Christmas Eve & Christmas Day

Every Christmas Eve, all the Rowans gather at an aunt and uncle's (it rotates) house for a wondrous party. It is one of my very favorite traditions! We have dinner, a short program, and exchange gifts!

This year, we were contributors to the dessert so the girls frosted and decorated cupcakes the night before.

Ben and I sat with some of our cousins - including my very favorite cousin, Michael, who recently got home from his mission and who I am so excited to be able to spend time with again! He wanted to know how we met so we got to tell our crazy story once again. This would have been a really cute picture if my eyes were open all of the way!

This is Ty and Scott and Doug (who chopped off his long, curly hair for Mom's Christmas present!) on the couch for the program.

This year the program included several musical numbers by the kiddos and a silent nativity narrated by Grandma. Tommy was Joseph and Emily was a shepherd.

Those are the only pictures we took . . . but after that, we had the cousin gift exchange - which I am no longer apart of because when you get married you're out! Then Grandma and Grandpa gave out their gifts; Ben and I received a large red and white stained-glass dish that will go perfectly in our kitchen, hand-made by Grandpa.

When we got home, we all went to bed . . . well, except for Dad and Ben who were up until 3 am helping Santa Claus build a foosball table!

Christmas morning came early, especially for Santa's helpers, and it was full of joy and excitement! Some of our spoils were: new running shoes with a pink Nike Swoosh, a new North Face fleece, and a very exciting new dessert cookbook for Karin; new ski pants, a new Under Armor zip-up, and P90X for Ben. We both lucked out with new socks and new iPod Nano's with touch screens!

We spent a delightfully relaxing day at home napping, eating, walking, and playing. It was so very, very fun to spend our first Christmas together as a married couple! What a wonderful time to reflect on the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. What a joyous gift to the world!

Cambria at Christmas

This Christmas vacation, Ben and I have spent our first week with the Rowans in California. We revisited our honeymoon location and spent the first half of our week at the beach house in Cambria!

Cambria pretty much equals heaven on earth and we had a wonderful time relaxing!

We played a ton of Wii Mario Cart.

We walked on the ranch.

Ben and Doug wrestled.

And we read - a lot!

We went tide-pooling with Dad.

We went out to dinner!

One night we visited the candy shop!

And I took Ben to see the elephant seals!

Christmas Cookie Friday

Aunt Kelly has always been my hero, so I wanted our family to have a Christmas Cookie Friday, too! If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here and here.

So, on Friday, Ben and I had a little party with sugar cookies, frosting, and sprinkles! It was so fun! (Ask Ben - I said that, oh, about 150 times.)

For some reason we didn't register for a rolling pin, so our dough was rolled out with lots of finger prints.

We laughed at this little guy because he has a bum crack! (Mature, I know.)

These are the cookies we're giving to our home/visiting teaching families; they're the cute ones.

These are the one's that Ben managed not to eat.

You'll notice "blessing" in Chinese, "wife" in Chinese, Peyton Manning, the Mexican snowman, and ET/Edward Scissorhands among our other creative joys.

Tonight we went to an Appetizer/White Elephant Gift Exchange party. We brought popcorn balls! I topped them with Christmas sprinkles for a little extra festivity.

On the last round of the gift exchange, instead of stealing an already-unwrapped gift, Ben decided to take the last wrapped present. The game ended with this . . .

Pacers!

Last night (a school night?!), Ben and I got a pretty sweet deal. Ben's high school basketball teammate Josh McRoberts was in Salt Lake; he plays for the Indiana Pacers and the Pacers were playing the Jazz! About a week ago, Ben sent Josh a text message asking if he could get us tickets and his response was no problem at all, hope you can stay after the game. So, last night we drove up to SLC, picked up our sweet tickets and post-game passes from will call, and had a blast!

Because we spent no money whatsoever at all on our Row 15 tickets, we fell a little justified in dropping $20 on a popcorn, a sprite, a shake, and a water. Wah-hooo!

We had so much fun watching the game and every time Josh did something exciting we would stand up and cheer, much to the dismay of the Utah fans surrounding us. Go Pacers!

After the game, we got to go down on the floor and wait for the players to come out of the locker room. We got to talk to Josh for about a 1/2 hour; he is so, so nice and it was so fun to chat with him!

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving, the whole of Mom's family gathered in Colorado for a fun Johnson Thanksgiving. I wasn't very consistent with the camera but I'll share the photos that I did happen to snap.

Ben and I left in a rush on Tuesday afternoon. We were planning on leaving Wednesday, but "blizzard conditions" were in order. BYU cancelled all classes, closed all buildings, and even closed the testing center. After we received multiple emails and text messages from the BYU Police warning us of the dangerous conditions, we decided it would be safer to leave right then and run from the storm rather than attempt to drive in all of the snow. It turns out (or so we heard) there wasn't much of a blizzard - there wasn't even much snow - but we weren't about to complain about an extra day of vacation for we were happily on our way belting "Wicked" at the top of our lungs!

Both Ben & I and the fam bam arrived at the hotel late Tuesday night. I could not wait to see my family the next morning. Ben & I had breakfast with Dad and then I got to see this little champ:

Emily had a nasty cold all week and I couldn't help but think she was cute as she left the hotel with a box of Kleenex in one hand and a bottle of Triaminic in the other. On Wednesday, my whole family wore Giants World Series Champions t-shirts. I am so sad we didn't take a picture of all of us. It was a beautiful thing and a wonderful way to rub our victory in the faces of Rockies fans. Or . . . was it Angels fans this year, Kelly? We spent the morning walking around downtown Durango and the afternoon playing at Grandma & Grandpa's house.

On Thanksgiving day, Durango held their Turkey Trot and we had multiple stars among the Johnsons for running 5 miles in what, 8 degree weather?!

Check out that time - 39:32 for 5 miles, and in freezing weather and 7000 feet altitude! Ben, as usual, was uh-maze-ing. :)

The runners: Jay, Kelly, Reece, Peggy, Creed, Adam, Ben.

The supporters: myself, Scott, Mom, Darren, Grandpa J, Delanie, Jerry, Sara, Kate, Matt, Lucy, Sam, Henry.

That afternoon (after delicious breakfast burritos at Patty's), we congregated at Grandma's for pictures, football, chatting, and Thanksgiving dinner!!! What a delight.

These are all of the cousins, oldest to youngest. (Baby Caden is being held in the middle.) (Thank you Aunt Lucy for letting me steal your pictures from your blog!!)

The boy cousins.

The girl cousins.

After dinner, we had a small impromptu talent show followed by dessert (yummmm). Then, we broke some pinatas! The girls had a unicorn and the boys had a piggy. I love being the oldest cousin because I got to hit first!

On Friday, everyone drove to Monticello where Grandma & Grandpa J are the temple president and matron. The adults did a session and the youth got to do some baptisms. It was wonderful.

Then it was time to say goodbye and we began our drive back to Provo. As per usual, we stopped at Hole in The Rock and ran up! I love my brothers for taking such good care of Emily while hiking and freezing. I totally trust them walking down a scraggy hill with her in their arms. Love it.

On Saturday, we hung out with the Rowans before they began the rest of their trek home to Merced. First we shopped and played at Sports Authority and then we watched some of the BYU-Utah game while dining on Brick Oven pizza and Graham Canyon ice cream - Provo classics. We also played some Uno and Emi decorated our fridge with new pictures. Such fun. Then it was time to say goodbye - thank goodness we will be together again in just 3 weeks!

Back to reality: I woke up this morning, looked out the window, and said "Geez, snow, we would have gotten the point with just one inch!"

Happy Thanksgiving and hooray for Christmas celebrations!