My Musings: Arizonian Christmas Morning

The Burtons always have a Christmas eve and Christmas morning at home with their little family before they fly up to Utah for the holidays. The weekend I was visiting just happened to be the weekend they were celebrating so I got to join in! I was so excited to be able to experience a Burton family Christmas! They have the funnest family traditions.

We began with a story, The Light of Christmas, and watching a short film of the Christmas story.

Then they took the traditional Christmas morning photo on the stairs. We took this same photo every year growing up with my sisters. We kept taking it each year, adding in husbands and grandkids, until our family was too big to fit on the stairs at mom and dads house. So Christmas morning pictures on the stairs is a treasured tradition. The burton boys looks so cute in their Christmas pajamas!

I totally wasn't expecting a stocking, I was looking forward to watching the boys open theirs and be excited about what they got. But sweet Karin had filled a stocking for me! She is the sweetest, most thoughtful person I know. Watching her spread joy, happiness and service during the Christmas season was truly awe inspiring. She is such a beautiful soul and I feel so blessed to have her as a sister.

Karin had filled my stocking with so many of my favorite things! It was really touching to me to see how well she knows me.

When we had gone to Trader Joes earlier in the week I saw these chocolates and thought they were the coolest thing. The packaging alone was so much fun. I spent a long time looking at them and showing how cool they were to everyone, but ultimately didn't end up getting them. When I found them in my stocking on Christmas morning I asked Karin if she went back and got them after I made such a big deal about them and she said she had already bought them before I even arrived in Arizona!

The boys were so excited about all the fun goodies they found in their stockings. James and Thomas got to building their legos right away.

Then we gathered by the tree for presents. James handed out the Christmas poppers he had handmade for everyone!

This was the joke James had handpicked to be in my popper. I love how all the Burton boys foster my love of animals. Whenever I travel with them, Thomas and James love to point out any animals they see to me because they know I will want to see them too.

James had also handmade a crown for every single popper. He even measured everyone's head to make sure our crowns were the right size.

Each person had a wrapping paper assigned to them and all their gifts were wrapped in that specific paper. It was so cute to see how some of the papers matched the persons personality. Thomas had Christmas avocados.

And James had "fluffin" (penguin) wrapping paper.

I couldn't help but giggle at all the artistic additions drawn on this flamingo paper. The longer you look at it, the more you see.

I love the way the Burtons do Christmas presents. Each family member gets three gifts, one fun, one practical and one meaningful.

Again, I wasn't expecting any gifts, I was just excited to be a part of the festivities. But Santa Karin came through again and had gotten me one of each special kind of gift! Thomas and James had picked out a very pretty wrapping paper to be my assigned pattern. Each kind of gift is labeled by the color of the tag. We all opened our gold tag gift first, which was the fun gift.

My gold gift was a beautiful dainty necklace from Honey and Ice, I love all their jewelry.

Next, we all opened our green tag gift, which was the practical gift.

I was so surprised and thrilled when I opened my gift and saw that it was toys and treats for Dinah and Louis! Again, Karin's thoughtfulness continues to blow me away, she had taken the time to contact Jenny and ask what kind of treats they like. She had also found the most adorable cat toys I have ever seen. I couldn't wait to take them home to show them to the kitties. Dinah was immediately obsessed with them and now begs to play with them every single day.

Then we all opened our red tag gift, the meaningful gift.

Inside my red tag gift, was a hand drawn card from Thomas of the cutest Christmas kitties. A gorgeous print of all the names of Christ from the Inklings study that Karin and I do with mom each week. And a gift certificate for a day pass for snowboarding at Brighton and lunch at the lodge! This was a very meaningful gift indeed! I felt so loved by all the amazingly thoughtful gifts.

It was special to witness an extremely meaningful gift Ricky got Karin that was a complete surprise

After gifts it was time for breakfast! The Burtons have a fancy Christmas breakfast and use all the special china and glassware.

We had a gorgeous charcuterie board full of lots of yummy cheeses, meats, crackers and fruit.

As well as homemade greek bread, a really delicious egg casserole topped with salsa and avocado and all the treats we had got from Trader Joes.

Merry Christmas!

In the afternoon, Karin and I went on a baking adventure. We saw some chestnuts at Trader Joes and I remember roasted chestnuts being so delicious, the one time I had them 10 years ago in Switzerland. So we picked up a bag and thought we would try our hand at making thee classic Christmas treat.

The instructions that came with the chestnuts were pretty simple and a little vague. So we looked up articles on google and videos on youtube. Before roasting, we cut large X's on each chestnut to help the steam escape and made it so they wouldn't explode in the oven.

After roasting, the chestnuts need to be shelled immediately, or the fuzzy lining of the shell begins to reattach to the nut and it is nearly impossible to get off.

With Karin, Ricky and I all shelling the chestnuts right when they came out of the oven, we did a pretty amazing job. After all the effort that went into roasting them, we did a taste test.... They had the consistency of a cooked sweet potato and tasted extremely bland. So, we added some salt, that didn't help. Then we candid them in a syrup of sugar and butter, which surprisingly .... didn't help. When the boys tried them, one said they tasted like bacon, one said they tasted like meat, and one said they were disgusting hahaha.

I have no recollection of what made the ones I had in Switzerland so delicious, to be honest I don't really remember what they tasted like. I just have a very strong memory of loving them and thinking roasted chestnuts are so yummy. It was a super fun activity to do with Karin though, we had a great time on the ups and downs of this adventure.

That night we went to the most spectacular light display in Scottsdale.

Enchant was the world's largest Christmas light maze and village and it was breath taking.

Thee maze was called The Great Search

"A great storm blew through Enchant and now all of Santa’s reindeer are missing! Can you help us find them in time to lead Santa’s sleigh and save Christmas?"

One of the main focal points of the entire display was a 100 foot lighted Christmas tree, I hadn't ever seen anything like it, it was truly amazing. It was surprisingly at the very beginning of the maze

Guests could get a little passport at the beginning of the maze and you could mark off all the reindeer as you found them in the maze. We found Rudolf first.