Happy Holidays!

Better late than never. I'm finally getting around to blogging about Christmas! We had such a wonderful and most memorable Christmas! It was bitter sweet. It was my first Christmas away from home (and the Jolley's) But we all got to be together! My parents came to Utah and we all celebrated Christmas together at Ben's house! We were just missing Hill, Aaron, and Joey. We packed our week full of FUN activities! These are just a few (ok, a lot) of the pictures from our holiday festivities and highlights of the week.

*Going to Temple Square to see all the pretty lights. Incredible! A must see at Christmas time, i've realized.
*Going to the "Savior of the World" Pageant. Amazing! (we're waiting in line)

*Making Doughnuts for Court and John's neighbors. YUMM!

*Shopping (no pictures)

*Eating LOTS and LOTS of yummy food!

*Attending Courtenay's Christmas Sacrament meeting. Awesome choir and speakers!

*Playing Rock Band and watching my Parents play Rock Band! They really rocked out! And they were GOOD!
*Having a Hotwheels race tournament in Ben's Basement. My mom kicked everyone's trash!

*Helping the little girls put together their Build-A-Bear's from Grandma.

*Opening the Family Video's my dad had worked SO hard on and put them on DVD for all of us! Best present ever!

*Watching the family videos.

*going to Pirate Island. Eating yummy food, watching Dylan win 1,000 tickets, seeing Darren and Jill Jolley, and playing fun games.

*Skating at the skating rink. Who knew skating could be SO FUN! A family friend rented out the WHOLE rink so we had it to ourselves. It was awesome and quite entertaining. I fell 3 times!

*Sleepover under the Christmas tree.

*Sledding. Nobody got hurt!
*Preparing our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. Ham, Potatoes, Green Bean Casserole, Dill Bread, Etc.
*The Nativity play. The kids were so cute and fun to watch. I was the Angle this year.

*Getting our new Christmas Eve jammies

*The pretty Christmas Tree after Santa came.

*Family Pictures. My dad brought all of his fancy picture stuff and took these beautiful pictures of our family. He did individual families and couples too. We're so lucky to have such a talented dad!

(I just had to post this picture of Amy and Oliver because it's just too darn cute!)

*Playing endless games at all times of the day.

*Eating more yummy food and treats.

*Sitting around talking and laughing.

*And just spending some good quality time with family. I am so grateful and feel so blessed to be a part of such a wonderful family!

Thanks Ben and Kris for hosting all of us and Mom and Dad and Scooter for coming to Utah for Christmas. It wouldn't have been the same without you!

OUCH!!

Ok, I need to post about Christmas! I know, i know, its super late. But we had an AWESOME Christmas! So much to write about! So that will all come later! with LOTS and LOTS of pictures! This post is about our New Years Eve. Joanna was with us this year and we were SO happy she was! We had so much fun with her and are SO excited she is in Provo! She's going to have SO much fun and we are going to have so much fun with her here! We started out our day by going SHOPPING and found some sa-weeeet deals!! How could the day get any better? Well it did! We went home and ate lunch and got all bundled up to go SLEDDING! YAHOOO!!! We went sledding on Christmas eve with my family (pictures to come later) and it was SO MUCH FUN! So we wanted to take Joanna. We were having a blast! We found this jump and i dared Jarom to go off it. He told me he would after i did. I hesitated and while i was waiting for my nerves to catch up to me Joanna piped up and said "I'll do it!" so we watched and laughed. It was a big jump and it shot you straight up in the air to where you were just standing on your feet. So Jarom had to do it after how fun it looked. Then it was my turn. Oh boy! I started out great! Excited to see what this jump would do with me. Ya know, shoot me up, make me stand up etc. But my sled starting turning so i was going BACKWARDS! SO SCARY!! I ended up going off the jump sideways. I tried to stand up but i was going too fast and the snow was too slippery i just landed straight on my tailbone and smacked my head SOOOOO hard!! It was SO painful! I instantly started crying/laughing. I think i was a little bit in shock. Joanna and Jarom were laughing/concerned that i was hurt. They asked me if i wanted to keep sledding. The stupidity in me wanted to go more so i stood up and was ready to go. not really. They said my face was so white and I felt dizzy. Not exactly in the mood to keep going. They went on one more run down the hill and then we headed home. I had a missive headache and butt ache the rest of the evening. It ended up being a really fun night. We went to the first night party in Provo.
Went to dinner, and relaxed at home watching America's funniest video's until the ball dropped and then we had a toast and went outside to bang pots and pans. We went to bed shortly after that. I was miserable! I have been sick for 2 weeks and I was in a lot of pain. The next morning i woke up and I wanted to DIE! I was hurting SO bad! I couldn't move my neck! I was pretty sure i got whiplash, but that didn't stop me! We went o Salt lake to go shopping and hang out with Court and some of Jarom's family! Later that night we picked up Jenni and Michael from the airport and I told Jenni all about my crash. She was also pretty sure i got whip last. She's been helping me so much in trying to get better! Massages, advice, exercises, and such! I am SO grateful!!! I am still in a huge amount of pain. All over my body. My stomach muscles almost hurt as bad as my neck! Weird! Jenni says it will probably take a little while before I'm completely better! At least i have her to help me along! Anyway, sorry for the long post! I just had to share and couldn't leave any of the details out! And if you made it this far, you get to see the video of the sledding adventure! It's pretty funny! You can hear me saying OWWWWW, Joanna running over to me saying "oh no Steph!" and My loving Husband video-ing the whole thing, LAUGHING!! Haha he explained later that it was funny until he knew i was hurt. Even then, this video is pretty funny! And painful to watch! Enjoy! :)

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P.S. Do you like my boots? Pretty stellar! Thanks court! :)