a Christmas to remember!

Our Christmas started off wonderfully. We received this little black box on our doorstep. It was SO generous. THANK YOU mystery door-knocker! We headed off to Idaho for a 2 1/2 week break! We drove through a crazy snowstorm, which kind of just continued to give us a white Christmas which I LOVED! It was pretty chilly, so we bundled up the baby to prepare her for her first Idaho winter experience: We had a good visit with Kara and Nixon (or as Clay put it, Gracie and Nixon's second date)...so fun! Christmas Eve Eve was spent with the McMillans having a delicious feast and watching football. Sorry, no pictures to document it.
This year was the Jones year for Christmas. Christmas Eve events: First off...BECK BINGO! I won some wonderful prizes...Jared kind of got girl gifts so I pretty much got double! Poor guy, but we had a good time with LOTS of Becks, that's all that matters! We acted out the Nativity, which I had never done before, it was wonderful. Bonnie picked our parts out of a hat and we only had about five minutes to come up with an outfit. I was a Shepard (thus the pom-pom sheep), and take a close look at the donkey in the front. That's Jared. Hilarious. We had a very nice talent show with some talented musical numbers. Jared and I read a skit called "the Twelve Days After Christmas". It's pretty talent-less, but entertaining. We had a fun Christmas morning! The presents were piled up at the Jones house. Gracie was only awake to open about one present, then she zonked out...too much excitement. The girls got matching sassy aprons
We spent all of the extra-snowy Christmas day with family. It made me really grateful for wonderful family and in-laws who remember the reason for the season. It was a wonderful Christmas I'll never forget! The rest of our break had just as much excitement...every day we did some sort of fun activity. We played games with friends (and laughed until we cried), played games with family (lots of Rummicube), watched lots of football, went bowling (Gracie's first time):We participated in the Jones Family ball bash! I'm pretty sure I didn't place, and I'm pretty sure that I WAS sore the next day from playing for 2 minutes, but out of the "just had a baby 3 months ago, haven't shot a basketball in a year" division I did pretty good! The best part of the ball bash is socializing with all of the Jones family anyway :)
Jared and I got to go to the Twin Falls temple w/Kiley and Eric. The Jones grandparents babysat. It is gorgeous and was wonderful to be able to go again.
Here are the baby cousins in order of age (but not size however...:) Kinsley, Gracie, Claire.
When we got back to Utah we went ice skating with my family. It was both Jared and Jen's kids' first time skating! I got a picture to capture Jared's panic!! He did a good job...
We've had such a fun break, and hope all of you did too...now back to normal life :) sigh....