This is our last day of school for the fall semester. We are getting ready to go to the library to start studying for finals.
I guess I can't start talking about Christmas until I address our most beloved purchase of the year! In our small apartment we don't have a heating system that heats our whole house. In our living room we have a beast of heater (they are like the ones in the hotel rooms. The kind that are individualized, and attached to the walls). Yeah, it is electric and shoots up the prices in our utilities; so, we have decided (I guess mainly I have decided, Ryan would probably say otherwise) to not use that as a heater and get a space heater where it only warms up our bedroom.There are many nights where we are getting ready for bed and we have to dress up as if we are going outside to get the mail. It is freezing cold to just go to brush our teeth and get our last drink of water. There have been a couple of times where Ryan has been eating his "treat" before bedtime and you can see our breath! It has been quite an experience, and we definitely will have good stories to tell our children! :)
The first part of our Christmas holiday was spent decorating our apartment. We have found that a really fun family home evening activity is to buy construction or colored paper and make decorations. They are fun and Ryan is really cute when he gets creative. He was really good with the Halloween decorations, but he kind of really struggled with the snowflakes. We had some good laughs with how some of his turned out.
We love DI. I think we have gone there for every season and have found some pretty good stuff. We got the santa pillow and that has become Ryan's absolute favorite decoration we have.
My sister let us borrow their tree this year. It was 6" tall and fit perfectly in our little apartment! We were given some Christmas lights for a wedding present last year and then we were also given some decorations for the tree! All of those little things have helped to make it look so beautiful!
I was introduced to the Edwards nativity scene! I have never acted it out and somehow without even "auditioning" I got to be Mary (thanks to Angela :) It was fun to see the little kids act out their parts. The Ritchie boys definitely brought some more modern attributes to it. I don't think the wise men played their canes as electric guitars....but Bryson sure did...it was entertaining :)
Ryan was a really cute Joseph!
After spending the 22nd, 23rd, and the morning of the 24th in Heber we came back to have our Christmas Eve together. This was our dinner. I made this table cloth with my mom earlier in the week which helped add just the right touch.
Dinner was SO good! I think we outdid ourselves with the roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, fruit salad (yummy yummy), and homemade grape juice.
A new tradition Ryan and I started was to get one ornament for each other each year and open it on Christmas Eve. This is the one he gave me. 
Christmas morning I had a hard time getting Ryan out of bed (he wanted to sleep longer), but I am glad I did because he sure did love the football he got! Heisman pose!
Christmas breakfast...Heavenly!
After breakfast we went to Payson and spent the rest of the break with my family. Ryan had a fun time doing activities with my brothers. They took an afternoon and went shooting (my family has SO many guns. They like to feel manly every now and again). Now Ryan wants a gun! My brother said that he was a pretty good shot.
Games, games, and more games. Ryan played a lot of Rook. It is a good thing he likes it so much! This is New Years Eve. We played spoons. It was really intense!
The New Years always involves fireworks and banging pots and pans outside. We have a really fun time hitting them as loud as we can!
The break was very fun and we had so much fun together! I can't believe that it is already 2010! Happy late New Year everyone!
3 comments:
This post makes me SHIVER! You guys are troopers.
I know what you mean about rooms being cold. In Provo, we had a "central heating system," which really meant that we had a heater in the floor of the kitchen, and no heat anywhere else. We shivered in the living room and our bedroom, while the kitchen was hot as a furnace.
Your first Christmas together looks like it was perfect (except a little on the cold side).
I love your Christmas decorations!! They really turned out great!
I remember when I was younger still living in Payson listening to your family bang there pots and pans for New Years. Glad to see they still carry the Tradition on!!
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