Post of Christmas Past

Holls had the right idea this year."Why do people call it Xmas? X isn't even a word." I told them it was an abbreviation because some people like to make it shorter. "It should be call Christx, then." She said. Very perceptive of that little seven-year-old angel.

I was a terrible blogger (bad mommy!) last year and so many fun memories and stories are forever lost in that murky quicksand of my frontal lobe, never to be recovered. I must try to do better. Correction. I will try. Correction. I WILL! 

Christmas came and went and is suddenly several weeks behind us. Blake took two weeks off of work this year and at first I thought this meant we should travel. But we chose to relax at home this year and it was restorative. The AZ weather was perfect. We slept in, played board games way too late, visited the temple lights in Mesa, hung out with friends, rode bikes, played outside, and enjoyed each other. We get nostalgic for snow at Christmas, but man! We sure love 70 degree weather, especially when most of the country froze after a particularly brutal "polar vortex" the beginning of January. 

Here's some pics of the holidays:

We have loved having Santa one neighborhood over. He and his wife decorate their garage like this and see kids every weekend in December. We have visited them at least five years. The doggy elf is always there on the mantle.

Here are a few entries from past visits, back when I was a wittier blogger. This one was a 2009 visit.

This one too from 2012.

We had Christmas Eve and New Years with our friends, the Lines and Boyles families. We got lots of boardgames to play and movies to watch on our first flat screen tv. We also laid our VCR to rest. It hadn't been used other than to supply a connection from the TV to the Wii for years, but it was time for us to move on. Past time. 

It's 2014. The kids are healthy and life moves way too fast. We'll try to capture more of it than we did last year. We will!