christmas 2015, phase 2 {holmes}
We moved into our house in May of 2015, so Christmas 2015 was going to be our first Christmas in our new home. The only difficulty was that it was a Holmes family year for Christmas! For a while, we considered this being the year that we started to stay home for Christmas, but I didn't really want that; we don't have any kids yet and I love spending holidays with lots of people! But everything ended up working out perfectly because at one point, Russ's parents said that maybe they should come to Utah for Christmas; after all, Lacey, Russ & I, and Lance, Mackenzi, and Zander all live in Utah, so it made sense for 3 (mom, dad, & Chantry) to travel instead of 6. We offered to host and Mom & Dad Holmes accepted.
Somewhere between those plans and Christmas, Lance's family changed their plans and decided to spend Christmas in California, making it so that whether we spent Christmas in Boise or Utah, 3 would have to travel, but the Holmes folks were great and still came to Utah for Christmas :)
And I just have to tell you--I loved every minute of it! I really love my in-laws, and I love going to Boise (in fact, at one point over Christmas break I told Russ that it made me a little sad to not have a road trip to Boise planned!), but I also really loved having Christmas with the Holmes family in our new home. It was a short stay--it ended up being only 48 hours--but it was wonderful having everyone here with us :) I hope they all loved it as much as I did :)
Due to Dad and Chantry's work schedules, we ended up having to move Christmas around for the Holmes celebration, too.
On Christmas Eve {December 25} morning, Russ and I drove up to Salt Lake to pick Chantry up from the airport. Roads were CRAZY because we got a perfectly white and beautiful Christmas that would have been perfect, had we actually been celebrating Christmas that day :) But since we were not, it meant traveling through scary roads! Luckily, we made it safely, and afterward met up with Mom and Lacey at a homeless shelter. We spent a little while sorting through clothes and then clearing food from tables. I gotta say . . . I was definitely out of my element. I've never done something like that, and I'm already not very good at dealing with people who aren't like me, so it was definitely a stretch to try to interact with all of these people who seemed so different from me. I mean, I still smiled at everyone, but I just didn't know how to act there. I didn't know if I should be trying to talk to everyone, or what to talk about if I did talk to them. It was just a somewhat uncomfortable situation for me (though I don't regret going).
After that, we grabbed a quick bite at Denny's before picking up Dad from the airport and heading back to our house. The next few hours were spent preparing dinner (mostly Mom on that one) and watching Miracle on 34th Street. I've maybe seen it once before in my life, but if that's even true, it was a looooong time ago, and I didn't remember it. It was a cute movie :)
Mom made us a delicious Christmas Eve dinner of ham, funeral potatoes, green bean casserole, and a beautiful salad wreath!
Lance and Mackenzi facetimed us in the evening since it was actually Christmas Day, and we got Shayne on another facetime so that we could all witness the parents opening the gift from the siblings. Lance had the idea a few months ago to do those old photo re-creations and to turn them into a calendar. Even though I obviously wasn't in the old photos, I had lots of fun being there for the staging and I was really excited for Mom & Dad to finally get to see it! It was truly priceless to see them laughing hysterically at photo after photo. SUCH a fun gift, and I totally recommend it. I'm already planning on doing that for next year's Christmas for my parents :)
Later on, we watched Home Alone together, for the first time for a lot of people there! (Slightly mind-boggling since that was a STAPLE Christmas movie in my house growing up.)
Christmas Day {December 26} was so fun. One of my main goals with hosting Christmas was for it to seem like a Boise Holmes Christmas but just in a different location, so I tried to make sure we got to do Holmes family traditions. We started with stockings (or little gift bags actually). Stockings come first for Holmeses and there is always a personal-size box of cereal to hold you over until the bigger Christmas brunch. It's a fun tradition :)
Then, before moving on to presents, we all spent a few minutes writing down the gifts we wanted to give to Jesus this year. I love that tradition of theirs, so much so that Russ and I are adopting it as well; I made a white stocking this year to be Jesus's stocking and that's where we'll put our gifts for Him each year.
Another Holmes family tradition is for Channy to be the elf who delivers everyone else's presents to them; she chooses the order and she chooses the presents :)
One thing I love about Holmes family Christmases is that they make me feel like I'm still a kid! In my family, as soon as we got older, we started getting a check instead of presents. It's convenient, and I definitely still appreciate it, but I really enjoy opening up surprising gifts on Christmas Day, which is what happens at the Holmes celebrations :)
Russ got some special gloves to work on the car with, I got some accessories (scarf, necklace, bracelets), and together we got a game, a few books, a gas gift card, and a pre-planned, prepaid date to see Vocal Point perform. So many fun things! :)
Our sibling to give to was Lacey, so in attempts to help her cross a few more items off her 30 before/while 30 bucket list, we gave her five recipes, a promise to go sing karaoke with her, and a massage gift certificate.
Lance and Mackenzi gave us our sibling gift, which was three pre-planned, prepaid date nights! We've been babysitting their cute kiddo for a date night once/month for the last few months, so they told us they wanted to return the favor by giving us some date nights of our own! The dates included bowling & arcade games, a jump place, and a movie night at the Holmes Home Theater, complete with tickets, popcorn, candy, and a few bucks for a Redbox. It was such a great idea and we can't wait to use everything they got us! :)
Another Holmes family tradition is for the last present to contain flying screaming monkeys! Someone opens them and then proceeds to throw them out onto everyone else and then it becomes this whole screaming monkey war :) Well, I guess the tradition has been going on for too long, because this year, monkeys started losing arms left and right (haha and truly, no pun intended, but that just made me laugh)! Those poor little monkeys haha :)
After we opened up gifts, we ate a breakfast casserole that I made. It turned out pretty good, I'd say :)
During the afternoon, there was napping, puzzle building, grocery shopping, and dinner preparing. I made some seriously delicious meatloaf (America's Test Kitchen recipe), potatoes, and rolls with the help of Mom and Lacey.
Another Holmes tradition is Christmas crackers! So we all opened our crackers and took the obligatory paper hat photos :)
After dinner, Mom, Lacey, Russ, and I did some Just Dancing. (Dad was building a puzzle nearby and Channy was on her computer.) Later on, Mom and Russ made potstickers (another tradition). We ate many potstickers and also had hot cocoa, and sometime in the midst of this, we turned on The Santa Clause. It was suuuper late though, so I ended up falling asleep halfway through. It was just a day of happy though :)
Oh! And during the grocery shopping, we got these amazing elf microphone toys, so we had a lot of fun talking to each other in little elf voices! :)
December 27th was a Sunday, so we woke up and got ready for church. The plan was for everyone to leave around 2pm, which was only an hour after our church ended, so we kind of decided to be sinners and just go to the first hour haha :) We then got a couple extra hours together before everyone had to leave. Everyone finished packing up and then we played a few rounds of Scattergories. Mom made us ham and bean soup for lunch and then pretty soon everyone was leaving!
I really enjoyed the whole weekend sooo much that I was sad to see everyone go. I definitely felt some post-Christmas blues and there was a lot of cuddling between me and Russ that day haha :)
All in all, it was a simply wonderful Christmas, spent with so many of my favorite people :)
Somewhere between those plans and Christmas, Lance's family changed their plans and decided to spend Christmas in California, making it so that whether we spent Christmas in Boise or Utah, 3 would have to travel, but the Holmes folks were great and still came to Utah for Christmas :)
And I just have to tell you--I loved every minute of it! I really love my in-laws, and I love going to Boise (in fact, at one point over Christmas break I told Russ that it made me a little sad to not have a road trip to Boise planned!), but I also really loved having Christmas with the Holmes family in our new home. It was a short stay--it ended up being only 48 hours--but it was wonderful having everyone here with us :) I hope they all loved it as much as I did :)
Due to Dad and Chantry's work schedules, we ended up having to move Christmas around for the Holmes celebration, too.
On Christmas Eve {December 25} morning, Russ and I drove up to Salt Lake to pick Chantry up from the airport. Roads were CRAZY because we got a perfectly white and beautiful Christmas that would have been perfect, had we actually been celebrating Christmas that day :) But since we were not, it meant traveling through scary roads! Luckily, we made it safely, and afterward met up with Mom and Lacey at a homeless shelter. We spent a little while sorting through clothes and then clearing food from tables. I gotta say . . . I was definitely out of my element. I've never done something like that, and I'm already not very good at dealing with people who aren't like me, so it was definitely a stretch to try to interact with all of these people who seemed so different from me. I mean, I still smiled at everyone, but I just didn't know how to act there. I didn't know if I should be trying to talk to everyone, or what to talk about if I did talk to them. It was just a somewhat uncomfortable situation for me (though I don't regret going).
After that, we grabbed a quick bite at Denny's before picking up Dad from the airport and heading back to our house. The next few hours were spent preparing dinner (mostly Mom on that one) and watching Miracle on 34th Street. I've maybe seen it once before in my life, but if that's even true, it was a looooong time ago, and I didn't remember it. It was a cute movie :)
Mom made us a delicious Christmas Eve dinner of ham, funeral potatoes, green bean casserole, and a beautiful salad wreath!
Lance and Mackenzi facetimed us in the evening since it was actually Christmas Day, and we got Shayne on another facetime so that we could all witness the parents opening the gift from the siblings. Lance had the idea a few months ago to do those old photo re-creations and to turn them into a calendar. Even though I obviously wasn't in the old photos, I had lots of fun being there for the staging and I was really excited for Mom & Dad to finally get to see it! It was truly priceless to see them laughing hysterically at photo after photo. SUCH a fun gift, and I totally recommend it. I'm already planning on doing that for next year's Christmas for my parents :)
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| lacey & russ |
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| chantry -- same bear and same chair (and, of course, same channy) in every pic! |
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| bahahaha my favorite. lance & russ, and no, they are not actually naked in the re-creation. |
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| lacey, russ, & shayne. shayne had to be photoshopped into a few of these, so it's pretty amazing that they turned out as well as they did! |
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| lance, russ, lacey, & shayne |
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| russ & lacey |
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| lance & russ |
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| lance & lacey -- we used an oven rack in the 2015 pic to maintain proportions ;) |
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| shayne & lacey |
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| chantry & lacey |
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| another favorite of lance & russ |
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| shayne & lacey |
Later on, we watched Home Alone together, for the first time for a lot of people there! (Slightly mind-boggling since that was a STAPLE Christmas movie in my house growing up.)
Christmas Day {December 26} was so fun. One of my main goals with hosting Christmas was for it to seem like a Boise Holmes Christmas but just in a different location, so I tried to make sure we got to do Holmes family traditions. We started with stockings (or little gift bags actually). Stockings come first for Holmeses and there is always a personal-size box of cereal to hold you over until the bigger Christmas brunch. It's a fun tradition :)
Then, before moving on to presents, we all spent a few minutes writing down the gifts we wanted to give to Jesus this year. I love that tradition of theirs, so much so that Russ and I are adopting it as well; I made a white stocking this year to be Jesus's stocking and that's where we'll put our gifts for Him each year.
Another Holmes family tradition is for Channy to be the elf who delivers everyone else's presents to them; she chooses the order and she chooses the presents :)
One thing I love about Holmes family Christmases is that they make me feel like I'm still a kid! In my family, as soon as we got older, we started getting a check instead of presents. It's convenient, and I definitely still appreciate it, but I really enjoy opening up surprising gifts on Christmas Day, which is what happens at the Holmes celebrations :)
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| me, russ, mom, lacey, dad, & channy |
Russ got some special gloves to work on the car with, I got some accessories (scarf, necklace, bracelets), and together we got a game, a few books, a gas gift card, and a pre-planned, prepaid date to see Vocal Point perform. So many fun things! :)
Our sibling to give to was Lacey, so in attempts to help her cross a few more items off her 30 before/while 30 bucket list, we gave her five recipes, a promise to go sing karaoke with her, and a massage gift certificate.
Lance and Mackenzi gave us our sibling gift, which was three pre-planned, prepaid date nights! We've been babysitting their cute kiddo for a date night once/month for the last few months, so they told us they wanted to return the favor by giving us some date nights of our own! The dates included bowling & arcade games, a jump place, and a movie night at the Holmes Home Theater, complete with tickets, popcorn, candy, and a few bucks for a Redbox. It was such a great idea and we can't wait to use everything they got us! :)
After we opened up gifts, we ate a breakfast casserole that I made. It turned out pretty good, I'd say :)
During the afternoon, there was napping, puzzle building, grocery shopping, and dinner preparing. I made some seriously delicious meatloaf (America's Test Kitchen recipe), potatoes, and rolls with the help of Mom and Lacey.
Another Holmes tradition is Christmas crackers! So we all opened our crackers and took the obligatory paper hat photos :)
After dinner, Mom, Lacey, Russ, and I did some Just Dancing. (Dad was building a puzzle nearby and Channy was on her computer.) Later on, Mom and Russ made potstickers (another tradition). We ate many potstickers and also had hot cocoa, and sometime in the midst of this, we turned on The Santa Clause. It was suuuper late though, so I ended up falling asleep halfway through. It was just a day of happy though :)
Oh! And during the grocery shopping, we got these amazing elf microphone toys, so we had a lot of fun talking to each other in little elf voices! :)
December 27th was a Sunday, so we woke up and got ready for church. The plan was for everyone to leave around 2pm, which was only an hour after our church ended, so we kind of decided to be sinners and just go to the first hour haha :) We then got a couple extra hours together before everyone had to leave. Everyone finished packing up and then we played a few rounds of Scattergories. Mom made us ham and bean soup for lunch and then pretty soon everyone was leaving!
I really enjoyed the whole weekend sooo much that I was sad to see everyone go. I definitely felt some post-Christmas blues and there was a lot of cuddling between me and Russ that day haha :)
All in all, it was a simply wonderful Christmas, spent with so many of my favorite people :)
**ashleynicole
Haha, losing arms left and right! It took me a second to get it, which is a sign of a truly great pun.
ReplyDeleteHaha yeah, I actually wrote this post a few weeks ago (was waiting to get all the pics added), and then today I re-read it real quick before posting. For a second I was like "where's the pun?" HAHA so even I didn't get my own pun the second time around ;)
DeleteSorry if things were ever screwed up because of us! We planned on thanksgiving with the Holmes family and then to just do our own thing for Christmas (whatever that ended up being), but then we did decide California. Sorry if that ever complicated things though!
ReplyDelete