Christmas comes but once a year

Hooray for Christmas, and hooray for Christmas being over. It was lovely being in vacation mode at the Dennis house, but it is possible to get tired of being lazy. However, right before the Christmas break, Aaron mentioned that the 1st counselor in the bishopric told his kids last year at Christmas, "This isn't the Holiday Inn!" Apparently, they weren't cleaning up after themselves. So I tried to remember John and Julie's perspective as we stayed with them and do my part to keep the house looking respectable. I guess I wasn't all lazy, just mostly lazy.
William and Heather joined us for the holidays, so the whole Dennis clan was together. Angela took the official in-front-of-the-tree family picture, and I don't have a copy yet, but here is Annie with W & H.

She loved going into the room where they were staying and messing with their belongings. They were very patient, which is good since they are expecting their own little girl (!!) in April. Heather makes one cute pregnant lady. And William makes a cute pregnant lady's husband.
Annie definitely got more into Christmas this year. Last year she was one of those all lazy one-month olds who lays around all the time. This year, though, her potential Christmas excitement was curbed by her being sick. She'd had a "cold" for most of December, and we kept waiting for it to run its course. On Christmas Eve day she felt terrible and wouldn't go to sleep so we drove her around in the car for a couple of hours. Poor baby. By present opening time she was feeling a little better, but she wasn't as excited as I was about the pajamas she got.

Christmas morning was better for the little lady (how could it not be at the sight of all those presents?) and she had fun with her new toys.


The camping chair was a favorite. She plopped down in it and even put her bottle in the cup holder. How handy! Aaron and I also got lots of great presents. Last night I used, for the first time, the cookie cooling racks Aaron's parents gave us. Imagine me living 2 years as a married woman with with no cooling racks. It wasn't pretty.
Aaron gave me my present a few months ago. And it rocks.

It's a box spring minus the springs. He made it for me since our box spring cannot fit down the stairs to our basement abode. So we may be sleeping underground, but we are no longer sleeping on the ground. The box spring also goes great with the fleece sheets John and Julie gave us. We're living and sleeping in luxury.

I gave Aaron a subscription to the Weekly Standard, a conservative political magazine. My mom tried to give this to Aaron for his birthday, but we spent the money on new jeans for Aaron instead of a subscription. Sorry, mom. But now Aaron is very happy with his subscription and his non-holey pants.
After Christmas itself, I went down to the SLC to meet up with my sisters, Mom, and Aunt Kathleen for breakfast. We went to the Original Pancake House. It was very tasty, and very busy. Someone is making a lot of money. Afterwards, tried out Abbie's karaoke machine and a good time was had by all.


And we went to Abbie's house again for New Year's Eve and got to see Liz and Darren's clan as well. It was a wonderful holiday season. We feel very blessed to have such wonderful families. We're so grateful to have Annie. She makes us happy and teaches us a lot. We are blessed to have a Savior and the gift of His atonement. We know that is the most important thing. We're glad for this time of year to celebrate it.