Our Holiday Top 10 Events

I feel really behind on blogging right now so I thought possibly the easiest way for me to get caught up would be just to type the top 10 things I have been thinking about blogging about!

1) CHRISTMAS IN LOUISIANA

Our Christmas started a little early this year. We celebrated Christmas just the two of us the Sat before Christmas. We knew it would be hard to fit everything we needed to take on the plane to Utah so we decided it would help if we gave our gifts to each other while we were still here. And let me tell you...those suitcases were packed! We definitely couldn't have fit one more thing...

Christmas was small for us this year, we are trying to build our savings as well as we knew we would be spending a lot of money in Utah. So we kept things small and simple, which I liked.

We started off the morning with a yummy full scale Christmas breakfast and read the Christmas story from the Bible.

I got Dan this alligator with a basketball in his mouth for his car. He told me he wanted a cool steering wheel cover...and at first I was totally stumped at what to get for a guy for his car...but in the end I ended up finding a basketball steering wheel cover, this alligator, and I also made him a alligator vinyl sticker for his back window (can you tell he likes alligators and basketball??).

Me cheesing for the camera....Dan surprised me in Utah with the best gift of all...he got me the starter Willow Tree Nativity set, which I loved. He had to give it to me in Utah because he had his mom pick it up for him in order to keep it a surprise. I have to give him credit, when we first got married I knew every single gift he was getting me...but he is getting better and better as time goes on! I was TOTALLY SHOCKED when I opened the gift. I didn't expect it at all.

After we were done opening gifts we relaxed and watch the Charlie Brown Christmas episode. We own the Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas episodes and have started the tradition of watching them near or on the holidays.

Us cheesing for the camera in our PJ's.

2) WELCOME HOME MICHAEL!

We arrived in Utah on Christmas Eve morning. Dan's brother, Micheal, returned home from his mission from Argentina that morning as well! His mom picked him up from his mission and their plane arrived about 45 minutes before ours, so they decided to wait for us! So we did the whole "Missionary Greeting in the Airport" thing a little backwards...instead he had to wait to see us come out of the plane to greet us! It was really nice to get to see Micheal again. After we left the airport we went straight to Little Caesar's Pizza for him and then to the church for him to be released from his mission.

Pic of some of the brother's outside the church before he was released.

The boys with the Stake President after he was released.

Michael also had his Homecoming while we were in Utah. We were really excited to be able to be there for it. He did a great job and has grown tremendously in the past two years. Kristen, my sister-in-law, took professional pics of the brothers while everyone was together. It has been over 4 years since the 4 Crandall boys have been together all at once between missions, deployments, etc...so it was really neat. Once I get those pics from her I will add them to the blog.

3) OUR NEW CAMERA!

Our old camera decided it was done being apart of the Crandall household shortly before Christmas so we had to get a new one right before we left to Utah. Everyone seemed to have a good time just making sure it worked!

Rueb has a thing with taking funny pictures of himself....he pulls on his facial skin to loosen it and then shakes his head really fast and snaps the picture...they always come out funny, this is the one I liked the best that he took while checking out our new camera.

#4-10 to follow...my lunch hour is up but hopefully I can finish the rest by tomorrow!