Phillips Five: Christmas 2013

Christmas was here and gone so quickly this year. Our girls really wanted to have Christmas at home again this year. I personally have a hard time not being with our extended family, but also enjoy the simplicity of staying home and enjoying the day. Christmas Eve was the highlight of our Holiday. The Brown family has the tradition of bowling each Christmas Eve. We joined them this year, along with some of our good friends, and had a wonderful time.

After bowling we all headed over to a restaurant called Freddy's for shakes and burgers. It was such a fun tradition that we may need to make this our tradition too.

Latter that day we had our good friends the Sondrup's and Lewis families over for a turkey feast. The food was delicious, and the company so much fun.

We played a white elephant gift exchange game, and the Lewis family has these wonderful chimes to play Christmas carols with. It was a lot of fun.

It took some concentration to make sure you didn't miss your number to hit the notes in time to the song. I think it was the only time the kids really sat still the whole evening. We then watched a few Christmas video's on LDS.org to focus some time on the real meaning of Christmas.

After everyone left we were able to open up jammies, and a special gift from Santa thanks to Grammie.

Christmas morning the girls were up at 5am. We kept shooing them back into their rooms, but finally gave in at 5:30 because we were all up anyway. To our surprise Santa gave the girls what they really wanted this year….electronics. I wasn't too thrilled, but I'm trying to keep tabs on all the security devices to keep them safe. I just wished they were still asking for younger things. They are growing up. :(

Santa was very good to us. After opening all the gifts from family and friends our basement looked like a tornado had hit.

Sideways Christmas tree waffles thanks to the idea on Pinterest. We didn't eat them sideways, but I can't get the picture to rotate.

Around 4:00 it was time to just get out of the house for a little bit. We decided to head to the gardens at the Bellagio thinking that no one would be there on Christmas. Boy were we wrong. It was so packed that we waited a very long time for a parking spot, and then could hardly walk in the gardens. Who really travel's to Vegas on Christmas? Crazy people!