Christmas at the Andersons

Christmas is my second favorite Holiday, my first being Thanksgiving. (I love that you only have to buy good food for Thanksgiving, cause I stress out about what to get almost everyone except Kira and my mom) We spent this Christmas at our home here in Vegas. It's the second year we have done this and I have to say that I LOVE IT!

I don't want any of our family to take this wrong because we love them A LOT but I love how quiet and low key our Christmas' have been these last two years. We have been lucky to have GramJan and PapaMike (my mom & dad) to come up and hang out with us. Before they got here though we decided it would be a great tradition to go to Buzz BBQ for a Christmas Eve lunch. Then we took Kira to the park to play to make sure she got nice and tired for Christmas Eve.

This year GramJan and PapaMike got here earlier than last and after some internet searching and a making a couple of phone calls we decided that In N Out was a great place to get Christmas Eve Dinner (cause other than McDonalds and some places like that it was the only place open) So off we went for our Cheese burgers and Fries and had fun catching up. Once home, Kira got to open a gift from Grandma Jetta and Grandpa Alan so she could call and let them know how much she liked it all




My mom and I decided we needed to get a gallon of milk but before I left I wanted to get Jacob all the stuff that Santa dropped off early... only to slowly realize that I couldn't find it. Then I had this awful flashback that I threw a Target bag away and even though I thought it was trash in there that maybe it wasn't trash after all and I threw away ALL of Santa's stocking stuffers... OH NO! So we were off to Walmart anyway, I'll just pick them up for Santa... we drive to Walmart only to find it has been closed since 8 (it is now 9:15) I call Target (since I know it's Santas FAVORITE place to shop for those sorts of things) they are closed. So we end up at Walgreens, cause they are open.... well the rest of Vegas was there too. Only one parking spot open and it was shear craziness inside. But we managed to replace all of Santa's gifts and buy some necessities for the weekend (i.e Mt. Dew and Dr. Pepper .... oh yeah and some milk) We got back home hung out and watched some tv and went to bed. Santa came and we woke up about 8:30 and came out to this...

Kira got a Monkey Pillow Pet and LOVES IT, it has slept with her every night so far. (his name is George)

She got some other cool monkey things and was so excited about everything she opened.

We tried to follow the Anderson tradition of one gift at a time in order of age (youngest to oldest) but Kira's gifts outnumbered ours about 6 to 1 so Kira opened like 3 or 4 and we opened one and so on.

She got some cool dress up stuff like butterfly wings and tutus.

She got a really cool Belle costume, i need to hem it but she loves it.

I got this super cool jewelry box that I'm excited about... it's all ready to be hung up and be put to use (hint hint honey)

Kira in her glasses from Santa

After we opened gifts, our family is so good to us, we had breakfast and started on Christmas Lunch. We made the same Ham recipe as last year, Turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls and other great stuff. As we were pulling together dinner I found Santa's stash hanging out in a kitchen cupboard, right were I left it, in an effort to not wake up Jacob, I hid it there and since it's a place I hadn't used before I couldn't remember where I put that stuff...

It was a great Christmas and we are so blessed to have everything we were given and everything we have. We wish you all the best for 2011 and look forward to reading about your families this year.

'til next time