Belated Merry Christmas!

Our Christmas was great this year! This is our first Christmas since we've been married that we didn't have to pack a suitcase! This year was at my (Rebecca) parent's house and they only live 10 minutes away. Yeah!!

Justin got to be Mr. Mom on Christmas Eve because I was working. They paid me an extra 7 dollars an hour to have me work that day, so it wasn't too bad. ;) We went to my parents for Christmas Eve dinner with our friends the Beesons. And mmmmm, it was really yummy. I don't think we have ham nearly often enough. Our after-dinner festivities included a $1 gift exchange game. We came home with a paddle ball thing and a growing alligator toy that is sitting in a huge bowl of water on my kitchen counter right now "growing". [Insert Rebecca rolling her eyes at Justin's excitement -HERE-]

Then as our family tradition has always been, we opened our Christmas pajamas. Carrie got purple princess jammies, as you can see in the picture below.

Then we got to go home to our own apartment to sleep! (In case you couldn't tell, I was really excited not to have to pack for this holiday)

Christmas morning, my little sister had to work until 10am, so my mom decided we would do brunch and then open presents. By the time we got over there and finished eating, it was 11:00 and Carrie was beyond ready for a nap. We ended up putting her down and opening our presents without her. I think it turned out for the better though because we were able to get the majority of the mess cleaned up before she woke up.

My brothers and sister (and Justin *not looking) enjoying all the gifts

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Our collective spoils! In case you can't tell what's in the big frame, it's a beautiful picture of all the Latter-Day Prophets. There are also a LOT of gift cards including, movie passes, Pei Wei, PF Changs, Texas Roadhouse, Wal-Mart and Deseret Book. YEAH!!

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Carrie's presents all alone under the tree waiting for her to wake up from her nap.
.Carrie's Christmas haul (minus one that's still in the mail somewhere). I got so involved in helping Carrie unwrap the presents that I forgot to take any pictures of her actually ripping into them! Oh well, she didn't really get it anyways!
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Grandpa helping Carrie play with her new blocks! She mostly just likes to UN-build the towers.
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"Help! I can't get up the stairs! Someone put this gate in the way!" (Also a picture of her adorable Christmas sweater!)
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Running all over the house. The blurriness of her leg is because she's moving. In my last post on the 23rd, I said she was walking about 50% of the time. That night it was like something clicked and she decided she wanted to walk! Since then she's been NON-STOP! I'd say she's walking about 99.5% of the time. The only time she crawls is if she falls and has to get to something to help her stand back up. It's so much fun to watch!

We also got to go see "Sherlock Holmes" on Saturday and go out to Olive Garden for my little brother Jake's birthday. Carrie only joined us for dinner. (Thanks for babysitting Beesons!)

*Last story for this post, I promise ;) Last night, I don't know why, but Carrie had the hardest time falling asleep. She doesn't take an afternoon nap on Sundays because we're at church (much to my disappointment). Anyways, she was ready to go to sleep at about 6:15. She ended up falling asleep in my mom's arms around 7 while we were still over at their house for dinner. She woke up when we put her in the carseat to go home and NEVER fell back asleep!! We tried everything we could think of: clean diaper, full tummy, room not too cold, not too hot, she had her binky, her "B", no fever, we even tried tylenol in case her still not-yet-existant tooth was bothering her. Nope...

Because we felt like we had run out of possible answers, I finally got her out of her crib and brought her into our bed. We turned off the light and she finally fell asleep... at 10:15pm!! Once she had been asleep for about 10 minutes I got up and put her back in her crib, but what a process!! Poor Justin got up at 5 to go to work, but lucky me, Carrie and I slept in until 9:15 this morning.

We'll be going out of town for New Years, so I probably won't be writing again until after that weekend. Hopefully with movie of Carrie walking!!