Fun Gifts and Christmas Traditions

We had a really fun Christmas this year. We did most of our traditions that I have written about before.

We put together a gingerbread house:

Ryan's favorite part is smashing it on Christmas day

Joseph had a Grinch play for school. He was a Who from Whoville.

We had our traditional Eureka Christmas Eve dinner of crab salad and clam chowder
We went to look at the lights (the mansion and the dancing house were our favorite)
We did our nativity. Nobody cried or yelled, "No be konkey!" this year (first time in years.) Belle was a sheep.

We had our Christmas Eve treasure hunt. Ryan and Joe got Perry the Platypus PJs. Lauren got Mickey Mouse PJs and Mark got just PJs.

Santa came to our house

Lined up to check out the loot

Self-powered slot car race track for Joseph

Lego Millennium Falcon for Ryan

Melodica for Mark (see details below)

Cell phone for Lauren

For those of you who haven't heard of a melodica - it is a cross between a harmonica and an accordion. You blow into a mouthpiece and make notes by pressing the keys. For American Idol fans, Casey Abrams played one at the end of his audition. I recorded a brief clip of Mark playing the melodica.Click here to see the clip. The song he is playing is from the powerhouse harmonica video that Lauren posted on her blog a while back. Click here to see the blog. You may recognize the song from old Bugs Bunny or Tex Avery cartoons. Mark had no idea he was getting it. It was fun to watch him open it and try to figure out what it was.

Probably the funniest present was in my stocking. First a little background. For those of you who have not seen the Bad Lip Reading youtube clips, check them out on Lauren's blog here. The one that is relevant here is the one from Rick Perry. When he is meeting the fire fighters and shakes each one's hand, he says, "Tuna, Eggs, Doritos, Cheesecake, Tamales." As I pulled each item from my stocking, I found the following:

A little creativity was needed for the cheesecake (yogurt) and (hot) tamales, but it made me laugh.

Here is a picture of Ryan's completed Millennium Falcon. It is pretty cool.

The Sumpters came to visit before Christmas. We went to temple square to look at the lights and then to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes. They came again after Christmas. We went to the Thanksgiving Point Dinosaur Museum. We had a great time with them. We didn't take too many pictures, but here are a couple.

Mitchell with a present

Karen, Steve and Miranda

We celebrated New Year's with some friends and actually stayed up until midnight for the first time in a while.

We hope you all had a great Christmas and have a great 2012.