Christmas Eve 2009

For the first time in our marriage, we did not go home to Utah for Christmas. I was worried about feeling lonely and homesick. Luckily, we did not feel lonely at all since we were able to have great times with some awesome friends!

The tradition from my family that I will always continue to do for Christmas Eve is a pinata pajama hunt. This year we had the Andersons and the Urlings come over to share in the tradition with us. We had a fabulous meal, thanks to everyone! After that, we started the festivities!

Here is Alexia giving our 'Grandma Penguin' pinata a hit. Check out Addie and Savanna's faces, which were totally justified (with a few of the kids backswings getting dangerously close to making them living pinatas).

Porter was more than ready for the handoff of the bat so it could be his turn. I was pretty impressed that none of the kids cried at the pinata getting hit this year; they all enjoyed getting encouraged to be violent ;-)

After the kids had a few turns, we called in Sherrida and Rebekah's big guns to help the cause.

After the pinata was broken into and everyone got their goodies, we did the classic pajama hunt. We had eight clues this year that ultimately led to the prize (Christmas Pajamas!!!) in the girls 'animal drawer!'

Here is our family sporting our PJs.

Here are the Anderson's sporting theirs.

Here is Peter getting upset that he did not get a turn at hitting the pinata (Ha ha ;-)) Actually, I asked him to pose for this picture since I thought it was so cool that someone was packing heat in our home! I think the picture turned out awesome, especially with Sherrida's classic response in it!

The only part of the tradition that we didn't keep this year was watching the Christmas movie in our pjs while eating our pinata candy. It simply was more fun to talk to everyone. We had a blast with all of them!