christmas 2015 phase 1 {petersen}

Ever since we got married, Russ and I have been very organized about who we spend the major holidays (i.e. Thanksgiving and Christmas) with. We always do one with my family and one with his, and we alternate every year. However, because we live really close to my family and because my brother's family is on the same rotation schedule as we are, my family will often celebrate the holiday  they don't get on a different day. As the youngest child, I used to not like it when holidays got switched up just because of my married siblings. However, it's been that way for a long time now, so now I really have no issues celebrating holidays on the wrong days, especially when it means I get to participate in multiple holiday celebrations. Holiday celebrations are the best!

Since it was our year to spend Christmas with Russ's family, my family opted to celebrate Christmas on December 22. My sister's family was in town from Texas, so they joined the rest of us Utah-livers.

Christmas Eve {December 21} was filled with lots of excitement. We had a big turkey dinner, and in addition to our family, we invited Sumner Mahaffey [the son of an old friend of my dad's, who happens to be the one closest to my age and therefore a good childhood friend] and Marie [our German foreign exchange student from 2005] and her boyfriend, Adam. We had a full house, which was a little crazy, but actually really fun for me in particular since of everyone in the family, I was closest to both Sumner and Marie. It was good to catch up with them.

michael & rachel

adam & marie

After dinner, our guests left, but we soon had a new guest--Santa Claus! Santa knew so much about every single one of us--not just the kiddos, but the kidults too! That made it really fun :) My favorite part was when he said something to my sister Rachel about how crazy she was for giving up sugar (she had been going 7 weeks strong at that point); he told her "sugar was the spice of life!" Go Santa! Haha :) Jackson and Haddie loved Santa's visit, but we had some crying babies on our hands!

brandon, santa, hadley, max, amy 

adeline, michael, santa, jackson, rachel 

russ, santa, & me

mom, santa, & dad

Next we did the Nativity, and it really was just the cutest little thing! Dad read scriptures while the kids acted it out and we sang a song every so often. I couldn't get over Haddie's pregnant belly!

bahahahahaha i die :)

ARE THEY NOT THE CUTEST! 

donkey, mary, & joseph

angel 

narrator

wise men 

and there was, of course, some more crying :)

After the kids were asleep, the adults helped Mom wrap Christmas presents for ages before we were finally allowed to sleep :)

Christmas Day {December 22} turned out to be quite hectic. Since it wasn't actual Christmas Day, there was a funeral that my mom had to go to and the boys only got to take off the first half of the workday. Those things left us a bit crunched for time! But we made do :) We had some interesting pumpkin pancakes for breakfast (Brandon insisted on his pancake tradition of making a gianttt pancake) before we could finally go sit by the tree and get started.

I'm the youngest in my family, so I never had to deal with tiny children being impatient for their turns--I was the impatient one! So it was a bit strange to have 4 little ones freaking out every so often because they wanted a turn.

this girl made so many fun faces I had to post most of them!

we petersens are famous for decoy presents...a few books in an ipad box that
really contained a piece of paper with a picture of a ladder on it :) 

when you take weird pictures of yourself, they get posted for the world to see ;)

there were several more awkward pictures of me like this. I have no idea why I
was making such weird faces like I saw a spider or something!

Mom and Dad always say we're not getting any presents for Christmas (they usually give us a check instead) but there are always more presents than they think there are going to be. In addition to a nice check and our experience in November, Russ got a ladder, I got a sewing machine, and we got a certificate for a couples' massage! It was a good Christmas, indeed! :) I knew beforehand that I was getting a sewing machine, so I was a little disappointed when I scanned the presents under the tree and didn't see anything big enough to hold a sewing machine! But my mom was a little trickster and she had just wrapped up the owner's manual :) Russ had to find his ladder, which was in none of the places we looked first; we finally found it in my parents' closet.

That night, Russ and I took a break from the family and spent some time at home together. We didn't do anything special (in fact, if I recall correctly, I think we cleaned and organized), but it was nice to have a night to ourselves.

December 23 in the evening we tried watching A Christmas Story, which none of us (except Russ) remembered ever seeing. We couldn't get through it, and after giving up on it, we played Just Dance followed by some Hand'n'Foot. We played Just Dance last year, and it was one of the first things Rachel and Michael requested we do while we were together this year. It's hard to convince my dad to join in, but when he does, it's really fun, even though he's beyond embarrassed the whole time ;)

December 24 was our last day with my family. After a half hour of Just Dance, the women made cookies all morning while the men worked a half day, and then we all went out to lunch together before Russ and I whisked Rachel and Michael away for their Christmas gift.

We do rotations for gift giving each year, and this year we had Rachel's family. They'll be moving soon, so when we asked what they wanted, they didn't have anything to ask for because they didn't want to be accumulating "stuff." So we opted to give them an experience instead. We went to Color Me Mine and each couple painted a Santa plate. We enjoyed chatting with each other, even though maintaining conversation was hard when we were all trying to concentrate on painting! Our plates turned out cute, but I'm definitely jealous of theirs, which is way cuter haha :)

their plate

our plate

Following our plate painting, we returned to my parents' house to frost the cookies, watch the long, drawn out ending of Back to the Future (movies on TV are the worst! ugh commercials to the max!), and sing a few Christmas songs around the piano before Russ and I headed home to prepare our house for company.

**ashleynicole