Christmas Eve we spent time at Hale's house then migrated over to my parents' house for dinner with the elders. After driving around to look at lights, we headed home to open our family presents. Max was excited to get a new, very large art kit, and he's been filling our home with projects ever since. Luke received a toy dinosaur, and Jack got wooden swords for himself and all the boys to play with. We also made our traditional fire and left out cookies for Santa.
Christmas day we opened presents from Santa then ate breakfast before heading to Grandma and Papa's house. Each boy got what he wanted from Santa this year: Max got a basketball hoop and basketball for his room, Luke got a scooter, and Jack got a snugly, stuffed puppet. After a thorough spoiling from my parents, we got ready to eat Christmas dinner at Grandma-Great's house, but I got sick. Like, really, really sick. We passed around a stomach bug the entire first week of break, and it was just my luck to get hit in time for Christmas dinner. We sent Max over for the festivities, but the rest of us stayed behind and wallowed in misery (well, mostly I wallowed in misery). Luckily, the illness was short lived, and we made up for the missed dinner the rest of Christmas break.
Darreck took me out on a date one evening the second week of break, and Gram watched the boys. While we were enjoying steak and crab, the boys were busy destroying the house. Luke cracked the screen of the TV we bought in October, Max wrecked the train table, and they all decided to play soccer with my childhood globe which resulted in a dent over South America. When we got home, I have to give Darreck some serious credit for not killing them. Instead, we filled up the rest of their break with chores, chores, and more chores. Those boys worked like they've never worked before. To top it all off, Jack grabbed my glasses one day towards the end of break and broke them. We replaced everything, and it ended up being the single most expensive Christmas on record.
We had a very low-key but fun New Year's Day. We went to the store and stocked up on all our favorite junk food then watched a movie together- in the man cave on the floor, of course, because the replacement TV hadn't arrived yet. I know it's dorky, but I look forward to our junk food night all year. It's probably my favorite dinner!
Now we're looking forward to an amazing 2016. We have goals to keep paying down our student debt, attend the temple at least three times, and I want to read another 50 books. We're also looking forward to celebrating our 10th anniversary! I'm excited to see what this year brings.
