Christmas Traditions

Last night we were able to go into Mesa to do some pre-Christmas festivities with my family since we'll be with Justin's family for Christmas this year. After dinner, we opened our traditional Christmas Eve gift: Pajamas! Carrie's have a snowman on the front ans they say "snow angel".


Then we went to our friends the Beesons and had our white elephant gift exchange game. Usually, we buy dollar store goodies for gifts. This year was truly white elephant though. My parents decided just on Sunday morning that we'd to do most of our Christmas Eve traditions a few days early (in this case, Sunday). No one was able to go out and buy gifts, so we really had to scrounge around our houses. We took a broken polaroid camera we got from goodwill, an old putter, and regifted one of last year's white elephants of a "growing" alligator toy (when you put it in water it expands).

Carrie wearing one of the gifts, neon yellow plastic aviator sunglasses! We ended up bringing home some toy cars (which Carrie loves), a paper airplane and a package of microwave popcorn :)


The next part of the night, we've actually never done before, but it was really cool. It has good potential to become a tradition.

All we knew when we went was there was a house with some cool lights and train display. We had no idea what we were getting into!

First of all, when we drove up, the streets were lined with cars, the church parking lot next door was packed full, and there was a HUGE line of people waiting to get into the backyard.

Santa was there too! Carrie got to sit on his lap again.

"Look! He gave me a sucker!!" (The best part according to her, I'm sure).

And now, tah-dah! The train display! The picture really doesn't do it justice at all! There was probably a full acre of toy/model train tracks and functioning toy/model trains complete with miniature tunnels, landscaping, junk yard, work yards, trucks, people etc... It was AWESOME!

Getting the view from the "lookout platform"

In front of the house (when we first walked up, I thought this was"it". I was disappointed until we actually got into the backyard and saw the "real" show.)

Justin went to bed "early" as usual, since he goes to work so early. I, however, stayed up until 1 am with my dad and brothers putting together a 550 piece puzzle one of them got from the white elephant exchange. It was so much fun. I haven't done a puzzle like that in forever!

Even though it was a few days early, it was fun to be able to celebrate some traditions with my family this year in addition to everything we'll be doing with Justin's family!