My Musings: Holiday Happenings 2017

Happy Holidays 2017! This was the first Christmas in my new house, and I had so much fun decorating it for the holidays. My tree fit perfectly in my family room, right by the window so that everyone could see it twinkling as they drove up the main road into the neighborhood. The cats both loved to sit near the tree and study the ornaments.

Here is a little overview of some of the fun holiday happenings that we enjoyed this year:

I spent quite a bit of time curled up on my couch in a fuzzy blanket, in my Christmas pajamas, with a mug of hot tea or cider, enjoying the lights from the Christmas tree and the comforting glow of a crackling fire I streamed off Netflix, as the snow fell outside. It was Christmas bliss.

My parents and I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Millennial Choir and Orchestra's Christmas concert, Joy. We learned about this marvelous organization through my older sister, whose husband and two sons are in the Arizona chapter of the choir.

Joy was a phenomenal and extremely moving concert, the music was absolutely gorgeous, and there are so many singers that they envelop the audience as they sing not only from the stage, but from the balconies on either side. I am excited to make this an annual tradition.

Since we were in Disney World for Bethy's birthday, it was well into December before we could celebrate here with the traditional Backer's cake. We hadn't ever ordered on during the holidays before, so we were excited to see how they would decorate it for Christmas.

It was so beautiful overflowing with frosted poinsettias, piped evergreen boughs, Christmas ornaments and it's light dusting of powdered sugar snow! So fun and festive!

We did a sub for santa, and helped provide gifts for several families in our community. We had a big wrapping party at Mom and Dad's, V was ver eager to help, and used some of the wrapped gifts as a buster seat to help her reach the table as she created some gift labels.

My friend Angie gave me this shirt a while ago, and it seriously one of my favorite shirts, I wear it all the time. But it's always that much better when it's the holidays and it fits in a little better with the season.

My best friends from high school, always get together at Christmas, when everyone is in town visiting for the holidays. We have had this tradition from the year we graduated high school, and here we are 12 years later, still going strong! I love all these wonderful women so much and am so grateful our friendship has lasted all these years, they are all amazing!

All the girls in the family, had a girls night out at the ballet! It was the Griffin girls' first time seeing the nutcracker! They had all new sets and costumes and it was amazing and beautiful. I love this production so much.

Bread Day! One of my favorite family traditions. It's so fun to see all my nieces and nephews get excited for and participate in a tradition that I loved when I was a kid, and still look forward to today. My sweet dad makes all the dough for us, he makes greek bread dough for the kids to mold into creations of their choice, and sweet roll dough for the adults to make into cinnamon rolls that we save for breakfast on Christmas morning.

James made a cute little chick

Beth helped V make a mermaid

Once all the greek bread is cooked, it is so delicious to have for a snack throughout the holidays, it is such dense, flavorful type of bread.

We didn't get much snow this year, which was a disappointment to the Burton boys who always look forward to snowball fights and building snowmen when they visit from Arizona. We were lucky enough to get a couple of snowstorms while they were visiting. They had their snow gear on and were out ready to go after the first signs of snow.

They were so sweet to let V play with them in the snow, she was in heaven being surrounded by her cousins and having so much fun in the snow. All the cousins get along so well and it just warms my heart.

Look at those rosy cheeks!

Doing a little cleaning after changing into some warm, dry pajamas haha, so cute.

I always love wrapping gifts. I like waiting until I have all the gifts I am going to give, and then dedicating a whole night to wrapping gifts, watching Christmas movies, and sipping on eggnog or wassail. It becomes a fun holiday event that I always look forward to.

The cats always love to "help"

Christmas Eve! A big part of our christmas eve celebration is a musical concert put on by all the grandkids. We have a talented bunch of kiddos in our family, and it is always fun to celebrate their talents and hard work. Sam often sings, which is so adorable I always love his songs.

The crowd throughly enjoying the concert.

V taking pictures and vidoing, just like all the grown ups.

My mom always serves the most gorgeous meals, she is amazing at cooking and entertaining. She made this beautiful Christmas tree appetizer for Christmas Eve dinner.

Christmas Morning 2017! Our staircase picture is getting pretty full now a days! I remember when it was just us 4 daughters taking this picture. Now there are 19 of us, so fun to watch our family grow.

We had a lovely Christmas day with the entire family, we enjoyed our traditional sweet rolls for breakfast, with fresh frosting made by dad. We exchanged gifts which is always fun and full of excitement and love. We played games and took naps throughout the afternoon, and my mom cooked a fabulous meal for Christmas dinner. I love all the family time that we get on Christmas day.

During the week between Christmas and New Years, we had our annual family ski day at Brighton. Ben and Will were the kids that came this year and they did so great! Every year I am always so impressed by how good these kids are at skiing and snowboarding when they only go once a year! I always look forward to this ski trip, we always have so much fun.

It's tradition to stop at the 7-11 at the bottom of the canyon for hot chocolate and snacks at the end of a long day on the slopes.

On New Year's Eve, we celebrated Karin and Ricky's birthdays since we never get to be together on their actual birthdays (in January and March) thus they never get to have Backer's cakes!

My mom often has a fun craft for the kids to do on New Years that teaches them about different holiday traditions around the world. This year, they learned all about Japanese Daruma Dolls.

Usually red and round and made of a special type of Japanese paper, the bodiless head of the Daruma Doll stares with fierce determination. The eyes are left intentionally blank, so that it’s up to the user to draw in the pupils or irises.

The process of using a Daruma doll is simple:

1 Have a goal, wish, or promise to fulfill.

2 Paint in one eye.

3 Work for it everyday.

4 When the dream is achieved, paint in the other eye.

All the kids got to color their own doll, and wrote their goal or wish on the back. It was fun to go around the table and see what they had all written.

Get a snake

To make the best I can on art <3 p="">

After craft time, we had our white elephant gift exchange. This hilarious tradition came about when my mom was teaching our family about the Boxing Day celebrated in Great Britain, we had so much fun the first time, that we have decided to bring it back every year. It's always so fun to see what silly gifts people bring.

I originally opened this gift which is basically an action figure of myself. It got stolen though, I can't blame them, it's pretty adorable. So I walked away with a melting clock, a replica of one of Dali's paintings, yet another perfect gift for me since I am the art history major in the family.

Here are some of the gifts that were received throughout the night...

Vienne got this blow up astronaut, she named her Emma and they have been best friends ever since.

My family loves to play games, so whenever we are all together there is always a game being played. We had a great time playing Apples to Apple while we anxiously awaited midnight. Sometimes we get so into our games, that we don't even notice when midnight rolls around, so we have to have our own count down to the new year..