First Christmas!!

Who doesn't look forward to their first Christmas together as a husband and wife?  It's busy having two families at Christmastime that you have be sure to visit for the holidays.  I jetted out of work a little early on Christmas Eve day and we headed down to have Christmas Eve and morning with my family.  We went to grandma Jewkes' that night to have our family party over there.  We spent the night at my parents' house, and had Christmas breakfast there in the morning.  Grandma and grandpa Jones came over to have breakfast with us, as usual.  We left in the afternoon to come have Christmas with his family. 

We had dinner at Grandma Schick's house. Jay and Jared and their kids all came down (after totaling their car after hitting black ice shortly after leaving their home in Oregon).  We were so glad to have them there, and safe!  We got money from my parents and Jewkes grandparents, the game "Sorry" from my Jones grandparents, 50 mink females from Brent and Jan (and yes, we were excited about it), food storage from Grandma Beckstead, several things from Grams (Cook's Nursery gift card, Cafe Rio gift card, Orange Sticks, etc), house decor from Ryan and Lou (they drew our name on the Schick side), and a small house tool kit from Clayton (he drew our name for our Beckstead family). 

After dinner at Grams', we went back to Brent and Jan's to open our gifts with everyone. They had got us all a few gifts like new sweats and hoodies, and then the gifts we exchanged names for.  The funny story we'll always remember...Ali had got a "gag gift" at her bridal shower from her great grandma.  At the time she opened the gift, Ali had no clue it was a fake gift.  Her grandma kept saying, "Don't you like it? You can put it on your kitchen table or a front entry table like this."  Her grandma then proceeded to lay out a small piece of shag carpet looking material, a "marble" colored cat, with matching colored vases/candlesticks in different sizes.

By this point, Ali was wondering how she was going to avoid putting this out as a decoration, but not hurt her grandma's feelings. Finally, her grandma starts laughing once she sees how mortified Ali is and tells her it was all a joke and gives her a real gift.  Well, Arin and I both had to leave early from the shower Ali's other grandma had put on for her, so neither one of us saw this "gag gift."  Ali and Alex drew Brock and Arin for Christmas and re-gifted the gag to them.  Arin is pulling out the pieces one by one, and we're all laughing, not sure if we should be laughing or not.  Ali is telling Arin, "You can set it out on your table, It will be so cute. I picked it out special for you!"  Then Ali and Alex finally busted up and told us the whole story.  I'm sure that won't be the last of the marble cat and his shag carpet in the Beckstead family!

The cutest gift was this little horse that Clayton made for Cade! He spent his nights building it. I'm pretty sure it was Cade's favorite gift of the year!

After we finished up at Brent and Jan's, Zach and I ventured back to Payson so we could hurry and open our gifts to each other really quick before heading off to bed. We both had to work the next day...talk about a super bummer!  We had a conservative Christmas because we agreed that our new cell phones and TV we bought for our family room would be most of our Christmas.  Zach bought me some cute new black, sequined Ugg-style boots and a new set of sweats.  I gave him a DVD of "Mormon Messages," a book about the timeline of church history, a talk on CD, and a new pair of sweat bottoms. All-in-all we had a pretty great first Christmas together and enjoyed some wonderful company of our families.  (A few days later we went to the Beckstead part at a church nearby Grandma Becksteads as well.)