and Papa came over to watch the kids open their gifts. From Santa they got Razors (scooters) and and Elf on the Shelf, among other things.

We went to church then went over to Mom's and Dad's to exchange gifts with them. Mom made her famous cinnamon rolls, best yet!! Paul and Sandi made a secret trip in to bring the advent house we made Mom and Dad. We had to time everything just right to make sure everyone could be there at the same time since this year was the "in-laws year" rotation. We didn't want Mom and Dad to know anything was up so we couldn't tell them that they wouldn't get their gift from us until Paul and Sandi got there so we kept everything a secret and when they got there they text us so we could distract Mom and Dad enough for Paul to get the house in without them seeing it. This house is huge so it wasn't an easy feat, but it all worked out nicely. We stood up, linked arms, and sang "Da-hoo do-ray" like the Who's on The Grinch in order to distract them and block the setup. I think Mom and Dad thought we were all psycho for a minute but Mom was already in tears when she saw that the Jenkins had come in, let alone when she saw why. It was awesome!!

Then we went over to the Wood's to exchange gifts with them. Our family performed a little musical number using sock puppets and sang the 12 days of Christmas, our own rendition. The grand kids acted out the nativity as we do every year. Rylan was Joseph, Cate was Mary, Calyn and Afton were angels. Grandma Simone made tons of wooden puzzles and dolls for all the grand kids and a snowman puzzle for all the siblings as well. She was a busy bee this year.

*Skyline Alumni tourny: Dev's team won again! They decided to do the whole thing in one day so the boys had to play several games in a row so they were pretty exhausted by the end. The championship game was an exciting one, which ended in a buzzer beating shot by Shawn Rose to win the game. Devin won the 3 point contest with 22 and was also awarded MVP!! Way to go Dev!

*The rest of the week was a ton of playing games, eating, playing with cousins, playing with new Christmas toys, etc.

*New Years Eve: we decided to change our annual day after Christmas Prime Rib to New Years Eve Prime Rib day since we are usually at Dev's tourny most of the day the day after Christmas. It was delicious! We played tons of Pounce and did some Just Dance too!

*Today we just got home from spending the weekend with Dad Jose and Linda. We haven't seen them for Christmas until now so it was fun to hang with them and exchange gifts there too. The kids always love going to see Papa Jose and Grandma Linda, but this year I think Linda's son Drew, who was still home from college for Christmas break, was the star of the weekend. Cal wouldn't leave his side most of the weekend. Their house has stained concrete floors upstairs so the kids were able to ride their scooters in circles around the living and dining room so they were pretty happy about that.

Well, there you have it, long story short (kind of) we had an awesome holiday season and once again were spoiled by family!!