holiday favorites

Honestly I don't know where to start. December just flew by and I wish I could hit the rewind button and experience it all over again! Except the Oreo balls for the neighbors/family...you really can have too much of a good thing and that is why I have made that treat a ONCE-a -year tradition. Besides that, I really enjoyed having absolutely no distractions, since being a student means constantly being paranoid about the next assignment or project. I was able to really be there with my family. I have this theory that school makes marriage ten times harder so I cherish those breaks I have to really be together with Tyler. 

I'll spare you the list of Christmas Gifts and Holiday Traditions/Events and just share my favorite parts.

CHRISTMAS EVE:
Along with the infamous Oreo balls, I included a scripture that I painted with watercolors. I kept thinking of Joshua 24:15 and how we all have the perfect example of this: Jesus Christ. I loved that I was able to gain new insight during the Christmas season and pass out cute prints of it to everyone.

And I can't forget the superman pinata that wouldn't break until it was Tyler's turn. I just loved being able to laugh with my family and my biggest worry being candy.

CHRISTMAS DAY:

Is there anything better than Christmas Morning? No? Well I get to do it three times. I loved my Christmas morning with Tyler the best though and I've never been so content with my house being an absolute mess.

We saw Unbroken as a family and I was so inspired by Louis Zamperini's story. 

So we were supposed to talk to LJ (my missionary brother who is the best missionary I've ever seen) in the morning but I guess a huge chunk of Oakland had a power outage. It was the most random thing ever but it was a great way to end the day. His cheeks looked chubbier, his laugh was still dorky, and he didn't seem to miss home too much. You could just see much he loves his mission.

NEW YEARS EVE:

We basically ate a million tacos, played games, and laughed.

The craziest part was the SNOW. Yes. Snow in Mesa.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

THE DAY AFTER NEW YEARS DAY (that's a real holiday somewhere):

My mom's cousin from LA surprised us by taking a trip to AZ and brought her husband and two kids! They wanted to take their kids to the snow up in Payson for the first time so we decided to tag along. The only bummer was that Tyler had already planned a hunting trip so he missed out but we'll just have to go up to the snow another day. Can you tell it's been a while since I've seen this stuff?

High five 2015!