RM Cook Family Christmas Eve Celebration

We have taken parts and pieces of Cook and Graves family traditions and added some of our own for what we think is a pretty fabulous Christmas Eve Celebration.  Some of it has been tradition for several years and some of it was new.  For 2013 here is how it went down...

We hung our stockings on Christmas Eve.  How fun to have our beautiful new mantle to hang them from.  We put the finishing touches on our lego advent calendar.  The lego calendar was a new addition at our house this year.  I remember Jenny mentioning them a few years ago.  Neither Kyleigh or Katelyn were interested in legos so I filed the information away.  Ridge LOVES legos so this was our first lego advent year and it was a big hit with everyone.  A large portion of Christmas Eve was spent in the kitchen.  We had the pies all made and the turkey marinating for a big Christmas Eve feast.  The table was set and ready to go.  I had pre-prepared as much as I could.  I had Christmas Day breakfast ready to go, and lots of snacks prepared.  I didn't want to have to do anything but play and eat on Christmas Day. By the time Rusty came home from work in the early afternoon we were ready.  We had a turkey dinner with all of the fixings.  We read the nativity from the scriptures and used our nativity puppets.  We opened the gifts that we had bought for each other.  We took the kids to goodwill again this year to find these gifts.  This year the big hits were the tractor that Kyleigh found for Ridge.  We try to keep the kids separated at Goodwill so they don't know what they are getting for each other.  This year Kyleigh and Katelyn picked the same thing for each other.  The panda hats/gloves were pretty fun (we found them new at Goodwill).  Also the lunchbox Ridge found Rusty was pretty fun.  He grabbed it from under the tree, and blurted out "it's a lunchbox Daddy, open it, it's for your lunch."  I guess he couldn't stand the surprise for one more second.  We gave the kids a basketball hoop for their gift from me and Russ.  After presents we went on a drive to see Christmas lights.  There is one house nearby that goes all out.  We discovered that on Christmas Eve they have hot chocolate, Santa, and candycanes.  When we got home we left cookies out for Santa.  This year we had a second plate to put them on.  When Katelyn was in preschool and was doing her preschool plates (a piece of round paper they draw on to be sent in and made into a plate) Kyleigh wanted to join in.  It was near Christmas time so she made a plate to put cookies on for Santa.  This year we had a repeat of the same situation with different kids.  Ridge was doing his plates and Katelyn wanted to do one.  Now we have two Santa cookie plates and I must say they are pretty cute.  For Christmas Eve stories we utilized technology and some cute hallmark books and had grandparents read us stories.  Grandpa's record-a-book was the night before Christmas and Nama and Papa gave us one this year for a second Christmas Eve story treat.  Before we put the kids in bed we took Ridge's screen out and sprinkled sparkly reindeer food on the roof for Rudolf and the crew.  The kids all slept in Ridge's room for a Christmas Eve slumber party.  We must have adequately threatened them because they fell asleep way faster than the average slumber party night, which is pretty much every weekend night.  That was just the beginning, Santa was hard at work for a very exciting Christmas morning.

Christmas with Mom and Dad

Mom and Dad came up on a Saturday a few weeks before Christmas.  I was so excited for them to come.  We had it all planned out.  They were bringing a prime rib for a delicious dinner.  We were going to do presents and look at Christmas lights.  We only had about 24 hours with them so we were going to make the most of it.  They were set to arrive around 10:30 a.m.  At around 9 a.m., when they were well on their way, I started feeling sick.  I went to lay down and was still asleep when they got here.  I was terribly nauseous and felt all around awful.  The thought of going anywhere or doing anything made my head spin.  So we didn't go anywhere or do anything.  I finally did throw up, just in time for Kyleigh to start feeling sick.  Rusty followed shortly after Kyleigh.  It manifested itself differently in all of us, but it was definitely a stomach bug.  Kyleigh got the worst of it.  She was throwing up every 30 minutes for 5 or 6 hours.  We made it through dinner.  The prime rib was calling for me, but my stomach refused to allow me to give in.  Prime rib, just sitting in front of me.  My favorite food in the world and I didn't even get one bite.  That's a travesty.  We opened presents, with a few breaks to wait for Kyleigh while she was throwing up.  Mom and Dad looked like they wanted to huddle in the corner and not touch anything.  Maybe I just think that because that is what I would have been doing.  Despite the stomach bug, we were happy to have them here.  We hope they won't be afraid to come back and see us again.  Maybe they could bring some airborne?

Penny Park Pics

Penny Park is an all wood all-volunteer built park in Silver City.  The number of volunteer hours put into it had to have been amazing.  A few years back a whole section was set on fire.  Before it was rebuilt another section was set on fire.  When they rebuilt it again they had to abandon the all wood idea.  They were re-building the last time we were in Silver City and it wasn't open.  It is finished now and still a really great park.  A few of the original items are still there, including the rock climbing wall.  Most of the new toys are really original and fun.  Jenny was putting together a book of picture/messages for Joseph (Elder Tarry) to send to him for Christmas.  We wanted an original way to send our picture/message so we wrote our message in sticks.  Nancy took the cool pic of Katelyn with a fun mode on her camera.  I think that is the neatest picture.  Most importantly everyone had fun and got some fresh air on a crisp Thanksgiving-time day.

Thanksgiving in NM

 After the long, fun journey we arrived in Silver City for Thanksgiving.  Some of the pictured highlights of our trip included...
-  Ridge playing superhero with Josh and Ben.  He loved having two big boys to play with.
-  Making the turkey cookies that Jenny brought supplies for.
-  Building fires with Nama and enjoying the cozy warm results.
-  Opening one Christmas present each from Nama and Papa.  Ridge opened a new Mr. Pig.  At least that is what it was supposed to be.  However, it didn't have a "scab" on it's belly.  Mr. Pig's scab is a spot on his belly that had something stuck to it at one point.  Ridge picked at it for so long that there is no longer hair in that spot and it feels different.  He goes to bed every night picking Mr. Pig's scab.  Ridge declared the new Mr. Pig to be Mrs. Pig and now needs to sleep with both.  Kyleigh got some new books, which were perfect for the ride home.  Katelyn got a super cute new shirt.
-  A visit to Alotta Gellato and a night at Jalisco's.  My mouth is watering thinking about it.
-  Lots of playing with cousins.  Brianna taught the kids a new favorite.  She pulled out her phone and they made music videos.  They also played fireball island, ping pong, pool, and more superhero. 
-  Thanksgiving dinner.  Tons of preparation, delicious food, and good company.  During dinner we had a mishap when the hot gravy spilled on Josh's leg.  Don and I tackled him and got it off his leg and all was well. 
-  A trip to Penny Park (pictures to come).

 

 

On the Polar Express...when we get there we'll say yes!

We spent Thanksgiving in NM this year.  We decided to make the trip there an adventure in itself.  We left on a Friday morning and drove to the Giles house in Prove.  We love visiting the Giles.  The girls look forward to it from the moment we tell them we are going.  I even requested my favorite Wendi meal this time.  We had Navajo tacos with Wendi's AMAZING fry bread.  Best I've ever had.  Wendi invited some of our Hawaii (now Provo) friends, the Wilcox family, over for dinner also.  After dinner the girls stayed up giggling half the night and we played ticket to ride.  The next morning we were treated to more delicious food before we went on our way.  We had a bit of a conundrum trying to figure out which way to go.  The weather reports were calling for a foot of snow through Colorado.  We had been warned and had actually changed our Polar Express tickets in Durango to the following week.  We figured we could go that way on the trip home.  However, the morning we left Provo the weather report showed similar forecasts on the drive south through Phoenix.  We decided if we were going to have bad weather either way we would rather drive the shorter route that led us through Albuquerque where we could see Jenny and her family.  The only bad roads we hit were about 45 minutes outside of Moab, and they weren't too terrible.  In fact, they were so good that we decided to try to go to Albuquerque through Durango.  We were hoping we could change our tickets back to our original plan and go that night.  The whole process of changing our Polar Express and hotel tickets back and forth while worrying about bad roads was very stressful, but in the end so worth it!  When we changed our tickets the first time we lost our upgrade to seats that faced one another.  When we changed them back they said they no longer had the original seats and we could be in the same car but not next to one another.  We were really bummed but just decided to stick it out.  We already had a hotel room and were pretty sick of changing our plans every five minutes.  When the train arrived at the station (which was so exciting) we went to get on our train car and it wasn't lit up like the others.  We didn't have any "chefs" greeting us when we got on.  One other family of three were the only other people on that car.  A minute later a chef came to get us.  She said that they hadn't even prepared that car because there wasn't supposed to be anyone on it.  She asked if we would come with her one car back.  We followed her to another empty car, but this one was lit up and ready to go.  It turned out us and the other family had the whole car to ourselves.  We had two chefs on our car, all to ourselves.    When they read the polar express book there was one book per family so the kids got a close-up of the pictures.  We didn't really have the option of singing quietly like we usually do, so we all got into it and had a great time.  When we got to the "North Pole" the kids were able to jump from one side of the car to the other to see the lights and look for Santa (and the hobo).  I am so happy that we went that night.  It worked out perfectly.  We were the very first car so we didn't have to wait long to see Santa.  He came aboard and Ridge's face lit up brighter than all the Christmas lights at the North Pole.  He was so excited about the bell that Santa gave him.  He carried it in his coat pocket all through Christmas jingling everywhere he went.  After we got off the train we visited the live reindeer that they had at the train station.  They had one building with an antique tractor display and all the tractors were decorated for Christmas.  They also had a train museum with a Christmas tree display and Santa was waiting there to visit with all the kids.  Of course we had to do that!  It was a great night.  Totally worth the stress it required to get there.  Our hotel there in Durango was very nice.  We ordered pizza and went for a swim in the hotel pool.  It snowed for part of the night but by the time we got on the road the snow had mostly melted and we had an uneventful drive from Durango to Albuquerque.  We stayed that night with Jenny and left for Silver City the next day.  The ride is so much shorter when you break it up and have something to look forward to every day.  We will definitely have to do that again!

Look at that smile!

PS-in the end, besides getting a nearly empty car and free rein of the seats, we got the same hotel for cheaper and they refunded money back because our seats didn't face each other!