Merry Christmas!

So Christmas was a definite success this year!

First we started things off Friday evening(Christmas Eve) by going to Daniel and Carly's stake center for a big Erickson dinner and a nativity put on by the children, and a piñata later on.  The dinner was awesome!  We had ham, funeral potatoes, salad, rolls, green-been casserole and more!  The beverage was the Erickson party beverage of choice: apple juice, and 7-up!  It really is a brilliant combination!  We all chowed down as the little ones watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and then Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  Then we did the little ones nativity!  Jacob was designated as the donkey that Mary had ridden on to Bethlehem but he had had a slight operation that morning due to a cist near his knee.  So I filled in for him and played the part of the donkey!  I think I did a decent job especially on very short notice!  Mary was played by Kaitlynn and J.D. played Joseph!  All the others filled in as wise men, shepherds, or sheep!  It was very cute and definitely memorable.  Then the others watched The Nativity film put on by the church, but Kristen and I had to jet in order to make it to my parents place for the rest of the proceedings that evening.

We arrived at the McLaws residence to find everyone watching Jingle All the Way and cleaning up dinner and putting out desserts!  Kristen and I were in charge of the program that evening and so we had put together quite an arrangement of performances and stories and such!  We started things off with the candy bar game!  A silly game where you all gather in a circle and everyone has a wrapped candy bar.  When the narrator says the word "right", everyone passes their bar one to the right.  When the narrator says the word "left", everyone passes their bar one to the left.  It was fun and started things off nicely!  Then Dad told a few memories of Christmas as a child.  He talked about one Christmas where his Dad had asked him to help fix up a go-kart for his brother Andrew, in exchange for getting a cool old truck that he and Aaron would work on and fix up. He said that was a great memory and probably one of the most memorable.  Then I shared the story of the littlest jingle bell!  If you haven't heard that one before, I guess you will have to come to our activities next Christmas eve to hear it for yourself.  It is a fun story that involves the participation of many to help jingle the jingle bell props.  Then Esther shared a story of Christmas that she had borrowed from the library and it was really good and she bore her testimony about how she believes that part of the reason the Shepherds were sent to Mary and Joseph was so that they could have the much needed supplies that they didn't have because they had traveled such a great distance.  Faith shared a tissue paper cut out design that she made of the stable and Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus.  It was really nice!  J.R. played "What Child is This?" on the guitar and he did an excellent job!  Kristen and Julia performed the song "Mary did you Know?"  Kristen sang it as Julia played it on the piano.  Kristen did an excellent job of singing it and it sounded great!  Julia played wonderfully on the piano and I am very proud and impressed that she has progressed so much on the piano.  Then Mom shared a spiritual thought/testimony on gratitude and the importance of always being thankful for what the Heavenly Father has given us.  She gave us all a little pack of thank you cards so that we can make sure to send out thank yous to those who gave us gifts and also to others as the Holy Ghost impresses it on our minds.  We then watched The Nativity with the song of "Breath of Heaven" done by Amy Grant.  It was wonderful and it was a great way to spend Christmas Eve!

 Then we opened up our sibling present: I gave to Cheryl and she loved getting her fashion bug gift card and her Eclipse(from the Twilight saga) board game!  J.R. gave to me for our sibling exchange.  He gave me a box of Andes mints as well as a homemade knife from old files and a real wooden hammer!  It really is a cool gift and definitely something very unique and special!  Cheryl then introduced the desserts she had made and we dug in!  Then we drove home through some neighborhoods with a lot of Christmas lights on display!  Great evening!

Christmas morning, Kristen and I opened up our presents to each other and then drove to my parents place for a Christmas breakfast that Cheryl had prepared and then opened up presents with everybody!  All the gifts we got were awesome and many were very needed!  It was fun to see Barbara and baby John having so much fun opening gifts and helping others open their gifts!  Barbara loved both of her pink presents that she got from us, and played with them so much that one of them was broken after just about an hour or so.  Baby John gave us all lots of hugs and brightened the atmosphere the whole day!  He really is such a blessing!

Then we headed over to Mom Erickson and the clan to open presents and talk with Robert who was making his Christmas call from Uruguay!  That was fun to talk to him in Spanish and he seems to be picking up a very good accent and it sounds like things are going fantastic for him!  We got to see all the Erickson side of the family again and then opened up presents with everyone!  The main present we got from Mom Erickson was the Christus statue that we will have to find a place for!  It is very beautiful and it's kind of a tradition of hers to give it to all the couples when they are newly married.  It was fun to see all the nieces and nephews as well as Stephen!  He seems to be doing well and I'm sure it helped to have so much loving family around!  Robert we love and miss you!  You are serving where you are needed most!

The rest of the day was just kind of laziness and playing games and watching movies and going to visit grandma and grandpa McLaws.  It was a great Christmas!

Today being Sunday we went to church, and then I went out with Mike Joslin to be substitute companions and stop by a bunch of less active people on our home teaching lists to wish them a Merry Christmas!  That was a good experience and I'm glad we made that effort!  Then in the evening we went to visit Mom Erickson and Suzanne and Mark who had driven up from Sahuarita!  All the family was over and we ate a delicious lasagna meal and hung out and saw them open their presents and played family feud!  It truly was a great weekend, vacation, celebration, and remembrance!  And it was great to spend so much time with my lovely wife!  Happy Birthday Jesus! :)

The Christmas Season is upon Us!

So a few eventful things happened to us this week!
The biggest most eventful thing was that Kristen got her wisdom teeth out and that was most definitely a lot less hectic of a situation than we had imagined!
Kristen and I were a bit worried about the operation and so she asked me to give her a blessing the morning of, before going in for her operation.  The blessing seemed to calm her down quite a bit and give her the strength to have the operation without being nervous.  Dr. Porter who performed the operation was guided to do his work correctly and he was able to completely pull all four of Kristen's wisdom teeth in just about a half an hour!

Once the job was done, the assistant came out to get me from the waiting room.  She told me to pull my car around to the patient pick-up location and then opened that door for me.  She gave me a packet of information which also had the rinsing syringe and the ice packs for swelling.  Once my wife was ready, we helped her out to the car and then headed over to Mom Erickson's to get a few more movies that we wanted to borrow.  She let Kristen borrow Eclipse even though Mom had not yet watched it!

From there we headed home, where I made a smoothie for us both.  After that Kristen took her first dose of medicine, and then we climbed back into bed to sleep a little more.  Kristen seems to have recovered from the operation very well and without many problems.  She has only been a little swollen and rosy cheeked, she hasn't had to take stronger medication than just her ibuprofen to kill the pain and her amoxicillin for protection from bacteria.

The other eventful thing was that today we went and had our annual McLaws extended family Christmas program!  The dinner was an awesome feast!  It was awesome to see Christian and Sterling Priday as well as all of the other uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandma and grandpa!  And of course the highlight of the evening was when we did the white elephant gift exchange game!  Kristen and I ended up scoring!  I ended up with the Harkins loyalty t-shirt which entitles the wearer to a free medium popcorn for the full year of 2011!  And Kristen got an ab work out set: DVD's and an AB balance board.  Great presents!  Can't wait for Christmas to really start this coming Saturday!

Well that about wraps up things for this week!  It was a good and eventful one to be sure!  This coming week I only have to work Monday-Thursday and work has given me Friday off as well as Saturday and Sunday!  So that will be nice to have a shorter work week and just get to enjoy the time with family and friends and of course my lovely wife!  :)

Finals are done with!

So this week I took my last final and finished up my last paper of the semester!  And now I am enjoying a well deserved break and am very happy about my vacation!

Friday was cool because in the morning I helped one of the brethren that I home teach to pack up his U-haul truck and move farther east into Mesa.  Then in the evening we got to go to our Christmas Party and eat of the delicious food storage meal: fake potatoes, gravy, canned green beans, delicious roast beef, and lemon water.  The best thing was that we sat next to J.R. and Esther and family.  Barbara and Baby John helped make it a great occasion!  It was awesome to see baby John's face after he tasted the lemon slice lol!

They had a nice Christmas program as well and did some musical numbers.  The primary kids did the whole Jesus nativity and that was awesome.  The Cisco family(Investigators) was there and the 3 kids got to be in the nativity program as: sheep, angel, and shepherd.  The funniest was the wise men because one of them looked like Drew Carey and he had a huge turban on his head!

Then to finish the night we went to the Mesa Temple lights with the Missionaries: Elder Corbett and Elder Christopherson.  While there Elder Corbett ran into an old friend of his who he knew from BYU.  That Elder is serving in the Mesa mission while Elder Corbett serves in the Tempe mission.  It was fun to walk around with the missionaries and at the very end because I wanted to embarrass them and act like I was an investigator; i said loudly "ok, I walked around the whole thing, and you guys promised me a Book of Mormon if I did so!" lol

Saturday was a busy day as we went to do sealings and then got Blizzards from Dairy Queen which we also got for Cheryl and Katy and then sat and ate them at Cheryl's house as we talked about movies that have recently come out.  We also gave Cheryl her pre-present which is a nice ornament of sand and sea shells that talks about how Christ walked along the shores of Galilee and called out to his disciples and said he would make them fishers of men, and likewise has called us to share the gospel.  We had fun making those ornaments.

Then we stopped by and saw Stephen, Bella, Rachel and kids before going to my parents house to say hello and have Kristen practice her song with Julia.  Julia has gotten very good on the piano and I was very impressed with the skill she now possesses.  Kristen and her sounded great together and I'm sure that they will do wonderfully when they present it at our Christmas Eve party.

Following that we went to see the Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  It was AWESOME! We really liked to see the new characters and old favorites that have now grown up quite a bit.  The story was cool and it was especially enjoyable to be taught from Aslan, the Lion God who is the creator of the Narnian world.  He really symbolizes Christ in just about every single way and much of what he says can be internalized to improve oneself!  :)  Then I decided that with my free time over the holidays I am going to read the whole 7 book Narnia set and so we went back and borrowed it from my mother and I have already finished 2 of them!  :)

It was a great week and I love documenting about my many memories!

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving was an eventful day!  We went over early to Mom Ericksons so as to prepare for the bike ride/turkey trot!  I'm not entirely sure why we call it the turkey trot, we don't ever see a turkey and there is no one trotting!  But all the same I suppose it is a good tradition and justifies pigging out on all of the turkey and it's trimmins'.

After the bike ride we went to the nearby park to play, watch Bella, and celebrate Chloe's 1st birthday party!  As you can tell from the pictures Chloe was very aware of what was going on(sarcastic grin), and she was so nice towards her gifts that upon receiving a stuffed toy dog from Mom Erickson she straightway threw it on the ground. lol

Following the park, we walked Bella to the McLaws' home and Barbara thought that she was really fun and hesitated to pet her...it was actually quite funny because every time that she reached out to touch Bella she would uncontrollably start giggling and blinking her eyes, such that she never touched Bella more than once, and only on the back.
Then we returned to Mom Erickson's and set up for the food!  I fell asleep for a quick snooze while watching the Football game: Lyons vs. Patriots.  Kristen kind of dozed off as well.  Then everyone finally arrived and we dug in to all the food!  Oh what a feast!  And I got to say I am a big fan of that apple juice/7 up mix that seems to be the usual beverage of choice!

We said our goodbye's and headed over to the McLaws clan!  Dinner was pretty much over with when we arrived and everyone was making plans to go blow up the turkey!  It has become something of a tradition now and even has it's own name: The McLaws annual butt(Blowin' up turkey tribute)!  lol!

We drove way out of town nearly to florence to find a good deserty spot of land!  We took some pictures with the family and blew the heck out of that turkey!  There were turkey chunks on the windshields and sides and tops of both cars!  And the air rank with the smell of rotten turkey!  lol  One really cool thing was that there was this random construction stuff and it looks like Julia and I are giants visiting ancient Jerusalem!

We drove home and finished up the night with the McLaws family playing the game of LIFE(version 1982), ate delicious chocolate pie and icecream, and took off with a good amount of left-overs!  We also stopped at Michaels to take advantage of their holiday sales and pick up these little additions to our garden(the turtle and chipmunk).