Christmas Break!

I have been loving Christmas Break! :) First of all, I came home! :) YAY! This is me coming home from Rexburg with my brothers in the back seat!  

It was pretty squishy!  We came home on a Sunday and it was a very treacherous drive because of the weather, but I finally arrived home at almost 2 a.m. on Monday, December 17th and it's been great!  :)

A couple days into my first week home, the school district canceled school for the day because of a little bit of snow  (I wish I had a picture) and my siblings stayed home from school.  My sister and I had fun unloading my college stuff in my room

 ...and then we made blueberry muffins!

:)  I loved spending time with my sister and the muffins turned out delicious!

Then, I got ready for Christmas.  This meant getting a gift for each member in my family and I had fun doing this.  My mom asked that we make the gifts meaningful, but they didn't have to be store bought.  I caught the vision to do this major surprise for my mom and then write meaningful notes for each of my siblings!  They loved it (I think) and I added in some pictures so it was more than a note!  We had a great!  Christmas!  My mom got super blessed (and when she's happy, we are happier!), my uncle came to visit, and we all enjoyed spending time with each other. Here are some pictures from our last family photo shoot that I gave to my family:

Heidi

Sam

Melissa

Andrew-sorry it's bad.  We didn't have a lot of good pictures of him

Spencer

Parents

Family photo

Sisters

Brothers

I can't move on from Christmas without briefly expressing my gratitude for the Savior and the blessings that I've received this year!  I've been SO blessed.  I love my family, the gospel, and my friends!  Thanks everyone for a great year!  I can't wait to keep moving forward!

One of the fun family tradition that my family has is delivering "Sticky Buns" to family and friends that we love.  We do this on Christmas morning so it distracts us from our regular tradition of opening presents and instead helps us to think of other people (don't worry, we unwrap gifts after we get home-and sometimes we switch it up and and open a gift or two before we leave).  This is great because we all get into it and it can be really fun!  We prepare the rolls with our recipe and have fun doing it every year with our dad on Christmas Eve.  This is what they look like all prepared before we go to bed on Christmas Eve.  It was really fun!  My dad and I did it with my sister this year and we watched/listened to our favorite Christmas movie, Elf while we did it (part of tradition).

We also have a tradition of reading a Christmas book together over the break.  A few years ago, we really liked reading Christmas Jars, a book about a family who starts the tradition of giving away jars of loose change that's collected over any period of time before Christmas.  It's really great and I would recommend it.  It's written by Jason F. Wright and he wrote a sequel, Christmas Jars Reunited that I found last year and gave to my family for Christmas.  This year, on Christmas Eve, we started it and we're still reading it but I'll tell you how it goes. :) 

Also, just in case anyone has tried to contact me via cell phone, I lost in on December 14th, and it still hasn't showed up.  I'll be getting a new one but until then, you can call my house! 

This coming semester, I am going to take some great classes to finish up my Associates in General Studies.  I'll be in Medford so that I can stay home and earn money.  Come summer, I'll be getting ready for another great semester at BYU-Idaho for a Communications major or an 18 month mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I'm SO excited! :)   2013 looks good and I'm looking forward to living it!

I also started listing to great songs from The Piano Guys, a group of talented musicians (not all pianists- there's singing and a cellist!).  They are very funny and they record and produce great music videos posted on YouTube, so go take a look! :)  I love their song, "Pep-oni" a take on Coldplay's song, "Paradise."  It's great and the music video (click on song title for video) for it is pretty cool too! :)

In addition to the music, I started reading a GREAT and inspirational book called Heaven is Here by talented writer, Stephanie Nielson.  Video about book.  She wrote it after she survived a terrible plane crash and felt  a sense of peace-that everything would be okay.   She went into a coma and came out with lots of support as she began to pick up the pieces of her life and re-create her happily every after dream.  Its' great! 

It's been really low key, fun, and memorable! -Merry Christmas! (late)