Christmas Time (was) Here

Happy Christmas!

We had a great time this year, spending our holiday with our dear cousins: Tommy, Sierra and Josh. Determined not to be bored and to have a great time, we pow-wowed about a week before Christmas to plan. It took us all night because the boys were a little rebellious and goofy, but fortunately Sierra and I know how to take charge of our men! So here's what we did (and didn't do):

Three days before Christmas, Sierra and I tackled the task of shopping for our Christmas dinner items in one of the busiest stores ever...Walmart!! It was absolutely insane, but we made it out of there in record time!

Sierra and I started cooking early in the morning on Christmas Eve--we decided to have our big dinner that night instead of Christmas night. We had a humongous turkey that took forever to cook, but it was sooooo worth it. Things went very well until I burned the yams, which I've never done before! So sad because it's my favorite part of the meal.... However, everything else was delicious and we had a great time with lots of laughs at dinner.

Oh! I forgot. We came up with a fun little possibly-new-tradition idea. During our planning meeting we were split in half over whether or not to open a gift on Christmas Eve. In the Jorgensen family it's tradition. In Sierra's and my family it's not. So we compromised and came up with a super-fun activity. We drew names right before dinner and kept that name a secret. Then we piled into our van and went to Walmart, each of us with five dollars. The goal: dash into the store and find a $5 gift for the person whose name you drew as fast as you can. It was a total blast! We opened our gifts after dinner, and you'd be amazed at the awesome things you can get for only $5!!

Okay, so anyway, after dinner we all gathered at our house, where everyone slept to elimnate "commuting" for Christmas morning. The kids were up bright and early as usual, so we started opening presents right around 6-ish. The kids were so excited! (not to mention the adults)

We had a yummy breakfast of Aebelskivers (a super-tasty Jorgensen tradition) and Ziploc omlets (also very tasty and so simple!). Then came the laziness.... We watched a couple movies, ate our weight in treats and snacks, napped a little bit...you get the idea! We were supposed to make sugar cookies to take to a few of our friends, but discovered the day before that none of them would be around. So we decided enough of the laziness! Let's go play in the snow! We did and we had a blast!!

So even though we were stranded for the Holidays, we ended up having a great time, mostly because Tommy, Sierra and Josh were stranded too. It was so nice to have some family to celebrate with. We are so lucky to have them close by!