Christmas this year was fantastic, despite the fact that a lot of it did not go how it was planned. We were all supposed to be at my grandma's house for Christmas Eve and stay over for Christmas morning as well for our annual brunch and present-opening. Half way through dinner, the fun began with my grandma choking on her food. The choking got so bad that her face turned blue and everyone jumped up to administer the heimlich maneuver, but luckily her body decided at the last minute to get rid of it itself. Only a few short minutes later, we heard a strange loud beeping and realized it was the carbon monoxide detector going off. Since my parents had just bought it a few weeks earlier, we thought maybe something was wrong with it, so we took it outside and it immediately stopped. When we brought it back in, it started beeping again. To be on the safe side, we figured we had better call someone to check on this. A few minutes later the Salt Lake City fire department was at our curbside, flashing lights and all. Turns out the house had a dangerous level of carbon monoxide in it and we had to turn off the heat, open all of the windows and doors, and leave the house for the night. We ended up coming back to our apartment, but not without another adventure. On the way, Lisa and Brandon realized their car's check engine light came on. Luckily they made it back to Provo that night but they wouldn't have made it much farther since it blew some gasket or something. Basically I felt like we were living our own version of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. However, despite all of the unexpected craziness, we were still able to work everything out and have a good time together as a family, which is the most important part!
The only picture I got of Christmas Eve was, of course, the fire engine outside the house:
Our first Christmas together as a married couple:
We got a lot of great gifts (not that gifts matter) but some of the goods included an electric blanket (Hallelujah! I can sleep at night!), a basketball, ear muffs, gloves, some cute Christmas decorations, a leatherman (some fancy knife thing), clothes, a nice waterbottle, yummy hot fudge, family pictures, and some dinero! Santa must have thought we were good this year!
Ryan got a present as tall as him! (Or maybe it was a decoy box and there was something really small taped to the bottom. :))
He also got a cool new coat (a.k.a. his mom's old coat from a long time ago that we found in the back of the coat closet):
We decided to save a little money and made our own stockings this year... for about $3.00 total! They're no pottery barn stockings, but we had a lot of fun making them!
We headed downtown for a little date to eat dinner and see the lights at temple square. We had a gift card so dinner was free... until we went to pay and realized I left the gift card at home, dang it! It was freezing cold that night and absolutely no parking anywhere close to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, but we still had fun and loved looking at the beautiful decorations in the building! (P.S. This is my first picture taken with my braces... hence the semi-awkward smile on my face):
All of this holiday stuff really tuckered Ryan out and this is how I found him one day. Actually, he was home sick that day and our apartment complex decided to test the fire alarm in our building during his nap so this was his solution!
Well, another Christmas has come and gone, but we had a lot of fun and really enjoyed decorating our apartment together, starting some little traditions, and spending lot's of time with each other and family!
