Christmas

I realize this post is a month late, but please don't judge. :)

Christmas this year suddenly seemed to make sense to Lillian. She was constantly noticing the sparkly lights and pretty trees. She was actually WAY too excited about snow for her own good. And most importantly, she understood that Santa was coming. Somehow, though, we managed to completely miss (or forgot - one of the two) taking her to sit on the fat man's lap. Horrible parents, I know, but I swear: we will remember next year.

Since she was so enthralled with all the lights on the houses, we decided to take her down to Temple Square to see some proper lights. Rather than drive, we hooked up with Erik's parents in Roy and rode the Front Runner train. I think, in the end, she was more excited about riding the train than anything else, but as long as she had fun, I guess it doesn't matter. And I have to say, riding the train was the best decision we EVER MADE!!! No parking hassles. No traffic. No worrying about the weather. The worst part was not timing our departure so that we didn't have to wait half an hour on the train before it headed back to Ogden.


Once we got to Salt Lake, we met up with my parents at the Gateway and had dinner before we all headed to Temple Square. Of course we chose the night of the MoTab Christmas concert at the Conference Center as well as a Jazz game, so Salt Lake was swarming with people. Being Utah, everyone was naturally on Mormon Standard Time, so our 7:00 arrival nicely coincided with half the attendees of the concert rushing across the Plaza causing complete chaos and a huge crowd. When you have a toddler with you who is VERY reluctant to hold a hand, this can cause great stress for the parents, but miraculously, she didn't get lost and we were able to see all the lights and have a great time. Whenever we pass the temple in Logan, she still talks about how Grandmas and Grandpas and Addison all went to the temple with her.


On Christmas Eve, Lily helped me make some cookies for Santa. She had blast rolling and cutting them out and (of course) eating the dough. She helped me stir and we had to roll out and cut a shape from every last scrap. We decorated them later that night before bed.



On Christmas morning, we opened presents and had some breakfast. Lily had to examine every present thoroughly before moving on to the next one, which made for a long process, but it was fun to see her get so excited over every item. After breakfast, we headed down to Ogden to make the rounds with the other side of the family and had a great time seeing people we only see a couple times a year.

It was definitely a great Christmas. It's hard to believe that next Christmas, we'll have two munchkins to celebrate with, but I'm looking forward to it!