O Christmas Tree

It's our third year of buying a real Christmas tree.  I love it.  Dad helped us pick it up at Home Depot and set it up since I am pregnant and can't be lifting trees with 10 inch diameter trunks.

Dad also took our Christmas card photo at the lot.  I printed them that day and sent them out the next day.  Haha.  Next year with a baby we might solicit a professional photographer.  I need to up my game.

Here are a couple of many tree photos I took this year.  Every night I just wanted to snap one while sitting on the couch!

Christmas Club

Somehow we got to host Suppa Club in December again!  We had a lot going on that night.
Amazing, AMAZING food, talent show, gift exchange (homemade gift exchange), gingerbread making, whistle chorus, and photo booth.  Great job, everyone.  Great job.

Those Holiday Times

Here we go with a bunch of mumbo jumbo of shots from November until now! 

^^A typical Sunday at the Aillons.  Everyone lounging on the sectional, including Verona.  

^^My two-minute-homemade Thanksgiving banner, in the dark? 

^^Christmas craft view.  Two screens for pinterest/netflix viewing.  

^^Driving by the Gilbert Temple is a treat. 

^^Sarah and Benson (and our whole family) welcome Harper Mae Garner

^^Me and Harper

^^Mom's Birthday breakfast on November 18th with her babies. 

^^Hunter displaying one of our many take out nights this month.  Gecko Grill is our favorite. 

^^Hunter's work hours changed to 11am-7:30pm.  So our mornings look like this.

^^Thanksgiving Day!  First time running the Turkey Trot.  I liked it. 

^^Thanksgiving at the Wheelers.  Sad I didn't get a picture of my Dad next to me! 

 Let it be known- he was there.  

^^ Christmas house starts in our bedroom!  

New Christmas quilt, new drapes, festive trees with all our traveling ornaments and stockings hung.  

^^Hunter and I for real put these lights up at midnight and 33 degrees.  

We were laughing the whole time. 

^^After a Sunday "adventure" that I probably shouldn't share online. But it was very fun.  

^^New chairs!!!!!!!!  One of my favorite Christmas presents to me. 

^^Brother bear turned 25! Oreo cake=best creation. 

^^Mom and Hunter and I created five different varieties of truffles over a two week span. 

A Christmas tradition I started in High School.  

^^Our cozy home on Christmas Eve before my family, and my mom's sisters came over.  Sadly, I didn't snap ANY photos of Christmas Eve or Christmas Day after this.  

To note: this year was quite stressful and weird.  I don't know how to explain it.  But it was still magical and fun and completely full of love.  But the fact that I don't have any photos kind of makes sense at this point.  

A lovely Christmas.

We had a wonderful Christmas. Christmas eve my family (Aillons) came over and we had dinner at our house. This year I've got some of those English crackers for the table and is really fun to open them and have jokes around the table. Afterwards we kept our Aillon family tradition and went to the Mesa Temple Christmas lights.

Then we went back to mom and dad's house and had a fire in their fireplace at their new house.

Christmas morning Hunter and I opened presents together. Which I must say is so wonderful.  I love that our family's schedules work out that we can have that special time together to be our own family on Christmas morn.  It's one of my favorite times all year with Hunter.   Hunter always wins when it comes to gift giving.  We each sneak out of bed in the middle of the night to set up Christmas.  And we both pretend that we didn't hear the other.  It's cute.

Then we packed the car with all of our gifts went to breakfast at my parents house and had gift opening with them.

 We gave Todd a cash basket.

My dad is really into guns lately.

Hunter got spoiled and got a huge compressor.   And I got my prize- a new iPad on which I am blogging from right now.

Delicious breakfast and lots of fun with the Aillons. We went back home packed up our next car and went over to the Garners for their gift exchange.

Every year I'm still surprised at how many presents hunters mom seems to get under that Christmas tree. But I guess with nine kids and nine grandkids there's going to be a lot of presents.

Hunter got a really cute onesie from his secret Santa.

I was spoiled with some homemade gifts from Heidi and then a wonderful assortment of cookbooks.
And our favorite gift from his parents was a new Dutch oven.

We had another great meal with them- lasagna, cheese and meat platter, pasta and an amazing salad.

After many fun hours with the Garners we headed home and got ready for our annual Christmas hot cocoa party.The hot cocoa party has become ours and many other friends and family's favorite tradition. Except I have no tradition of taking pictures at this party.  ;-(  boo

I just love Christmas and this year was especially wonderful. Everyone got along and we had lots of good food, presents and laughter.

I've had an especially good time the last few weeks physically and Spiritually preparing for Christmas and it really paid off I hope I do this every year.

Here are some last shots of the 2 hour long gift opening at the Garners: