Christmas Eve

Every Christmas Eve morning, we go to breakfast with the Johnsons. This year we went to Center Street Grill. It took a while to get our food but it was really yummy. I got a flat bread egg/cheese/sausage sandwich that had avacado and it was delish. Zach got a doughnut egg sandwich. They cut a doughnut and grill the sides with the glazed part staying on the inside. Weird but surprisingly kind of good. Zach and the kiddos colored while we waited.

Then we were off to bowling as the Johnson's do every year. It was so much fun. Jonah especially loved it and would cheer for everyone. He is so dang cute. He ended up sitting on the side of the lane most of the time to get a front row view then would get up to do his turn. Maelee entertained herself by running up and down the aisle and laughing her head off as Willa chased behind her. As always, we got to choose a candy bar each time we got a strike then steal from each other when they ran out. The gummy hot dogs were a hit and there were even tears over who could have them. Who would have known a gummy hot dog could cause so much heart ache :)

After bowling we headed to my family. We went straight to the hospital to do our usual rounds of giving out dinner to the employees who have to work that night. This year my mom had the idea to also put together boxes of food/warm things and hand them out to homeless people. So this is what we did after the hospital. We walked around temple square and gave one to each homeless person we saw. Some were really happy and grateful for the surprise while others wished they could have taken all of the boxes we had. It was a fun experience.

 Then we walked around temple square and the lights ended up coming on for the end part of our visit.

Then we went home and got ready for our dinner. We have the same feast every Christmas Eve. Each person in the family is in charge or preparing/serving/cleaning a course. By the end we are stuuuuuffed and over satisfied. I am always the salad course.

 After dinner we relaxed for a bit and Zach had me open some new comfy pajamas for the night :) Then we did our Time Capsule tradition where we write about the past year/take a picture and seal it away for 5 years.

Zach has wanted a Kinect for the xbox since it came out last year. Building the house kind of distracted him for a while but as soon as it was complete, his want for this toy became a daily conversation. I wanted to surprise him with one for Christmas so I used our points that have been building up on our credit/debit card to get one during the Black Friday sales online. Well over a month was a loooong time to steer him away from going out and just getting one. We had a lot of extra/random incomes during the past month with rebates and things, and every time we'd get something he'd try to convince me it was a perfect way to go buy a Kinect. Every time we'd go to a store we'd have to look at them and I'd have to bite my tongue and just try to convice him we didn't 'need' one. Well one day we were at the mall and he had the brilliant idea of using our points to get one so we wouldn't have to spend any money. I tried to shrug off the idea but as soon as we got home he went online to check our points and saw they were all gone...he knew right away what I'd done. SO since I wasn't able to surprise him on Christmas morning, I decided to give it to him on Christmas Eve and at least it would be a surprise that he was getting to play it early. He fell asleep on the love sac as we were watching some videos and I put it right in front of him them tried to wake him up. He was so out of it and we were just all staring at him and asking him questions about what we should do the rest of the night. He wasn't seeing it so I told him to look in front of him and finally he saw it and grogilly said, "hey...what's that doing there!". He woke up enough to try it out before we went to bed. It was fun :)