Visiting Friends

Ashton and I spent two weeks in San Diego for the holidays and I thought it was plenty of time to see all our wonderful friends. Well I was wrong! However, I got to see many of them and had so much fun meeting for lunch and play dates. Of course I didn't take pictures at all of them either, but here are a few of the fun pictures I did get.

My mom was nice enough to watch Ashton for me so I could go out with my cousin Alli. We went to this yummy little restaurant in La Jolla. Krystal and I met at a McDonald's for lunch another day so we could let the kids play in the play place. Tera and Sara were able to meet me for lunch at my favorite restaurant Islands. And Ashton and I were able to drive down and see Anna and Tyler for a Sunday morning play date.

It was wonderful to see everyone and to be able to catch up. We miss our friends, but are always thankful for the time we get to spend together. I'm going to have to start scheduling better when we are in town, but hey we do our best. Love you guys, thanks for making it work!

Christmas Day

After a long and wonderful Christmas Eve night, the party continued on the next morning. Luckily Ashton slept till almost 8:00 so we were able to get a little bit of sleep. He was so excited that he was finally going to be able to open his presents. I got him to pose at the top of the stares and wait till we had camera's rolling to come down. He got a new big wheels from Santa and he loved it! He spent 20 minutes just riding it around the house. Then he remembered he had more to open and came back for more presents. After he would open each one, he would want to get it out of the box and play with it. It was so cute! It literally took us till two in the afternoon to make it through all of his presents.

After getting all the presents, Ashton set up little groups of his toys and would spend time with each grouping. I had fun playing with my presents the rest of the day too. Aaron got me a wonderful little laptop and accessories. Among many other wonderful presents, I also got the Julia Child's 1961 edition cookbook from my mom. After seeing the movie Julie and Julia, Costco carried the same cookbook she went through in the movie. We decided that we would also try to cook our way through this book, except we are going to skip the meat section as we don't eat it. I know Aaron is going to love this because it will be lots of new and exciting food. I probably won't start this project for a while, in the meantime I'm going to create a layout of what to cook and how long it will take.

Christmas night we always go to a movie. Ashton, Taryn, Brooklynn, and I went to see the new Alvin in the Chipmunks movie. It was so cute and Ashton actually sat through the whole movie and was really good. Christmas day was such a blast, it seemed to go by so fast. It was a wonderful day and we loved spending it with family. I took a ton of pictures, but these are just a few of my favorites.

Christmas Eve Dinner

Every year it is a tradition to have a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner at grandmommy's house. She decorates the table beautifully and everyone gets dressed up nice for the evening. It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of thanksgiving food, but our Christmas Eve food is another story. It is all my favorite things all in one meal. After dinner, we get all the kids dressed up and they perform the nativity play. Ashton was Joseph this year and Jayne was Mary. We had practiced his part and by the time it came to the play, he was being a stinker. He wouldn't say his part, but he sat by the cradle and played with the baby Jesus the entire time. He was really cute and it is always fun to see the kids dressed up and remembering the real reason for Christmas. After the play we get to just relax and enjoy each others company. Ashton was so excited I didn't get him to bed till almost ten. Christmas Eve will always be one of my favorite family traditions.

*The funniest picture of the evening was Ashton when he was all dressed up in his Joseph costume. He didn't want to walk into the room on Que so he bent down and put his head on the floor and looked like he was saying a prayer. We all got a good laugh and then he finally moved over to the nativity set.

Baking at Moms

While Ashton and I were visiting at my parents house over the holidays, my mom and I decided we would do some baking. I am pretty sure we spent four days straight in the kitchen either preparing for Christmas Eve dinner or just baking fun things to eat. It all started because we watched Martha Stewart and thought we should make fresh bread and jam. It was my first time making jam and of course I over cooked it so the jelly was super thick, but it still tasted really yummy.

Then we decided to make Aaron his favorite cookies. Then we had to follow tradition and make sugar cookies and decorate them. Ashton loved being in the kitchen with us. He had his little stool and stood with us the entire time. He even decorated his own cookies. Even though I ended up getting sick at the end of our baking, I had so much spending time in the kitchen with my mom. I can't wait to do our cooking challenge with our new cookbooks together. I didn't get pictures of everything we baked, but here are a few I did take.

Seymour Christmas Party

One of my favorite things about December is that we have lots of family parties. The first of these was the Seymour family party (my dad's side). We got together at my mom's house, had a yummy Mexican dinner, and a gift exchange. This exchange is fun because we each buy a gift card somewhere and attach to a white elephant present. Then we draw numbers and take turns choosing/stealing presents. Some of us buy cute things, others are really good and get hilarious real white elephant gifts. It is always fun to see what people come up with. I love getting gift cards because I can use them to buy stuff I want as opposed to things I need.


The night was especially funny because Ashton was being a ham. He was actually posing for all these pictures. As we all know this is always hit or miss with kids. He was so good and just ran around playing with everyone. He loved that there were so many presents to open. Another fun tradition at this party is to wear something silly. Last year we had an ugly sweater contest. This year we had people bring funny Christmas socks. So of course we had to take a picture of all the cute Christmas socks. It was a wonderful party and it always nice to see and spend time with family, especially those we don't see as often.