Christmas is my Favorite!!

On Christmas Eve, we went to Taber to celebrate with Sarah's family. We had a delicious meal and our Christmas Eve program.  Declan had made an online Christmas trivia game that we all played - the benefits of technology when some family is in Idaho and some in Alberta.  Some of the kids did musical numbers, and then we had the nativity. 

Carly had learned Silent Night on the violin to play for her recital so she played for Christmas Eve.  Her and Taylor didn't actually practice before the program and Taylor's tempo was about double how Carly usually plays the song, but she did good.  

Sarah and Kaela had a small battle on December 22 and Kaela left her house and went to stay with a friend. Austin and Jill drove to Barnwell to pick up Kaela on December 23 so she could spend Christmas with family. She did go to Christmas Eve dinner with us to her family, and she had brought her stuff to stay and spend Christmas with her family.  But she tested the waters, and they weren't ready, so she came and spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with our family.

Christmas was on a Sunday.  We opened our presents from Santa Claus and our stockings and one other gift. Then we had breakfast and got ready for church.  It had snowed a lot in the night, and as the Bishop, Austin was worried that no one will have shoveled since it was Christmas.  So he went to the church early, but it had already been shoveled.  His dad had gone at 7:30 this morning to shovel.

We all sang in the choir for the Christmas program. My girls were not thrilled to come to all of the practices, but they did it. Kaela even joined us and sang with the choir. It was a really good meeting.  The choir only ended up singing 2 songs and then 2 more where the congregation joined in.  The choir director had added  3 musical numbers of his own kids/grandkids so he cut some of the choir songs.

Grandpa Buck won the award for the most thoughtful gifts. On Christmas Eve after we left for Taber, him and Grandma came and installed these gates he had built to cover our cattle guard.  He also left this red toy horse barn that he had built for Lucy. He also gave each of the granddaughters a wooden shelf with horseshoes and the Nunn brand.

 Jill also gave awesome & thoughtful gifts this year. She gave Lucy this pillow, and she had this temple picture printed for her gift to me. Tanis Hardy took the picture of the Cardston Temple, and Jill had her print it.  Jill had bought a poster frame but it broke, and so when Austin and I were doing the end of our shopping on December 23, we found this frame. I love it. It is perfect.

A summary of the main gifts each of us received:
Austin - 5-star horse felt pad
Kaylynn - pans and cutting board
Jill - splint boots for her horse, muck boots for her, and stuff for college life (toaster, etc)
Hanna - scriptures and  rodeo jacket
Lucy - a toy horse for her 18-in dolls, rodeo jacket, basketball
Carly - Olympics sweatpants & hoodie (she had written a note to our Elf on the Shelf, Molly, and asked if she would tell Santa she wanted clothes to wear like they do when they receive an Olympic medal.  She also asked if she could get a gold, silver and bronze Olympic medal, but I guess you have to earn those). She also got a volleyball and a lava lamp.

Merry Christmas!