The Tangrens

This year has been an odd one for our end of the year holidays. My parents have been out here for Halloween the last four years until this year then we've always been with family for Thanksgiving and Christmas and this year it was just us.

We knew for awhile that we wouldn't be going up to Idaho Falls for Christmas with Derek's family remodeling and Derek conducting ( and as it turned out speaking ) on Christmas day. We thought for awhile they might come to us but with Christmas being on a Sunday and Derek's mom working in retail we figured the chances were slim to none that they'd be able to join us and they weren't. I'd planned for this eventuallity by talking to as many cousins as I could about coming down to our house for a Christmas eve something. As it turned out we had plans for my cousins to come down for an old fashioned Streeter shabang on Saturday and a nice dinner with some of Derek's cousins on Friday.

Derek was off work on Thursday and we ran around finishing up shopping and other details then Thursday night the upset stomach Derek had had all week seemed to worsen. All of Friday he was in bed with the stomach flu. We called to cancel our plans. But that night we started our gingerbread house as Derek slept on the couch.

We did one last year and Hyrum remembered and wanted to do another. This may become a tradition

Last year I had little to nothing to do with the construction of the house itself and this year I was flying solo with two eager little boys pushing to put the candy on.

I think I did pretty well.

The next day Derek was feeling a lot better and headed off into the Christmas eve shopping madness to finish up HIS shopping. When he got back we decided to finish the gingerbread house. This time Dad helped.

It should probably be noted just exactly how much my boys LOVED the gingerbread house frosting

Except when it was on Noah's finger. He really hates his hands being dirty

But Hyrum took care of that

He's such a good big brother.

Then we made the Santa cookies that Hyrum remembered making with Mema from last year. Noah helped too this year.

We got a box from my sister that day and in it with the presents were boots and coats that she didn't send with the 4T clothes. Hyrum was SOOOO excited. One pair of boots had mud on them from the previous owners and Hyrum said they were army boots thinking that the mud was camouflage. Because Hyrum was putting on boots and coats of course Noah had to as well. And then since they were putting on boots, he wanted to take a walk, in the wagon and since we had a few more neighbor gifts to deliver we went for a walk around the neighborhood to deliver them. ( Is this sounding a little like 'If you give a mouse a cookie'?)

When we got back from all of our running we decided to watch The Polar Express since we hadn't watched it yet and Hyrum kept saying he wanted to watch it on Christmas eve. But when we asked him he said he wanted to watch 'Mr Kruger's Christmas' instead. So that's what we did and after we retold the Christmas story from the Bible using the Little People to act it out.

While Derek was reading we noticed when he paused Hyrum would continue, quoting the Bible word for word. We were shocked until we realized that he has watched 'Charlie Brown Christmas' as many times as he could get away with just about every day of the week and along the way was memorizing the Christmas story that Linus recounts from the Bible. Thank you Mr Schultz!

Then we put the baby Jesus in the manger. Hyrum was SOOO excited to do this. He'd been waiting for so long and was entirely committed to making sure that Jesus had a nice soft bed to lay in. We expanded it this year to include any nice thing you do for anyone without them asking you to do it. So if he picked up his wrapper without me asking him to do it he put a straw in the manger which I was totally cool with because otherwise I'd be doing it so really, it was for me.